eBay Plans Fixed-Price Sales Emphasis

[engine]

eBay Plans Fixed-Price Sales Emphasis [nytimes.com]

Acknowledging that most online shoppers cannot be bothered with auctions, eBay plans Wednesday to announce changes to its fee structure that emphasize fixed prices over bidding. The move is intended to help eBay compete more effectively with Amazon .com and other big online retailers.
The announcement, timed to increase sales during the holiday shopping season, is just one of the changes eBay has made in the last few months aimed at reducing its dependence on its auction business, which is growing more slowly than fixed-price sales. It provides yet more evidence that consumers are losing interest in auctions now that online shopping sites have become more affordable and easier to use.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Quite sad really. I prefer auction format. This will chase away many of the people who sell interesting, one off items.

[maximillianos]

I agree with the move. I can't stand using auctions any more. I don't have time to mess with them. If I want something, I'll find it a deal somewhere else and get it right away... none of these 7 day auctions and even then you don't know if you are going to get it.

I stopped using eBay 4 years ago.

[trinorthlighting]

It seems like eBay is grasping at straws a bit here. They keep switching around fee structures and try to attract new sellers or new advertisers?

I think what ebay does need to do is a reality check about all the fees they charge. They are very excessive and greedy.

Ever look into selling on amazon? You can auction and sell item flat out for a lower price than you can on ebay.

[HRoth]

I like the auction thing for the oddball stuff too. I've noticed less and less of the latter on ebay.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Yes, I buy old books and I have got many of them in ebay auctions. I am not in a hurry for them. The people who sell this sort of one off, stuff are unlikely to advertise them for a fixed price.

[vincevincevince]

Ebay muscled in and squeezed other auction sites out of the picture. What a waste. I do hope Yahoo! relaunches their free auction service - auction only format, no reserve or starting bid, and no commercial listings.

[rogerd]

The auction format is highly useful for one-of-a-kind items and for collectibles, etc., that are hard to price.

I don't see that market going away at all, even if eBay skews their pricing in an attempt to become a more diverse online marketplace.

In fact, higher prices for straight auctions (and cheaper listing prices for fixed price items) might well be a logical business strategy for eBay. They don't have much competition on the true auction front, while they certainly do on the regular ecommerce side of things.

[Roxster]

For new stuff I don't like ebay. For used stuff I love the auction format. Used items closer represent the used market value better.

[Gomvents]

bottom line it that between eBay and PayPal fees as a seller you have to take a huge hit when you sell on eBay. It's really crazy! If eBay was smarter they'd do something like a $1 listing fee $1 + 1% final value fee plus it's PayPal fees and encourage the use of PayPal (as they do). ehhhh then again, this is the same company that bought Skype... they don't know too much, do they?

[security56]

I sell a lot of stuff on Ebay and never like the "Buy Now" option which gives fixed prices because about 80% of the time the item is bought by scammers and had to relist the item again. After dealing with scammers so many times, I just decided to use the Auction format.

[PCInk]

If they had any sense, they would put the lists of items into two columns. Left-hand side for auctions and right-hand side for buy it now. Scrap those listings which have both. Keep both types of buyers happy - you only need to look at the side you are interested in.

If they really had any sense, they would allow shops to list their items on buy it now for free. I would list loads if I knew it was free until someone bought and then I would have to pay the final value fee and the PayPal fee.

I should work for eBay.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

auction only format, no reserve or starting bid, and no commercial listings.

I would use that.

[HRoth]

Yeah, me too. I really dislike looking for something vintage on ebay and finding a bunch of drop-ship junk with about 25 identical listings in a row.

[johnnie]

Ebay seems to be in panic-mode. Their site (and revenue I believe) have been stagnant for a while now...

[chance1376]

Here is the official annoncment:
[www2.ebay.com...]

It looks like your payment options are Paypal or ProPay for credit cards. Has anyone heard of Pro Pay before? I would have thought with all the payment gateways out there they would use something a little more common.

The Pro Pay account that will work for ebay is 60 dollars a year and 3.25 % + $0.35 per transaction unless it is AMEX which raises the fee to 3.75%. Plus the list of incidental cost.

[sun818]

It would be worth it to use ProPay if you are processing AmEx exclusively with ProPay. I can't imagine any card-not-present merchant would have a merchant account with rates that high.

When eBay integrates ProPay into their system, they can continue with their monopolistic behavior with Paypal. ProPay will be the buffer they use to insulate themselves from lawsuits. ProPay has been around for many years but they are a small player. Integrating with a Authorize.Net payment gateway would serve eBay sellers, but eBay is afraid this would leak too much revenue from their Paypal cash-cow.

[mfishy]

I never really understood the auction model as a buyer. Who would ever bid until the end? Why would I want to be around at the end? Does anyone get anything out of it other than perhaps the seller? If I don't see "buy it now" I am out :)

[HRoth]

Most people bid before the end on vintage items, IME. For one thing, if you are bidding on something popular, you could set your price at X and then find out that a lot of people bid on it and outbid you, but if you had known that, you might have wanted to bid more than your original max bid. Or as has happened to me, I set my max bid at X.00 and someone else set theirs at X.99, and they won because I did not pay attention to the bidding. Also, some people enjoy the process of buying. It is not all about getting the thing.

[koan]

Also, some people enjoy the process of buying. It is not all about getting the thing.

I'm glad we're not married ;)

[Bewenched]

Umm... I think there's something already like that ... it's called Amazon!

Seriously ... paypal has become a nightmare for alot of merchants including ourselves. A person can get the item, then dispute it because they didnt like it or what ever and YOU the merchant are forced to give back a full refund including shipping. Losses abound.

[Essex_boy]

Never had much love for ebay way to much hit and miss, however they made a grave error with all the price hikes, its now way to expensive to list small cheap items.

[dpd1]

I think the problem is that eBay hasn't been able to figure out what it wants to be for years now. One minute it wants to be a sales site, but then still be an auction site. In the end they've done both badly. There's still plenty of people that want to sell used items and also buy used items. I can't believe that demand has dried up. But I think the good buyers went always because eBay got greedy and wanted to try and be a retail site as well. Once they did that, the whole site became bloated with junk. That turned off all the good buyers with real money to spend. I don't understand why they even think they need to compete with something like Amazon... It's two totally different things. They should have stuck to what worked for them, being a good auction site. It may not have made as much money as a giant like Amazon, but how much money do you need to make? Everybody can't be number one.

[MrSpeed]

In a lot of niches like musical instruments there are a lot more transactions taking place on forums. People are sick of ebay and paypal fees.

[VV_Vivo]

In response to ebay banning googlecheckout a rival to paypal google hit ebay with there spam team. And boy did they hit them annilating there results on google through 302's proxy hijacks and duplicate content. Google remain the biggest single threat to any internet company trading online.

[gibbergibber]

I don't see what this has got to do with eBay.

Why not just let people use whichever format they prefer, and let the free marketplace tell us whether people prefer auctions or fixed-price?

Why does eBay feel the need to interfere in transactions between private citizens? They're only meant to be a venue after all.

--I never really understood the auction model as a buyer. Who would ever bid until the end? Why would I want to be around at the end? Does anyone get anything out of it other than perhaps the seller?--

The buyer may benefit if the auction ends at an unusually low price, while the seller may benefit if the auction ends at an unusually high price. Either way, both buyer and seller can receive tremendous benefits from the auction model.

It's a very exciting sales process too. There can be a real buzz around the auction of a rare and desired item.

--Who would ever bid until the end? Why would I want to be around at the end?--

You don't have to be around at the end on most auction sites, they will automatically bid on your behalf and you just set a limit for how high you want to go.

[vincevincevince]

The way Ebay implemented the bidding process did cripple the auction format to a substantial extent. They have always pandered to the seller's requests rather than the buyer's preferences - which is why buyers no longer trust or like it. They should have reformed their systems a long time ago to a sealed bid system - you bid $10 but don't know if you are the high bidder until the auction closes.

Example of Ebay's system:
Adam bids max $5 for a widget; Ben bids max $10 (price now shows $5.10); Charles, friend of the seller bids max $15, price shows $15. Charles withdraws. Ben is offered the option to buy, not at the price before Charles appeared ($5.10) but at $10 - his max bid, despite there being no other bidder over $5. If Ebay were on the side of the buyer rather than the seller, it would have automatically been a $5.10 offer.

[mfishy]

The buyer may benefit if the auction ends at an unusually low price, while the seller may benefit if the auction ends at an unusually high price. Either way, both buyer and seller can receive tremendous benefits from the auction model.

Nah, the seller on ebay has the reserve set at a price where there are basically no deals ever. It benefits the seller 99% of the time.

[HRoth]

"In response to ebay banning googlecheckout a rival to paypal google hit ebay with there spam team. And boy did they hit them annilating there results on google through 302's proxy hijacks and duplicate content. Google remain the biggest single threat to any internet company trading online."

This must be why whenever I search for an item on Google, it returns a bunch of stuff on ebay. This is Google's way of showing its disdain for ebay--giving them good search results.

[Roxster]

I just got stuck by ebay last night. I sold a camera and a pretend bidder one the auction. Someone bid up my camera with no feedback, with intention to help theirs sell better. Meanwhile I pay ebay about 30 USD to list it with their listing fees and commission. I have to plea my case in hopes to see a partial refund of the fees, and I have to re list it.