Comments on: eBayAG Reacts to Free P&P Campaign Criticisms

By: Sunshine

Sunshine — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:58:03 +0000

Ebay is making more of a PROFIT by the NIL P&P.

Sellers put up the cost of the item to COVER P&P charges and Ebay CLAW IT BACK in FEES !

MORE PROFIT FOR EBAY

Simple.

By: steve

steve — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:14:53 +0000

totally agree with Ed on this

there a good discussion about it on moneysavingexpert (a UK site)

Link is here

Seems most people aggree that this is just a money making move by ebay to tap into the postage revenue of small value items like DVD’s

Will this be afecting Cd’s as well (or has it already?)
I only list CD’s and DVD’s so im a bit gutted.

By: tula

tula — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:42:29 +0000

Hmm, I suppose they might be taking that tack, but I don’t give them that much credit for cleverness I don’t use SMP, so my cost and profit margins are known only to me, therefore I don’t worry about that as far as my own pricing goes. It never would occur to me that eBay would find pricing like in your example to be deceptive. I would think they would be happy with higher item prices, since they get more FVF, but who know what kind of backward thinking they are employing these days.

By: Ed

Ed — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:10:43 +0000

Hi Tula,

OK, maybe I spotted something that no-one else did. Try thinking it this way around …

All this year, on different eBay sites, at different times, eBay have introduced capped P&P costs in different categories. Several times, in announcements, or blogs, or forums etc, various eBay staff have claimed that one of the determinants has been looking at the average P&P charged by all sellers (or a weighting of the average). Fair enough you might think?

OK, let’s look at another “seller watching” that’s been mentioned a couple of times. In Selling Manager Pro, sellers can input actual product cost and actual P&P cost. eBay then provides a tool to calculate profits net of those costs and eBay fees, for sales per product SKU or per transaction. Now suppose they’ve been monitoring what sellers have been inputting?

Now put both of those together with para 4 of their email above, and what you have is a search and destroy squad armed with data from averaged sold P&P, plus seller input product cost and P&P costs.

So poor Sid the Seller is running an experiment to find the optimum price for a widget. In a simple example, he tests separate and inclusive P&P. In one listing he offers $10 all-in, and in another he offers $7 + $3 P&P. Now eBay does want him to sell at the all-in price (more FVFs for them), but the P&P Police decide that in the $10 listing, he’s misleading the buyers because P&P shows as $0.00 and is therefore not truly offering free P&P. BANG – listing pulled, or seller suspended.

They don’t have to use identical listings to do that comparison, just similar items in the same category.

… and as we all know, it only takes one neg or neutral feedback to become an SNP Dolphin (on the UK site at least). Plus we all know how unco-operative eBay are to their paying customers over false VeRO claims, etc, etc, etc.

Hope that helps you to see what I was driving at?

By: tula

tula — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:28:24 +0000

I’m not sure I understand the problem here. My understanding of the eBay text is that you can’t claim 0.00 or free shipping and then require buyers to pay additional handling or insurance costs that you don’t list in the shipping and handling fields (other than optional insurance costs). If it’s all wrapped into your item price, it’s no one’s business but yours as to what the breakdown is of your profit or handling charges.

It’s possible I’m misunderstanding this, but that’s how it reads to me. Of course, eBay also encourages people to makes their prices lower – interesting doublespeak from a company who keeps raising their prices.