eBay ecommerce forum and fee increases

Last year eBay held a get together for the top 100-200 sellers and they are doing it again this year in SFO Jan 16-18 as Bill Cobb discusses in his "fee adjustment" AB post.

Later this month, I'll be addressing a group of eBay sellers who will be here in person in the San Jose area, and I'll be sharing some of our plans and priorities for the coming year. My keynote speech will be available via a recorded Webcast for our whole Community to tune into. And we'll also be following the event with more announcements on specific initiatives. I think you'll find we're taking a surprisingly fresh look at some of the old challenges, and I'm excited about the road ahead.

I'll be attending the event and hope to do some live blogging for those of you that aren't able to attend.  It's also interesting that the keynote will be Webcast (not clear if it's going to be live or not and it's not on the investor events site) to the whole community which will be great.

I do know one thing, the top of mind areas for eBays top 200 sellers are:

1. What am I getting for these fee increases and
2. How can I grow my off-eBay business faster?

For a great take on a large seller's thoughts on the fee increases check out Kevin Harmon's blog (Kevin is CEO of inflatablemadness - a top 50 by feedback seller of media.).

I also suspect eBay will address some of the other top of mind issues with sellers:

1. Fraud, fraud fraud - They've started peeling the onion and I think there will be many more layers to the strategy revealed
2. I'll go out on a limb and guess that with the "stick" of the fee increases, we will see a "carrot". I'd guess it will be in the form of some seller's reward program that is geared towards giving growing sellers a break on their fees in the form of some PayPal $, etc.
3. eBay Express - DOA, it will be interesting to see if eBay capitulates here or continues to soldier on.  My guess is we'll be seeing a EE/shopping.com hybrid as a 2.0 kind of solution that will be a step in the right direction.  Incorporating unique items from smaller sellers with the more commodity items from larger retailers is something that hasn't been done before and eBay is uniquely positioned to make happen.
4. Personally I think the biggest break eBay could give sellers is to allow them to send eBay transactions through Google Checkout - that would basically give sellers 2% BACK.  I don't think we'll see that in 07 unfortunately.
5. Loose ends - there are still some loose ends around the great rebalance of 06.  For example, back then Cobb promised some exposure for store sellers and relief for media sellers.
6. Multi-channel - eBay increasingly is feeling the heat from the competition so it will be interesting to see what they plan here.  In the past ProStores was the big multi-channel push for eBay and it is really thrashing with little to no adoption.  Note the name of the conference is the eBay "ecommerce forum".  So that implies it won't be just about auctions/ebay.com.
7. Finally, I bet we'll get to meet the new team members - Philip Justus, Michael Linton and some other fresh faces as part of the reorg.

eBay Strategies readers - if you had questions to ask eBay or feedback to give eBay senior management what would be top of mind with you?

Comments

[ZafooAuctionware]

If the ebay fee is increased. Besides the ebay there are many other site for ecommerce and like ebay online sale, purchase and auctions etc.

The most popular one is http://www.zaffooauctionware.co.uk which creates an site like ebay with in 30 min.

________________
Muhammad ishfaq

http://www.zaffooauctionware.co.uk

[badchange]

eBay has an issue with seller's leaving retaliatory negative feedbacks to buyer's legit negative FB ... that's a problem, it ticks-off buyers and they may not come back, bad for the whole community.

However, this new feedback policy is not as benign as it may seem to investors who are not intimately familiar with the nature of eBay's business. Although it seems minor, there are serious problems with the new policy that does not allow sellers to post a negative to buyers... these problems may effect earnings and even eBay's credibility as an online marketplace:

* First and foremost, sellers negative feedbacks will increase, that is a given, little issues that could be worked out will result in neg's and neutrals. The end result of this is a marketplace that publicly LOOKS less safe to buyers. An artificially high volume of bad feedback will scare away buyers & with the greater emphasis on end-of-auction commissions it will effect earnings.

* I run a lot of 'make-offer' listings... I will accept more competitive offers from buyers with good feedback ... they're easier to do business with and less chance of chargebacks or fraud. This metric is now meaningless.

* It is epidemic on eBay that buyers extort 'partial' refunds from sellers holding the threat of a negative feedback even now ... this problem will go off the scale with this new policy. Example; buyer purchases a used laptop, writes seller and says it is more 'used' than he expected and wants $100 partial refund or he'll leave a negative and 1 star DSR's ... why wouldn't a buyer try this? no downside for them ... and can leave a negative even if paid off ... Big, big issue for sellers.... many sellers thus abused will not be back ...

* Fee discounts are offered to sellers with 4.8+ DSRs ... meaningless ... it is almost impossible to keep a 4.8 in the shipping cost category unless you sell beanie babies (and eat part of the shipping cost) ... A 45 pound item costs a lot more to ship CA to NY than MA to NY, buyers don't always realize the scope of the difference... offer 'flat-rate' shipping on heavy items and more local customers feel ripped off. Additionally, if you have 100 customers and a dozen give you 4 stars (which is labeled as a positive assessment) you will fall short of 4.8 ... why even offer this discount, will only piss off sellers ...

* Non-paying bidders who do not respond to a dispute can not post feedback ... but all a buyer has to do is respond with 'screw-you, I'm not paying' and they can leave the seller a negative that he can't even respond to ...

The current system of open mutual feedback is self-moderating if properly managed. To address the problem of retaliatory feedback eBay should form a team that polices and reacts to sellers posting unfair feedback .. not this poorly thought out move ... In short, this is a bad policy that will not protect buyers, will leave sellers vulnerable and will hurt sales because eBay will look less safe to buyers. Also, big companies (and not so big companies, like mine) will be forced to re-think their presence on eBay if skewed feedback profiles damage their corporate images ... just a bad move overall...

[Online auctions]

I am really surprised that eBay keeps raising their rates. I hope they don't do too far.

[Biddy]

I started leaving a comment, but it got a bit out of hand:
http://www.tamebay.com/2007/01/carrots-are-good-for-you.html