Ebay's Dramatic Push To Remove Stamps From Their Site!

Ebay's Dramatic Push to Remove Collectibles






Over the past few years, ebay has taken steps to turn away sellers of collectibles, and focus solely on big brand retailers. With each new seller update, it's come to be expected that sellers of collectibles will see increased fees and new hurdles to overcome. Whether it be fee increases, being forced to accept PayPal, being charged final value fees on shipping costs, or new rules which make absolutely no sense when applied to collectibles, ebay continues to make it clear they don't want collectible on their site anymore.

However, with their latest announcement, once the sugar coating was cut through, even we were shocked by how far they've gone this time! If you're currently a seller on ebay of stamps, postcards and other collectibles, it's likely that you're a Top Rated Seller, as long as you maintain a relatively high feedback rating. Two of the main benefits that Top Rate Sellers on ebay enjoy is a boost in search results, and on average a 20% discount on final value fees. However, for collectible sellers that's all about to change!

By May, almost every Top Rated Seller on ebay in the collectible categories will lose their Top Rated Seller Status, and many will instantly see a fee increase of 20%! This is mainly due to the fact that all sellers on ebay will be required to upload tracking information for at least 90% of their shipments to remain a Top Rate Seller! This means that if you sell a stamp or postcard, and send it in a plain envelope without tracking information you'll lose your Top Rated Status! Obviously this new requirement doesn't make any sense for collectibles, but that's the point - to force out collectibles, and collectible buyers and sellers like you. Even if you do spend enormous amounts of time and money to add tracking information to your shipments, you'll likely still lose your discount, because you'll also need to ensure that all orders are shipped out within one business day! Even if you're only a buyer of collectibles, these large cost increases will need to be passed along to yo you by the seller, so it's truly a grim situation for collectibles on ebay.

That sounds pretty likely. Today I received ebay email offering an additional 5% seller discount of final value fees provided I have 24 hr handling and offer a full money back guarantee for at least 14 days. No mention of tracking but if that becomes mandatory I will be done -not by choice but simply no way to sell from canada to US (90% of my business) and justify tracking cost. My items generally sell for $10-$40 and adding $12-15+++ for tracking would defeat any reason for customers to buy. Funny thing is in the past few months I've sent over 200 packages and not a single problem or complaint. I've also noticed that when communicating through ebay to anyone their system automatically hides email address even if you try and send . Had a customer that wanted to purchase through ebay but wanted additional pics sent to his email and they wouldn't allow me to see it. Getting hard to be a small business no matter what you do.

Nitrolures,
My sympathy, I am exploring bidStart and My Little Auctions as alternatives. I believe many will migrate to theses eventually

ebay seems intent on loosing customers...

ebay is also toying with this:

"From early summer a new payment process will be introduced which will change the way sellers are paid for sales on ebay Germany. With the new payment process, buyers will pay ebay, and ebay will pay sellers. The new payment process replaces the way payments are currently being made on ebay completely.

Sellers will no longer be able to offer the "See item description" and "Escrow" payment methods on ebay.de and ebay.at in most categories. This is in preparation for the introduction of the new payment process. Good Til Cancelled listings will be updated automatically on renewal. Most business sellers will receive their money one day after they have shipped the item and marked as shipped. The payout period will depend on the particular sales history and the service status from the seller.

Whilst these payment changes don't affect the UK (although it may be the shape of things to come in the future), if you list directly on the German ebay sites then you'll need to comply with them. If you list on ebay UK with International shipping options rather then directly onto ebay Germany then you can continue to list as normal.

I'm pretty sure that sellers will have a lot to say about this change, sellers generally like to be in control of their own business and to be paid directly but in truth if ebay control the payment process then it gives them much greater insight into the transaction. Seller protection from chargebacks, removal of unfair feedback and simply the knowledge of how long it takes a buyer to make cleared payment all become transparent. It also enables ebay to offer better buyer protection.

If I was designing ebay from scratch today I'd design a marketplace with a built in payment process. When ebay was first launched this is the one area that Pierre missed when he first built ebay 15 years ago and the biggest mistake he made.

Payments are an advantage that Amazon have long enjoyed – if you open an Amazon account you're automatically set up for Amazon payments. If ebay can migrate to the same – if you open an ebay account you're automatically set up for ebay payments – then there's a good chance there'll be a big decrease in unpaid items, ebay will be responsible for chasing in the money and can take stronger actions against buyers who fail to pay.

This will be an interesting one to watch and if it proves successful (and ebay have been testing the payments pilot for new German sellers since September 2011) it will in all likelihood be introduced to more countries in the future."


Source: http://tamebay.com/2012/02/ebay-ger...methods.html

I wouldn't use ebay at this point. You know ebay will withold payment to the seller until ebay's shipping services are used and tracking information entered or any other thing ebay will force sellers to do. Of course buyers pay Paypal then Paypal pays sellers and ebay owns Paypal so I'm not sure if there might be a change.

nitrolures: I believe it only applies to domestic shipments and not international shipments. Are we going to see sellers banning bidders from their own country? If registered mail was required international trade would disappear.

hasn't ebay already made a major leap in the direction, with the acquisition of PayPal?

I think the conspiracy theorists should stick to extra-terrestrials. This doesn't target light items or collectibles, it targets low dollar items globally. You gonna ship a $500 stamp with no tracking? Here's another FYI, you shouldn't be selling that low a dollar stuff on ebay anyway, do the math (all of it), you're likely losing money on it anyway. If ebay's chasing you off because of this, they're likely doing you a favor.

Bobby,

I look at low value items from a different angle:

The abundance of low $ items used to be, until recent years, a great attraction for buyers. Back than collectors could have bought stamps which they missed for years and it cost them only cents.

I still remember many stamp dealers "playing on that". Cheap items were offered as part of a marketing strategy: Collectors enjoyed the variety and dealers exposed their better items to high velocity traffic.

During the last few years ebay's stamps category had become a home for expensive items and in general (my feeling) it's not doing the hobby any good. Not all collectors look every weekend to spend 100's of dollars, do they?

The fun factor of finding cheap items for cheap has gone and in that sense nowadays' ebay is less attractive both for buyers and sellers.

Bidstart's letter may be a bit melodramatic but generally speaking I agree that almost every move ebay was doing during the last few years damaged the stamp collecting arena.

Having read through both ' ebay' threads, I did not see one mention of the alternative way to sell.

Everyone is running to ebay, Delcampe and Bidstart. They all have their good and bad points, although I did pick up two wonderful bargains on ebay yesterday, but there are alternatives.

And you know what they are.

Londonbus1...'cos I've written it a million times before !

i play poker with another 5 guys on Saturday night...i know they are cheating but its the only game around !!

Phil..... nicely put

Wow. This post is so off the mark it's not even funny. I've been selling on ebay for 14 years and the vast majority of my sales have been items under $30. I've done quite well on ebay, thank you very much. Just because you view anything under $500 as "low dollar stuff" doesn't mean everyone else does.

There are thousands of people making their livelihood on ebay via "low dollar stuff". Just because their business model is not how YOU would choose to run a business, doesn't mean that ebay is "doing them a favor" by running them off.

I'd better stop now before I actually write what's on my mind and start using 4-letter words left and right.

Bottom line: you are beyond wrong.

Well said!

The info from ebay I got was that the tracking number was a USA based need and not mine in Aussie. So long as I have the mailed box ticked in time all will be right.

I have no trouble changing to 1 day handling and 14 day money back and have changed all my listing this week. ebay's promised help for doing this, is great for us.

I sell a lot of cheaper items and usually one buyer will buy many item at one time. I do not want to share what I have payed for a stamp and how much I sell that stamp for but as an example a 99c stamp costs me 10c to list,8c final value fee, 20c failed listings and 2c store cost. So if the stamp sells for $5 it changes things over all very much. We average about $3 per stamp sold.

ebay made charging for mailing totally impossible for us. 1st they stopped us from turning off there automatic invoices they send out so as to make trouble for the seller which is very clever. All this started because too many people were selling a $50 stamp for $1 and the mailing cost was $53, that has no final value cost attached to it but it does now. More mailing charging problems.

To get a Top Rated Seller status ebay has drop the yearly income to only $1000. So I find it hard to see how ebay are hurting the small seller especially with 50 free listings per month.

As an ebay store we have free listings to the end of March. No matter how many or at what cost. But I do not know if the final value fee has changed. As you can imagine it is very good for income.

The beginning as a 2nd year apprentice selling on ebay.

After reading this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_eBay

that states all the problems ebay has been subjected too, and ebay's admission of wanting Big business 'high volume sales' on-board - a question. Is ebay required to notify the Tax/Internal Revenue Dept' of their Sellers annual ebay income. ?.

In Australia no matter what ebay you sell on. The tax man and centrelink get your sellers history if you earn over $20,000 per year.

They can also request selling info from ebay no matter how much you sell.

This has only been happen since the 1st July 2011 but they can go back the normal 7 years now.

Centrelink gets my sales report every 3 months and they can tell me if my sums a correct at the press of a computer button.

They have been using me as a learning tool. Good thing I am 100% legit.
With stamps they will let our business buy the stamps from out of my collection. A stamp collection is not an asset.