Saturday, August 23, 2008

More eBay Changes

I find myself in a confused state, just like this man. I'll never really know how he got to where he's at now... twice, and I'm not really sure why I found this in my eBay inbox today.

Goodbye and Thanks from eBay Express

We're Closing Our Doors but You can Still Sell All the Same Fixed Price Inventory on eBay.com

Dear fmercury39,

It's been our pleasure to work with Top eBay Express Sellers like you and we thank you for your loyalty. This message is to let you know we will be retiring eBay Express, effective September 16th.

Looking back, eBay Express helped us break new ground. Going forward, we're adding the best features to eBay.com:

Enhanced search and find functionality for fixed-price offerings

Higher search visibility for sellers with exemplary track records

Reduced risk for buyers to purchase thanks to automatic buyer protection for the full protection price, plus original shipping costs on any eligible purchase made with PayPal (starting this fall)
Since we've added these features to eBay, it makes sense to direct traffic and focus all marketing resources on a single destination.


As eBay Express goes away, rest assured, your inventory will display on eBay.com with no interruptions. In fact, an even bigger market of qualified buyers is already searching on it now.
And you won't need to do anything differently to list your items on eBay or to fulfill your orders.


For details about continuing your business on eBay, please visit Frequently Asked Questions.

Once again, thank you for being a Top eBay Express Seller. We look forward to your continued success at eBay.com

Best regards,
The Team at eBay Express


I never really understood eBay Express to begin with. I guess, I got a little business from there, according to a few invoice statements, but I never signed up for it. It was just there.

I'm sure this will alienate even more eBay sellers and customers. I could really care less. eBay has me so disillusioned right now, that I even inquired at Beckett on how to become a dealer. Let's just say the information I got was promising and devastating all at once. I doubt I will be becoming a Beckett dealer any time soon.

If eBay wants to shoot themselves in the foot, that's fine by me. I just wish that they would leave me out of it. I was perfectly happy with the way things were last year at eBay. I didn't need any changes. Why would I? Every change that eBay has made this year has effected me negatively.

Getting rid of eBay Express is probably the first change that they have done this year that won't directly impact me. Although, I'm sure that I'll be sorry that I wrote that. Knowing my luck with eBay this year, this will probably drive my monthly sales down to zero.

Will any place appear that has no listing fee and a minuscule final sales fee? Beckett does have that for dealers, but there's a catch. There is a $200 start up fee and monthly plans starting at $249.99. That would be fine, if I was trying to enhance an already existing shop, but that does not fit into my budget right now.

If anyone knows of a place where we can all sell at, where the only fees are final sales fees, I'm all ears.

8 comments:

jv said...

Check out Sportsbuy (formerly NAXCOM.) I sold there for awhile but got ticked off by some personal issues I had with the timing of their upload process. I went with eBay on a whim and have stayed there since.

I have no clue what the seller's atmosphere is like since they switched over to Sportsbuy but if you haven't tried them, I would suggest it.

Treasures By Brenda said...

Hi, White Sox Cards

I have been generally satisfied with my results with eBay through my auctions and my store, Treasures By Brenda. The volume of my eBay business has been gradually increasing (except for this past month during which I closed shop for holidays). Granted, it has taken a lot of hard work on my part.

Like yourself, I have not done any business through eBay Express and I do not know much about it.

I agree that eBay has made many changes that have been disagreeable and/or difficult this year. However, I believe that the marketplace has changed and that all companies need to continually evolve. (For instance, not many companies rate the buyer as eBay sellers have been allowed to do.)

Anyway, I agree with change in general. I just wish there was a way to evolve which required a little less work. The change I just read about fixed shipping fees is great. It will prevent eBay sellers from making a profit on shipping and that is good for eBay's reputation, I think. However, I am a Canadian eBay seller who sells on www.ebay.com and this change means that I now have to alter every auction that I have for media items -- books, DVDs, CDs and VHS -- I am guessing that I have about 1,000 of those items in my store and that process requires a lot of work. I now have to change the shipping cost to the one allowed by eBay and will have to add the balance (to reflect the true shipping cost from Canada) to the cost of my item. This is going to be a time consuming process!

The only alternate site that I have checked out is Amazon and, while they charge no fee to list an item, their fees are considerably higher than those charged on eBay and they are definitely not a good option for selling books, particularly from Canada.

I hope you are able to find some alternate sites. Have you tried a Google search for internet auction sites?

Brenda

P.S. I have created some web pages at Squidoo that are driving traffic to my eBay store. The one I created about my eBay store is at Treasures By Brenda if you are interested in having a look at it.

Steve Gierman said...

jv,

When Sportsbuy spammed everyone with that Steve Bartman thing, I emailed Sportsbuy about the services they offer with legitimate questions that I could not find answers to. I still haven't heard back from anyone. Not even with a form e-mail.

treasures by brenda,
Most of the items that I have for sale are well under a dollar, so that is my biggest beef with eBay this year. If I charge too much, the items sit there. If I put them at auction, I end up losing money. Their new pricing structure put me in a real bind. I never inflated my shipping prices, so that never effected me.

I appreciate all the suggestions.

jv said...

yeah, that was the other reason I didn't like NAXCOM. When I emailed them it would take forever to get a response and when I did, it was like a robot sent it. Like it took keywords and gave me back generic responses...

I sent them tons of email saying, "that's not what I asked!"

ad infinitum..

Treasures By Brenda said...

Have you tried bundling your items? Just a thought, I know nothing about baseball cards but if it would work it would spread the fees across more than one item.

Brenda

Steve Gierman said...

I've tried bundling before and it's not too effective. I have a bunch of cards designated by team and by set, but they are slow sellers. The few times that I have bundled random cards by set or by team or whatever, I always get e-mails asking if they could just purchase one of the cards.

Card collectors tend to stick with a want list. If there are a bunch of cards bundled with one card they need, they will tend to look elsewhere. It's jus the nature of the beast, in that area.

Maybe I will try to bundle more often and see how that goes.

jv said...

I tried to post a comment but had a hiccup on my internet connection. If this is a duplicate comment, please don't allow this one.

If you haven't tried a "pick #" approach I would suggest it. I'm not sure if it's against eBay policy as I just started selling but I see numerous auctions of 100+ card lots that allows you to bid on 10, 20, 25, etc of your choice out of the lot.

I've considered doing this myself so if you choose to, send me the link to your auctions. I want to see how you set it up.

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