The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I just received an email from ebay touting its new change in policy, effective mid april, that will allow all auctions, regardless of starting price, and even with the use of a buy-it-now option, to be posted for "free." yay.

at the bottom of that announcement, however, a couple of additional sentences appear:

"Also, because we know buyers take into consideration the total cost of an item, also starting April 19, to encourage sellers to keep shipping costs low, the Final Value Fee will be applied to the total amount of the sale--including shipping."

when ebay started requiring sellers to offer and accept payments from its partner, paypal, that guaranteed that the paypay transaction fee would draw a percentage from the total amount of money sent from buyer to seller, which included shipping fees. despite that the service was charging me, as a seller, a percentage of a basically fixed amount that I'd only be collecting to use to pay for postage, I tried to rationalize my acceptance of that policy figuring that, ok, the service there is the actual transfer of money, so the percentage is based on the total transferred. fine.

now ebay as well is going to take a piece of those shipping fees. ok, ebay facilitates the auction, so "earns" a portion of the proceeds. fine, that's the service it provides. but how that company can also justify charging the seller a bit more based on taking a portion of the postage fees that are collected as well I have no idea... because, according to ebay, it's to encourage sellers to keep shipping costs low? I'm not sure what one has to do with the other, being that sellers who charge at-cost, or even below cost, for shipping will be hit by this too.

I'm sure there's no shortage of colorful terms with which to describe a company like ebay, nor is there any such shortage to describe the sort of profit-driven business practices and policy changes companies like ebay disingenuously justify as being in YOUR best interest. so I'll let that stand. but I figured I'd post this in case others had not yet become aware, being that many people here use ebay fairly regularly.

I doubt there is any way around this, either. You're not allowed to say "discount available, contact me" for example, and tell the seller that a check or money order (prohibited by eBay) will save the buyer a buck or two. That would also violate the "one price for all buyers" stipulation. Even if a nonsense word were developed meaning "check or MO accepted," I'm sure after a number of non-paypal sales, eBay would catch on. With low-value items (under $20, say) as a buyer, I would certainly take the chance of not having the "protection" of PayPal if it saved a couple of dollars. Yes, eBay is for-profit, but this is becoming excessive. Although I have no background in law, I wonder what the legalities are for effectively "taxing" shipping charges.

Reading over some of the points made here, I'm wondering if it would be possible to set up a special auction board on this forum.

Registered members could post information about:

The item for sale
Photos of item
Opening Bid requested -- if any
Terms of the auction, including the closing date, payment type accepted--check MO, paypall, "take it out in trade," etc.

Bids could be made via PM, email, posted as responses to the message--whatever.

Might be worth a try?

I think people already do pretty much network among each other here and buy and sell through the board. it would be nice though to have a much further reaching auction-style web site available as a viable alternative to ebay - unfortunately, that's just where everyone turns at this point and the company knows it. bah.

Well I never get any business through this board. Its super rare that anyone shows any interest. I know other members have had the same problem. I turn to ebay for this reason. I also, unfortunately, can't always gauge a accurate price and ebay is fairly democratic in determining the current value of things. Sadly, despite the fees, its still a better option than the board for regular selling.

I should mention, despite my post above, people on the board have directed me to other people who have helped me restore phonographs.

in the context of buying and selling, a board like this is probably more useful for finding parts than anything else... or perhaps something very uncommon or very cheap. otherwise, you're dealing with a group of, for the most part, knowledgeable collectors who know how to find things themselves and know how to repair things, or if they don't would rather learn to do so if it means conserving some funds. and the people who really don't care and just want a nice functional machine that they don't have to do anything to will pay the premium and turn to dealers or certain ebay sellers who seem to know what they're doing. at least, that's what I've seen.

I am sure most sellers will keep the shipping costs low by passing those fees right on to the buyer.

Brad wrote:I am sure most sellers will keep the shipping costs low by passing those fees right on to the buyer.

Heck, just an hour ago, I went into my ebay Turbo Lister files, and jacked all my shipping rates up by a buck. I hope this whole thing backfires on ebay. The way they try to play off their annual "seller updates" as being beneficial is so insulting to their sellers. What will they come up with next year? Who knows.

If I were to hazard a guess, I would suspect they are attempting to prevent those auctions/sellers which list typically higher ticket items (like electronics) with Buy It Now prices of 99 cents, but then charge an exorbitant amount to actually ship the item (which may have real-cost shipping prices of less than 15 dollars). This effectively circumvented the majority of Ebay listing and final value fees on those higher ticket items as most of the money was recouped through the shipping.

An example would be a Nook Color Ebook reader with a Buy it Now price of $9.99, but the shipping fee was over $200.00.

Any way you look at it, nobody cares for the hike in "Feebay" fees... but as it stands now, there are few alternatives to this site. That said, they seem to constantly change their fee structure, so perhaps this will also eventually work itself out in accordance with what the market or users will actually bear.

Just my two cents (plus fees), of course...