eBay UK as announced big changes in their fees. Good coverage on eBay Strategies.
Firstly, media (CD’s DVD’s etc.) will attract much lower listing fees (down, for most items, from 35 to 75 pence to 10 pence). However the downside is that success fees have gone up from 5.25%/3.25%/1.75% to a flat 9%. That’s a really high margin for sellers to absorb in what is a very tight margin business. It seems that eBay UK is accepting that CD’s etc. will be ‘store’ items – which are items in stock which are continuously relisted, and that the real money should only be taken when a sale takes place. At 9% it will be hard for wholesalers to compete with high street.
Secondly prices for eBay motors have risen marginally- from £6 to £8 for auctions and from £9 to £13 for 28 day classifieds. Final value fees are tweaked upwards for aucton sales from 0.75% to 1%. The overall low level of prices told me (without looking) that eBay do not own the online used car market in the UK, and so sellers are not willing to pay much. Indeed Autotrader UK has 371,000 vehicles listed and eBay UK just 61,000. It also seems that classified listings are a new feature on the eBay UK site, which is poor considering the motors market demand for this format. Moreover the eBay Motors UK sell process is horrible – try it. Meanwhile Autotrader UK’s pricing is pretty steep – £17 for 2 weeks (there are other deals as well) and no ‘free until it sells’ offer.
Thirdly eBay UK has tweaked success fees for technology products – lowering them from 5.5%/3.25%/1.75% to 5.5%/3%/2.5%/2%/1.5%/1%, with the price breaks coming between £30 (3%) and £599 (1%). This affects mobile phones, home electronics and cameras. It’s good to see genuine price decreases for technology products – the theory is that eBay is competing against straight eCommerce providers and needs to give sellers lower margins to compete. We are looking at just £3.93 saving on a £400 item, but it adds up for the huge professional sellers, and the buyers for that matter.
Overall these price changes will increase the complexity of the already horribly complex eBay UK pricing model, and also is making sellers across the Atlantic take notice. Question to eBay – if your fees are too hard to understand, do you really think people will trust you?
Lance Wiggs 