US Sellers angry with our friends in Canada

As reported earlier sellers in Canada are having a real tough time.  eBay.ca threw them a golden life-line by offering a "eBay.ca seller pack".  What this does is for $50/month you get UNLIMITED GALLERY.

Gallery is usually $.35 so if you list more than 143 items a month, you safe significant money on this plan.  In fact here's a schedule:

Listings   /    Savings
143           /        break-even
1000      /  $300
2000     / $650
5000     / $1,700
10k       / $3,450
30k       / $10,450
100k      / $34,950

Yes there are sellers that could benefit THIS MUCH from such a program.  Heres' the problem:
A. This is Canada only
B. Canadian listings show up in the .com site
C. Canadian high-volume-sellers now have an economic advantage of their southern brethren.

All that aside, I have my fingers crossed this kind of concept moves to the US - FAST.  Charging for Gallery seems like a very silly thing to me.  If you go to any other ecommerce site every item has IMAGES.  Charging sellers for a thumbnail image in search results I believe economically gets eBay upside-down.  The GMV upside is much more than the $.35 is much larger.

In fact it's so expensive that now when you search around for DVDs, CDs and what-not, most of those listings don't have Gallery, resulting in a terrible buying experience.

eBay Strategy readers - what do you think? Are you pro "all you can eat Gallery" or against?

Comments

[mike]

of course ebay needs this. overstock for all their shortcomings has a full subscription plan for listings

ebay should charge a full subscription plan to list, even coupled with higher final value fees like os does

[Garry King]

I'm not mad at our Canadian friends. Congratulations to them for getting a deal! I'm more disappointed in the "let them eat cake" attitude Ebay has towards their US based sellers.

[JK]

If you never got the memo the eBay Canada community is in the late stages of implosion

With the fall of the US dollar , US buyers are less willing to deal with Canadian sellers

Canadians pay alot more for shipping to the point most Canadians for small items purchase from USA eBayers rather then Canadian ones.Also shipping is slow enough to discourage US buyers if the high cost did not scare them off.

This makes Canadians instantly not competition in any bargain items.

Canadians get "taxed" by Paypal to convert US funds to CAD funds for Paypal ,even when we have US dollar accounts in Canada we can not deposit them. While listings in CAD funds get far less attention from US buyers.Due to eBays system even Canadians will forward US funds to a Canadian seller.

The gallery pack is only a threat with a few of the largest Canadian sellers and liquidators , there you have a point , but it does not help the typical Canadian small and medium dealer who do need help.

This move by eBay does not help most Canadians and certainly does not help US sellers ,an all around bad move by eBay.

[Steve]

We have some serious competitors in Canada and I consider this reduced gallery pack for Canadian sellers on the .com site to be OUTRAGEOUS. Some months we pay almost $1000 in gallery fees so this puts us at a HUGE disadvantage. Since it's such a big revenue generator for eBay I'll be shocked if eBay ever offers this gallery pack to US sellers.
The good news is that our web sales are up 50% in the last 2 months.

[ChopSueySisters]

Hi Scot, I think the real problem is whether eBay is recognizing how they are ostricizing US sellers. You can only disdvantage your own country before it escalates into something that is out of control. USA is starting to be the red-headed stepchild of ebay. You have sellers scrubbing the floors, stocking the shelves, adding to the product category... doing everything ebay is instructing and Ebay chooses when and if you show up in search. The cost of gallery to begin with is such a negligible amount, you don't even need to have a gallery and it'll show up on ebay express.

I just don't understand why no one is talking about the real issues impacting store sellers. The fee hike was just the last straw. The Canada selling pack is just salt in a wound. Again, it's not an issue with our fellow country sellers, it's about a company grabbing sellers by their ankles and shaking out every single penny they have, then giving everyone under the sun preferential treatment to grab hold of that bigger share of wallet. The worlds largest marketplace was built on the backs of these sellers. There have been problems going on since the beginning of the year that have never been rectified that lead to these issues. A community can only tolerate so much.

[dave]

From a Canadian eBayer. This makes sense: "As a small time seller, I didn't even get the offer. It wouldn't pay for me as I always just take the standard listing. I'm cheap. I'm small and I definitely don't have the volume required to make use of this fee structure.

As for the "economic advantage," remember the high cost of shipping from Canada to the US. Maybe that is why eBay offered this to Canadian sellers to increase the market up here. Just a thought."

I can't believe the costs that Canada Post charges to Canadian sellers to ship the to the US. It's at least double and sometimes triple.

Dave

[iron_chick]

US sellers can't purchase the seller pack. The promo only applies to sellers with registered Canadian addresses.

[Bend the rules]

If the listings in canada show up on the .com site, whats to stop US sellers from listing on the canadian site and saving a bunch of listing fees??

[Greg]

I agree with John, ebay like amazon can gauge bottom line changes in minutes or hours, and will never give away that much money, regardless if it makes for a better buying experience.

[John]

Two things: (1) in my category, paintings, the 1 cent listing slightly-less-inflated shipping fee geeks continue unabated in listing their crapola every five minutes throughout the day, and most are unable to pay the gallery fee; if it were free, their advantage would increase to even more abnormal levels than at present and many more sellers would revolt, and (2) back in July or so, eBay ran a series of three back - to - back promos - 20 cent and 50 cent listing specials over one day and a 20 cent special over 2 days of listings (from memory - the actual details could differ a tad). It appeared quite probable to me at the time and continues to appear so today that this was a sensitivity test to determine buyers' reaction and its effect on their bottom line. So apparently the US is its own test market. These two factors indicate to me that they have no intention of making gallery permanently free (or anything else, for that matter) and that they don't consider Canada as a test market for the US. I believe that this Canadian promo was in response to a recent real and/or perceived seller mutiny in Canada and must conclude that it wouldn't happen here. Bummer, dude...

[iron_chick]

I'm a skeptic. eBay doesn't test anything. I don't think eBay has any intention of making this a global promo - you know, one that US sellers can actually use to list on the US site. I think they hope to *force* US sellers to use gallery in order to *compete* with the CN sellers, just like they tried to *force* store owners to list in core by the recent monster store fee hike.

[Bill]

Do it and do it know. eBay wouyld be stupid not to implement this. It makes for a much better buying experience. I would increase my core listings if they did this. Is Canada a big enough market to make a case study of? I certainly hope so. If this happens to the US before the holidays I would guarantee it would increase the bottom line tremendously for the upcoming holiday season but the clock is ticking.

[Joe]

Canada is obviously the testing ground before trying it on the US site. Of course it makes sense for the buyer and seller experience, but unless it increases the bottom it will most likely end with the Canada trial.