It looks like a great deal: list your vehicle on .com Motors this weekend for just a dollar. But scroll down the page a bit further, because this promotion has a sting in the tail: a 22% increase in the cost of a successful sale.
Though insertion fees have been slashed to nearly nothing, eBay have increased the transaction services fee (the Motors’ equivalent of FVFs) for this promotion, so that the total cost of a successful car sale is $110 instead of $90:
| Normal Pricing | Promo Pricing | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vehicle | IF | TSF | Total | IF | TSF | Total |
| Motorcycles | $30 | $40 | $70 | $1 | $89 | $90 |
| Cars & Trucks | $40 | $50 | $90 | $1 | $109 | $110 |
If you’re just an average joe with a car to sell this weekend, this is probably great news: with the promotional price structure, you’ve nothing to lose by listing on eBay; if it doesn’t sell, it’s only cost you a dollar, and if it does sell, what’s an extra twenty bucks anyway. For the majority of people, who have just one car to sell, the higher fee is outweighed by the advantage of the lower risk.
The people you’d expect to be hit by this are the professional dealers, who have a lot of inventory to list and a pretty high sell-through rate. But there are signs that, for some of them at least, this won’t be an issue:
On Friday, GM announced a deal with online auction site eBay Inc. that includes entire GM Certified Used Vehicles on eBay Motors at no cost to its more than 3,900 certified used U.S. dealers. The companies also plan to work together to boost sales.
Though the specifics of the deal haven’t been revealed, what is becoming increasingly obvious is that in the brave new world of JD’s eBay, the famous level playing field is a thing of the past.
2 Responses
This is just like any fee increase that eBay has ever done. If the increase makes it so you can no longer compete in the marketplace, or make a profit, then you should be selling something else.
eBay Selling Guide
Well indeed Eric. One can imagine that for this particular promotion, there would be as many people who should take the weekend *off* selling as there would be those who should take advantage of it. One size never fits all on eBay 😆