FLASH: Dramatic changes to eBay fees in UK announced
Published January 29th, 2007
eBay sellers in the US and UK are abuzz with some dramatic changes eBay is making to the eBay fee structure in the UK. Details are here.
These changes go in effect March first and they are substantial and complex. I’m still digesting them, but at first pass it looks like eBay is really working on the economics and making some DECREASES (that’s not a typo folks) and/or making the fees more performance based.
Here’s the highlights:
- For technology products -a decrease in the FVF (was 3.25 for the £30 and higher), now tiered starting at 3% and going down as low as 2% for higher ASPs.
- For media products - A substantial discount on listing fees (most are 10 pence)! For example, A £15 item used to be a .75 listing fee and now it’s .10. There’s a corresponding bump in the FVF from 5.25% to now a whopping 9%.
There are examples in the FAQ - interestingly they show the economics at a 33% conversion rate which is kind of interesting.
Bottom line
Positive: I’ve felt for 2yrs+ that eBay has to switch to more pay-for-performance by shifting $ from listing fees to FVF or they will continue to lose sellers at an increasing pace. I’m optimistic that this is a controlled test (UK+cat specific) to see what the impact is and hopefully roll out to the rest of the world.
Negative: US media sellers are ALL OVER this and now see that their UK friends will have an economic advantage AND if you list in the UK and flag that your items ship to the US, your items show up in ebay.com - thus the UK sellers now have a pretty big advantage over the US sellers. We’re seeing requests already for sellers to open UK accounts and prepare to move their inventory in preparation for the change so they can a) have the same economics and b) survive the potential flood in media items this most likely will generate.
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