Is it legal for ebay to take commission from seller's postage?

RFW

soolin wrote: »

there is an interesting discussion on the community boards about the changes. There are all the usual calls for legal action, petitions, boycotts etc but a high percentage of seller, almost half something thinks, who welcome the changes.

I saw the poorly worded petition that also called for the return of sellers leaving negative feedback. With that additional sentence it's fairly plain to see the type of sellers who are against. Anyone still banging on about being able to leave negative feedback doesn't really need to be on Ebay.
I was at the Ebay convention just after negs were taken away and there was a near riot from sellers against it. Some people were aghast that I wasn't that bothered by it. That's a few years ago now, Ebay doesn't seem to have disintegrated.
I suppose petitions do have a purpose, they keep people nicely in one place, by the time they have enough signatures to do anything the rest of us have moved on.
Historically Ebay have never stopped introducing something once they've said they're going to, they have changed a few after they've initially been implemented. This won't be one of them. If revenue does dip for them then they'll change/reduce another fee. FVFs on postage will be here to stay and it's largely the fault of the sellers who will be most affected by it.

soolin

If revenue does dip for them then they'll change/reduce another fee. FVFs on
postage will be here to stay and it's largely the fault of the sellers who will
be most affected by it.

I think that is it in a nutsehell. Same as capped postage categories- some areas of postage were traditionally inflated to daft amounts and all that happened was that ebay introduced caps.

zerog

adouglasmhor wrote: »

Yeah that really worked. People who have been playing by the rules have been subsidising people who think like you for years and now they are going to lose out less.

Well as a buyer who buys from "people who think like techspec" prices are going to go up by nearly 10%

patman99

The main problem with continuing to increase FVF's, include postage costs in FVFs and changing the whole way ebay works whilst their biggest rival has had no increase in it's 10 year history will eventually harm ebay.

In the world of business, you get the big business who thinks they are untouchable so fail to see far enough into the future to see their own demise.
It has happened to Nokia. At one time, Nokia sold 60% of all mobiles owned. Apple came along and took a large chunk of Nokia's market place & at their height, had a 49% market share. Along came Android & Apple's share is now below 18% and shrinking.
Nokia are struggling to shift phones as no-one wants Windows phones.

Same will happen with ecommerce sites. Tesco are in the process of allowing selected retailers to sell on their website in a move aimed at creating their own version of Amazon's marketplace.

When ebay realize they have over-stepped the mark it will be too late. Once you alienate a customer, they won't come back.

RFW

patman99 wrote: »

The main problem with continuing to increase FVF's, include postage costs in FVFs and changing the whole way ebay works whilst their biggest rival has had no increase in it's 10 year history will eventually harm ebay.

Do you mean Amazon? They've only recently upped their prices.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/28/amazon-fees-hike-third-party.

patman99 wrote: »

Same will happen with ecommerce sites. Tesco are in the process of allowing selected retailers to sell on their website in a move aimed at creating their own version of Amazon's marketplace.

Tesco have been running that for about 18 months now, it isn't working well for them.

Ebay could well contract at some point, I doubt this will be it. There is only Amazon who work at the same level and they've hardly had the best year for publicity.

We've been here any times over the last few years, Ebay is still very much in control of its own destiny.

techspec

soolin wrote: »

Except that it will merely show a marked difference between certain stypes of sellers. (apologies I can't explain this well)

The 'first' ranked ones will all be TRS with inclusive postage and with automatic 5* and a TRS discount. The 'second' tier will be smaller businesses and infrequent private sellers (the ones that tend to list only on free listing days) that have low p and p and the occasional free postage . The 'third' tier will be the private sellers who want to use 99p listings and load all their p and p and costs onto the P and p element, so they will stand out as 'poor' sellers to many buyers.

Eventually the average stars will creep up as the majority of sellers will be on 5*and 5* in p and p will be the normal expected stars so those sellers getting even 4* on occasions will become below average very quickly.

Ive always understood it from a sellers point of view.

Its dumb buyers, who could not see that fee avoidance was better for them, via cheaper prices, that did my head in.

adouglasmhor

zerog wrote: »

Well as a buyer who buys from "people who think like techspec" prices are going to go up by nearly 10%

Really, so you would buy from him with his exaggerated postage before me with my free postage? Well now I will be cheaper than him, win to me.

plumface

adouglasmhor wrote: »

Really, so you would buy from him with his exaggerated postage before me with my free postage? Well now I will be cheaper than him, win to me.
How do you know what the TOTAL selling price is to be able to say 'win to me' You could still be more expensive?

If the item was more or less the same total price (even if one had exaggerated postage) then i would look at the feedback and DSR scores to make a decision on who to purchase from.

zerog

adouglasmhor wrote: »

Really, so you would buy from him with his exaggerated postage before me with my free postage? Well now I will be cheaper than him, win to me.

Uhh, are you really asking me if I would rather pay £8 in total or £10 in total for the same item?

And no, you will either be the only seller, or he will be the same price as you, so loss to me, and probably you too.

plumface wrote: »

If the item was more or less the same total price (even if one had exaggerated postage) then i would look at the feedback and DSR scores to make a decision on who to purchase from.

Well I'd expect the postage DSR to be low anyway, and the rest don't mean anything. If someone has a lot of negs which he hasn't responded to, then maybe, but most of my problem transactions have been from so-called TRS and people with over 1000 feedback.

Brooker_Dave

All you ebay sellers - see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom