how long before free shipping becomes compulsary?

RFW

pdel61 wrote: »

But that argument falls down anyway as "soolin" amongst others has pointed out on many occassions that they have tried various others of the so called alternatives and nothing sells, there is at the moment to competition to Ebay. I will give you that some items do have alternatives, but for a general online aution there is only one company in the running, if you choose to clasify it as a monopoly or not is semantics.

Many people have talked about the hope that someone like google who set-up an auction, I'm sure one of the many reasons that haven't is the huge cost involved in getting any market share.

In so far as at least in one country at the moment Paypal is being forced to be the only payment method, meaning you have to pay Ebay 3 times to sell one item also indicates a monopoly to me.

A definition of a monopoly is the right to be, or the fact of being, the only supplier of a specified commodity or service.

If that were the case Ebay could charge what they want (don't say they do now!), believe it or not their rates for their service are competitive, that is why they have little competition.

With a move towards Paypal only and free postage, I'd surmise that the new Ebay chairman's goal is to incorporate Paypal charges into the final value fees.

Time2Go_25

RFW wrote: »

A definition of a monopoly is the right to be, or the fact of being, the only supplier of a specified commodity or service.

Only in a very narrow and simplistic way, using this definition there are probably few if any monopolies left in this country and the only ones that may exist do so because of state rules.

Microsoft by most people definitions would be classified as a monopoly and there are many articles describing it as such, however it does only have 90% of the operating system market share.

Does anyone off hand know what market share of the online auction sites Ebay has?

RFW wrote: »

If that were the case Ebay could charge what they want (don't say they do now!), believe it or not their rates for their service are competitive, that is why they have little competition.

But the could and do, I'm not saying the are high or low, but they are in a position to charge what the like because of the lack of competition.

RFW wrote: »

With a move towards Paypal only and free postage, I'd surmise that the new Ebay chairman's goal is to incorporate Paypal charges into the final value fees.

Maybe, however that is still resticting the methods you can use for payments to a single supplier.

RFW

pdel61 wrote: »

Does anyone off hand know what market share of the online auction sites Ebay has?
.

As I said earlier that is not the 'market' and isn't even definable to offer a figure. A lot of Ebay is not auctions anyway, there are also direct sales of which they have a very small market share. Ebay are one of hundreds of online auction sites. Their share of the amount of auctions must be very high, their share of turnover probably isn't (a lot of very high value online auctions (paintings, antiques, etc) go by the big auction houses).

Brooker_Dave

RFW wrote: »

As I said earlier that is not the 'market' and isn't even definable to offer a figure. A lot of Ebay is not auctions anyway, there are also direct sales of which they have a very small market share. Ebay are one of hundreds of online auction sites. Their share of the amount of auctions must be very high, their share of turnover probably isn't (a lot of very high value online auctions (paintings, antiques, etc) go by the big auction houses).

Do you not think that many people might think that ebay take advantage of their dominent position to raise fees paid by users and force users to only take payment via ebay's own payment gateway?

RFW

Brooker_Dave wrote: »

Do you not think that many people might think that ebay take advantage of their dominent position to raise fees paid by users and force users to only take payment via ebay's own payment gateway?

I know they do, wouldn't you? They're a business, their aim is to maximise profits, the same as any other company. The only way that wouldn't happen is if some sort of co-operative site was set up and the profits shared amongst sellers.

If you auction an item on Ebay and it fetches much more than you expected, do you refund the difference to the buyer, or put the sale price down to 'market forces' and smile all the way to the bank?

steviebabes

By way of an experiment I have not increased my postage charges in line with the new RM prices at the beginning of April. As a consequence of this the price of the stamp has been more or less the exact postage charged. For the first time since DSR's started I have 4.9 this month. I think postage charges must be very high on buyers hate list as it is a necessary evil and even free post has been factored in to the price so they don't like this either. I will just sneak my item prices up a little after 1st May to pay for packaging materials.

Brooker_Dave

steviebabes wrote: »

By way of an experiment I have not increased my postage charges in line with the new RM prices at the beginning of April. As a consequence of this the price of the stamp has been more or less the exact postage charged. For the first time since DSR's started I have 4.9 this month. I think postage charges must be very high on buyers hate list as it is a necessary evil and even free post has been factored in to the price so they don't like this either. I will just sneak my item prices up a little after 1st May to pay for packaging materials.

Exactly how ebay would want it?