The California firm’s latest moves focus on making buying items at eBay more like standard store purchases, complete with electronic payments and fixed prices.<\/p>\n
EBay is altering anew its fee system, making it cheaper to post items but taking a bigger percentage of sales.<\/p>\n
"These are some of the boldest changes we’ve ever made," eBay spokesman Usher Lieberman told AFP.<\/p>\n
"It is a shift in the business model for our sellers and for eBay. We are asking sellers to rethink their listing strategies and giving them economic incentives to do that."<\/p>\n
An online eBay chat forum teemed Thursday with complaints as sellers disparaged new rules including a ban taking effect in October on payments using checks or money orders.<\/p>\n
"EBay used to be fun," wrote an eBay user with a screen name Starfish2rcn. "Now it’s run like a dictatorship."<\/p>\n
EBay will require transactions be done using credit cards, debit cards, or online services such as PayPal, which it owns.<\/p>\n
Sellers complain that PayPal takes a percentage of each transaction, cutting into their profits.<\/p>\n
"We are really recognizing e-commerce in general and what our buyers are seeing anywhere else online," eBay spokeswoman Nichola Sharpe said.<\/p>\n
"It is going to make the process faster and more reliable."<\/p>\n
Electronic payments reportedly result in far fewer complaints when it comes to consumating deals.<\/p>\n
EBay is cutting the price of "Buy It Now" postings to 35c each and more than tripling the time they spend online to 30 days.<\/p>\n
Sales of such fixed-price items reportedly account for 43% of eBay deals and are growing at a rate of 60 percent annually.<\/p>\n
"We think auctions really work for unique items, rare items, hard-to-find items or one-of-a-kind-in-demand items," Lieberman said. "Fixed price really works for multiple items."<\/p>\n
Anyone selling batches of identical items will be able to load them in single postings instead of having to list them separately, as is current practice.<\/p>\n
The change saves sellers money and will also hopefully stop people from dominating eBay pages featuring search results for shoppers, according to Lieberman.<\/p>\n
"We are shifting most of the fees onto the back end but we think that with the change in our listing fee we are extremely competitive," Lieberman said.<\/p>\n
"The goal is to be the most competitively priced site on the Web."<\/p>\n
EBay is also reducing rates for sellers that ship items for free and for high-volume "PowerSellers," a move taken as a snub by some small merchants.<\/p>\n
EBay revamped its fee structure early this year in the hope of invigorating a website where the population of active users has essentially stagnated.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, arch-rival Amazon has been flourishing.<\/p>\n
"Amazon has been cutting pretty heavily into eBay sales and Amazon’s growth has been going phenomenally," said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group.<\/p>\n
"I think the bloom is off the auction a bit. By and large people want to be able to go in and get things quickly."<\/p>\n
People can also "game" auctions, selling fraudulent items, balking on payments or "parachuting" in to make winning bids as time expires on offers, according to Enderle.<\/p>\n
"In the end, a regular commerce site came in and found a way to steal eBay’s thunder," Enderle said, referring to Amazon. "EBay is bleeding and it’s going to have to step up and stem the bleeding."<\/p>\n
He added that it appears eBay is losing touch with buyers and sellers at a website long known for its sense of community.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year eBay stopped letting sellers post feedback about buyers while still letting buyers critique sellers.<\/p>\n
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