posted on March 9, 2006 04:52:30 AM new
I lowered my price in the middle of the auction and was expecting a refund. Now I know why I did not receive it!!
posted on March 9, 2006 05:13:02 AM new
Apparently eBay closed a loophole sellers were using to minimize their listing fees.
If you don't want to bother reading the link (the usual litany of eBay a brutal monopoly, send your items to some lame site and teach them a lesson, etc.) just use the following "cheat sheet":
Sellers trying to make more money: Good business sense.
Ebay trying to make more money: Pure evil.
[ edited by Damariscotta on Mar 9, 2006 05:15 AM ]
posted on March 9, 2006 05:24:58 AM new
Before anyone goes off on how we sellers are being mean to eBay, let's consider why most sellers change the price of their widget.
Seller A puts an item up for $12.95. Seller B comes along a couple of days later and puts the same widget up for $9.95. Seller A has two choices - leave it run at $12.95 and get no bids because Seller B's widget is cheaper or change their price to $9.00 to under price the competition and sell their widget. It's done in the retail world all the time. Check your gas stations, check WalMart. It's nothing new. And, for eBay to punish sellers in this way is just wrong. No money was being taken from eBay. They were still getting listing fees and FVF fees.
Cheryl
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
posted on March 9, 2006 05:58:44 AM new
Don't you think the drones at ebay read this board? Of course they do. When we complain about something, they fix it. When we find a loophole, they fix that too!
posted on March 9, 2006 06:28:41 AM new
Ebay has no quarrel with the 95% of the sellers that used this fee reduction method as a legitimate listing tool. It's the 5% that abused the policy by listing an item that would normally bring $2.50 to $3.50 in listing fees and only paying a quarter that caused them to change the policy. If you'll remember the ants in the pizza box thread, the OP described in detail a very similar loophole in Ebay's rules that allowed sellers to list half their items for free. That blueprint for abusing the system got the poster banned from Ebay for life. Ebay gets very upset when someone trys to cheat them out of their fees.
If Murphy's law is correct, everything East of the San Andreas Fault will slide into the Atlantic
posted on March 9, 2006 09:46:34 AM new
I was actually more surprised to find out that they lowered the insertion fee when the start price was lowered, than about them removing the rebate. I guess I never had to do this, and therefore never noticed this in the fee schedule, but I would have assumed I would be charged for the initial insertion with no rebate.
Was this insertion fee rebate emphasized anywhere?
What other sellers start at is irrelevent; if you are willing to list an item at a certain start price, why should eBay give up part of their fee when you change your mind?
posted on March 9, 2006 10:51:42 AM newThe 5% who abused it are the ones that ruined it for everyone else.
But isn't that always the case?
People buy cheap shipping boxes, shipped FREE, on eBay when they have every reason to believe they're being scammed from a shipping company...
Same for labels...
Same for Priority Mail supplies, which people are STILL abusing. Gee, did you know if you cut off the identifying marks from a PM Tyvek mailer, you still have quite a nice size envelope with a self-seal strip? Some sellers I've bought from sure know it. You just have to tape up one side of the mailer, that's all...
And whenever someone posts one of these discoveries to Vendio, dozens of people just can't WAIT to get theirs.
posted on March 9, 2006 12:00:14 PM new
How true, Fluffy. I buy postcards for our museum, at their request. I've been surprised (guess I shouldn't be!) at how many postcards are sent to me with a corner of a priority envelope used as stiffener. Always new-looking, too. When cardboard is all around us, like manna from heaven, I shake my head over sellers who'd cut up new priority envelopes for postcard stiffeners. It's going to bite all of us eventually, I fear.
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