eBay Kool Aid tasting good in the UK?

By Garry HJ | December 10th, 2009 | Category: eBay UK | No Comments »

eBay UK have announced an extended cheap fees promotion for private sellers in the media categories, but beware the terms and conditions.

The folks at Richmond must have been drinking a lot of the corporate Kool Aid with the new give away of free insertion fees for auctions starting at under GB £5.00, which runs from 9th December through to 24th January 2010.

Not only are the insertion fees free (but not to business sellers) but the sellers also have to give free shipping, free shipping insurance, and buyer collection is not permitted, nor are surcharges for services such as warranties. Basically, any ancillary area that sellers may be able to tag on to make a profit from the sale are prohibited. eBay probably thinks this is fair enough considering the promotion is only for non-business sellers, and likely expect private sellers to be simply dumping older items replaced by shiny new Christmas gifts. However ….

…. There are categories of products likely to yield a large volume of post-Christmas listings that are excluded from the offer. These include the following Video Games sub-categories:

Coin-Operated,
Consoles & Systems
Vintage & Retro Gaming

Although private sellers are unlikely to have a surfeit of ex-arcade coin-operated video games, there’s likely to be a very large availability of older console games and items classifying as Vintage or Retro in the post-Christmas period. If I was to be generous in appraising this move, I’d say it was to push private sellers into trying to dispose of such items to the business sellers who specialise in those categories, unfortunately (for eBay UK) I’m not going to be that charitable.

It’s well known that several of the UK PowerSeller discussion-board posters who are “chummy” with eBay staff are into the three excluded product ranges, whilst several prominent business closures in the last year (on eBay UK) have been high volume sellers of those items who were not always on the best of terms with the Pinks. Those exclusions could be a pre-emptive move to prevent them dumping their remaining inventory as “private” sellers.

As I reported a few days ago, eBay UK Trust & Safety have been clearing out excessively active “private” sellers and issuing Europe-wide restrictions on the listing ability of sellers globally, based solely on the number of listings uploaded.

Business sellers forced into closing down, claiming eBay changes removed their prime or sole revenue channel are then faced with large volumes of ex-business stock, following appropriate and correct accounting write-off of the stock, to clear as private sellers. A number of them have stated they are running ahead of HMG’s Official Receivers in a prelude to bankruptcy, and therefore desperate to liquidate at any price. eBay UK is denying them market access to do so, on the channel that built its ivory towers from exactly such situations.

Another “cull the sellers” move that eBay UK have inserted into this promotion, is that of the free or zero shipping cost requirement. It is entirely natural, and understandable, that sellers will insert the cheapest (slowest) possible shipping method into the first domestic delivery slot, particularly when selling low-price items. Experienced sellers understand this will lead to a surge of buyers who never read the details, and leave low DSRs for despatch time, misusing the rating as being total delivery time.

I also have to state my belief that eBay’s intransigence, globally, over not cutting slack to cross-border sellers on this item, is their passive-aggressive method of restricting international trade. Sellers from Australia or the Orient, listing otherwise eligible items onto the UK site during the promotion, can in no way acquire round-the-world shipping at the same cost as domestic sellers can acquire domestic shipping. eBay knows this, and has paid lip service to it many times, yet still they persist with this type of exclusionary and protectionist condition in complete contravention of global accords on international trade.

Ergo, despite their fancy words, eBay do not want a global marketplace, they want a divided and (racially?) segregated one – they are saying loud and clear to Orientals to stay in the Orient, and Americans to stay in the 50 States, etc. If Sandeep Aggarwal and co. (on Wall Street) cannot see this, then I can recommend many a good optician here in Thailand.

Summary

This extended promotion, given it’s narrow category focus and onerous terms and conditions, is a thinly veiled and half hearted attempt to delay or prevent the anticipated post-Christmas mass exodus of sellers to Amazon.

It is also eBay disingenuity at its finest, as many new and inexperienced sellers are going to get severely stung for fees when they don’t dot every “i” and cross every “t” to comply and receive the free insertions. Once again, eBay is looking at immediate gain and ignoring long-term growth. Those new and experienced sellers, stung by getting hit for insertion fees on this promotion, will drink the nay-sayers kool aid and move on to other venues.

I am certain that eBay do not expect this to be a revenue generator through FVFs, they expect it to be one through insertion fees for non-compliant listings.

Give it a miss and use the post Christmas lull to get your products onto other channels – “diversify and grow” needs to be the motto in 2010 … replacing the “get niche or get big” motto of the last few years.

Gaz

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