draco76 wrote:ok this is really pissing me off I just paid a $250 ebay bill...... and paypal fee's are getting outragous


look at this bullshit

Total Amount:
$90.01 USD
Fee Amount:
-$3.81 USD
Net Amount:
$86.20 USD

4.25% gez

If you think that's bad, wait until August when Paypal's fees go WAY up and get REALLY ugly.  I'm thinking about offering discount shipping for those that pay by check or money order, except you're not allowed to state or advertise that in your listings (obviously).  I suppose I can fit it on the invoice in some way to get around those rules. I'd rather hand money back to the customer than line Ebay/Paypal's pockets anymore.

Mike B.

Well, that makes it easy enough for me. I just wont accept Paypal any further. IMO, Ebay is going to end up pricing themselves out of the market. With that, 1 of 3 things are going to happen. 1) A viable competitor comes along that will cause them to seriously reconsider their fee structure 2) A viable competitor comes along and blows them out of the water or the most likely situation, 3)  Ebay gets sued by someone under the Federal Antitrust laws, as they have become a monopoly. Just my .02.

beyondthebreach wrote:I just did a search - effectively, Paypal fees remain the same . . . they will only be increasing the minimum sales amount merchants need to qualify for a discounted rate. The minimum will increase from $3,000 in monthly sales to $10,000 (other changes as well).

All the fees for the little guys will remain unchanged. Low to mid volume sellers will get "hit" by this and very high volume sellers will benefit.

I was going to post the same thing BTB. Of course I (and many Acaeum members that do this full time or even part time) fall into the "Low to mid volume sellers" category.  So for most of you guys it won't change.  Nice to see the guys already making a fortune ($10k a month?  yeh, sure, any day now  :roll: ) will benefit.  Sheesh.

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:
I'm thinking about offering discount shipping for those that pay by check or money order, except you're not allowed to state or advertise that in your listings (obviously).
Mike B.

You are allowed to offer discounts on the total price to Buyers who pay via a certain method(s) (e.g. 10% off if you pay via Money Order).
You are NOT allowed to add fees for using a certain payment option (e.g. add 10% if you pay via Paypoo).
And yeah Fleabay is just too damn greedy - has been for awhile.
They could easily integrate the Ebay & Paypal system together for one fee structure (and make things much more secure & safe too) but noooo.
Guess 20 million profit just isn't enough

i was talking to someone the other night actually, who was VERY interested in designing an alternative to ebay. whilst i am very interested and would do anything to help...do you think it has any chance of getting off the ground, realistically?

Not unless they have a billion dollars and a structure markedly different from Ebays.  Ebay's lawyers will proactively try and prevent any such site that exactly mimics them from every launching by tying it up in court for years.  So someone not only has to have deep pockets, they have to have a engine that is either superior or different from Ebays. Not much chance of that...plus the Ebay model may have just peaked (see next post).

Mike B.

jagd wrote:

Badmike wrote:
I'm thinking about offering discount shipping for those that pay by check or money order, except you're not allowed to state or advertise that in your listings (obviously).
Mike B.

You are allowed to offer discounts on the total price to Buyers who pay via a certain method(s) (e.g. 10% off if you pay via Money Order).
You are NOT allowed to add fees for using a certain payment option (e.g. add 10% if you pay via Paypoo).
And yeah Fleabay is just too damn greedy - has been for awhile.
They could easily integrate the Ebay & Paypal system together for one fee structure (and make things much more secure & safe too) but noooo.
Guess 20 million profit just isn't enough

Thanks for the clarification, I thought it was something like that, I may start offering discounts to MO and check payers then when paypal changes their structure.
   The Wall Street Journal the other day mentioned that Ebay's traffic has gone down for the 6th month in a row, the longest such dip since they opened their doors to business.  Ebay counters that although traffic is down, revenue is up.  What they fail to mention is that they raised their fees for certain services (such as BIN) during that time period, which could account for the rise in revenue (I'm not smart enough to figure any of this out, it was all in the article).  Their stock has dipped in the same time period too.   The end of Ebay?  Of course not, as long as a viable alternative doesn't exist.  Ebay does a lot of things right, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be better, a lot better.  And look what happened to AOL once they rose to the top of the heap and thought they were untouchable.  DSL may finish them off by the end of the decade (they are losing millions of customers each year).  
  Then again, the same article mentioned that Paypal is raking in cash, so that was a good aquisition for Ebay.  If you think about it, Paypal is ludicrous in its ability to just plain make money.....now that's a business I'm surprised someone doesn't start an alternative to....

Mike B.

I just wish someone with some money would open a different auction site with realistic fee's.  Hell dump all this buyer/seller protection shit(paypal fucks you half the time there anyways) like .10 cents per item to list 1% of sale final vaule should be what the fee's should be.   None of this .25-5 listing fee's, picture fee's, reserve fee's, 8% final vaule store fee's, 4% paypal fee's, its gonna be impossible to make a dime soon, if not now.

well BIN fee's are bullshit now as well...

$.25 compared to the old $.05  5x fee jump is a little crazy?

Some random thoughts ... :

killjoy32 wrote:i was talking to someone the other night actually, who was VERY interested in designing an alternative to ebay. whilst i am very interested and would do anything to help...do you think it has any chance of getting off the ground, realistically?

Two MAJOR players — Yahoo and Amazon — have already tried and failed miserably. Both were blown so completely out of the water that only a thin layer of mist was left ... (and, yes, I realize that both still do auctions. However, neither puts any emphasis on them any longer).

There's even been a couple of "gaming-only" auction sites that have sprung up, but they've been kind of sad (I logged onto one the other day and there was something like six items TOTAL being sold).

bclarkie wrote:Well, that makes it easy enough for me. I just wont accept Paypal any further

Clarkie, I'm not singling you out, but I'm going to use your quote here, as you echo a lot of people's feelings. To this sentiment, I would say "think twice." I've had 42 auctions end this month, and all 42 buyers have used PayPal (of my last 100 auctions, I'd estimate that I've received 95 PayPal payments).

Personally, I have no desire to go back to the "old days" of processing 42 checks/money orders. Yes, I'm paying fees on each of those transactions, but PayPal also provides some conveniences: virtually instant transfer into my bank account, 100-percent accurate address information (that is easily copied-and-pasted for label-printing purposes), and at least some level of seller protection.

draco76 wrote:well BIN fee's are bullshit now as well...

And BINs used to be free ...

morgansurname wrote:The old 10 auction for $.10 was a good deal.

And an even better deal when it was free. As mentioned somewhere above, eBay has a long history of introducing free services, getting users interested, then making those services not-so-free.

What's it all mean? I'm not sure; as I said, these are randmom thoughts. However, as long as the eBay/PayPal dynamic is the only real player in the online auction business — and, let's be honest, that's pretty much the case — small-time sellers like a lot of us here are forced to do two things: first, limit fees as much as possible (low openers, no BINS or reserves, no bold or other add-ons, etc.); second: pass on some costs to buyers.

It's the second one that causes a lot of contention, and it's been discussed on numerous threads here already. I'll just add that, unpopular as it might be, passing on some costs is an alternative that many small-time sellers are forced to adopt in order to not be nickel-and-dimed to death. Personally, I often charge $4 for a Priority Mail envelope (15 cents profit), $8 for the new flat-rate boxes (30 cents profit), and varying rates for first-class mail under one pound (profit varies). I always state my shipping costs up-front, the buyers don't seem to mind, and I live to sell another day after getting some of my fees back.