EBay increases fees again...

Ok, so not directly. I received an email from EvilBay yesterday as an occasional seller informing me about changes to the way they allow listings to be put up.

Essentially, any media items like DVDs, CDs, computer games etc are to be forced to be sold with free postage. Clearly this is a good thing for buyers you'd think, right? Perhaps.

No doubt sellers will increase their starting price to include postage, which is of course against EBay policy, but given you can currently expect to lose 10% of the final sale in fees (insertion/final value/paypal) sellers can't be expected to then lose the postage costs too.

I suppose it makes pricing more transparent for buyers, but if people are so stupid as to not factor in postage that's their loss IMO!

So if I were to list a CD, I would have listed at a start price of 99p. Now I will start them at £1.75 or £1.99 to cover postage costs.

How does this impact me? Insertion fees go up as (last time I looked) there is a fee for inserting an item into EBay listings based on starting price. EBay had marketed the 99p starting price to sellers previously by ensuring insertion fees for items under £1 had lower insertion fees than items over £1.

So now EBay will be taking a higher insertion fee from sellers who have to start the auctions at a higher price to cover postage. The final sale price will be higher (including postage remember) so the final value fees EBay charge for an item will be higher as fee now charged on postage.
Of course Paypal is pushed as the best payment method (look for paypal disputes online and you'll find examples of why the 'buyer protection' isn't worth squat), so a seller that accepts Paypal has to accept paying Paypal fees.

Including postage in auction price means higher Paypal fees.

All in all this change only seems to help EBay grab more cash from sellers. As an individual I think it's time to find alternative marketplace for your stuff. EBay don't want your business it seems, impression I get is EBay want to become somewhere for traders to sell.

If you like the auction model, try places like ebid.co.uk instead. They also have a wanted section for people to advertise what they want and others to offer them stuff.

Anyhoo... enough of my fleecebay rantings. In other news, the weightloss seems to swing back and forth in progress terms. Only last week my scales told me I was nearly 98Kg again :( This morning the scales told me 93Kg. 5 Kg in a week? I think not!

Weight loss and cars

Yeah I know, cars + weight loss shouldn't really appear in the same blog post. On this occasion they're not related, honest!

Finally got the remote control stalk by the steering wheel to work. Took a lot of fighting and a fair bit of cursing at it but when I figured out what I was missing it all sloted into place nicely. So in the hope of saving someone else the pain I added a quick guide for fitting the Autoleads PC99-x26 adaptor in a 206 on my website.

The weight continues to come off. Still very slowly though, weighed in at 97Kg this morning. Most of the last week I had been under that, so while it is slow progress, it is progress. :)