Belgium offers free listings, if free shipping offered

By Ed | October 4th, 2008 | Category: eBay BE | No Comments »

eBay Belgium have tendered a last minute announcement for free insertion fees for tomorrow and Monday (5-6 October) for listings offering free shipping.

eBay globally seem intent on creating a self-fulfilling prophesy that buyers prefer listings with free shipping, despite those sellers offering it continuing to complain of DSRs being marked down because of it. Those sellers state the buyers can neither see the actually shipping charged, nor qualify easily for multiple item shipping discounts, and that is why overall DSR averages for Shipping costs remain below the perfect 5.0

Buyers are of course, not as dumb as eBay would like sellers to believe, and most of them fully understand that the price they see contains “inclusive shipping” not free shipping. Despite this, eBay continues to push sellers towards breaking the Advertising Standards laws of many of the countries in which they operate (by using the terminology “free shipping”).

The 2-day promotion is only for auction and Buy Now format – classifieds and store listings are excluded). eBay Motors is included, and as usual, all extras such as Gallery are not included. The free insertion fee applies to all price tranches.

There was a time, once upon a time, when eBay was run by clever people who understood that September and October were good months for offering free or reduced insertion for eBay Shop/Store listings. I guess those days have gone?