eBay Germany have announced fee changes for business sellers today, creating perhaps the most complicated fee schedule ever seen on any eBay site.
The most important change is that Shop items will be converted into a new fixed price format, which will be fully visible in search results. The listing fee for these will be between 1c and 10c which will include free Gallery pictures. There are now five different schedules of insertion and final value fees, depending on which category you’re listing in. I think this means that 30 BINs will now be available on eBay.de as they will be on .com and .co.uk, but the release just says “long running times” with no further detail.
For €299 per month, sellers can upgrade to a Premium Shop, which from 25th September to 31st December, will offer unlimited good-til-cancelled BINs, with no insertion fees.
Sellers will have to offer PayPal for the new BIN listings: eBay reveal the quite astonishing datum that only 70% of German sellers offer PayPal. And there is also a hint that PayPal fees are changing, to be “simplified … throughout the Euro area”, though this is sadly lacking any further detail.
Multiple item listings which have had sales will be advantaged in search results, so it makes sense for sellers to use this route to visibility rather than sticking with multiple single item listings to keep themselves at the top of “ending soonest” sorting. Auctions, however, will still be displayed ordered by “ending soonest” as a default.
As with eBay.com and eBay UK, these changes see eBay Germany moving strongly towards a fixed price format. The emphasis is on favourable conditions for business sellers, who are specifically encouraged to “list their entire inventory” on eBay.de.
13 Responses
This sounds like eBay is not quite done with their announcements. Honestly, I would not mind such an arrangement for eBay.com before 2008 Q3 is over. I was very disappointed listing fees were $0.35. I was hoping for $0.05 to $0.10 for Fixed Price 30 days.
The big hike here is that sellers will have to offer Paypal.German sellers see it as the worst evil on the world.For one unneccassary expenses as normally payments are done by BACS for free but at least as important that Paypal just takes the liberty to freeze your funds and they do the decision without the seller having the right to decide.This 70% of German sellers offering Paypal seems even quiet high.Might be they just count the sellers but then some sellers only offer it on lets say 5 out of 100 listings due to it is demanded in certain categories.Ebay tries to force it on sellers by all means,latest was for bad DSRs punishment was you are only allowed to list if offering Paypal.Then German sellers react using this Ferk Malte Feller conditions:If you pay with PayPal, I need copies of your passport/ID as well as from your credit card that you are using within PayPal (both sides). Please provide these documents as electronic scans immediately after the end of the auction. The tickets will only be shipped after you have provided these documents obviously no buyer complies therefor seller dispite actually showing Paypal got the right to refuse it.According to German Pinks this terms are valid.(HAHA 🙂 what else are they supposed to say as otherwise head of ebay.de would be breaking the rules)
I think many are missing the point
non of this is about sellers, its all about buyers,
it what is best ,and easy for them,
sellers will go where the money is,
if buyers buy better using paypal , sellers will use paypal by choice
#Northumbrian I agree.I hate Paypal but offer it as UK buyers are demanding it.However different situation in Germany where almost everybody hates Paypal therefor most listings without Paypal anyway so buyers have to buy what is on offer.Ebay.de tries since ages to force Paypal on German sellers.For bad DSRs Paypalduty as punishment,for good DSRs discounts only if minimum 80% of listings offering Paypal,recently a “glitch” in ebay which made it for a while impossible to disable Paypal and so on and so on.Now this latest changes part of ebay worldwide changes but ebay.de jumps on the chance to add the Paypal condition in another attempt to force on to German sellers this by them so behated system.
But they will find another loophole and if it will be again offering Paypal but as requirement scans of Passport and Creditcard.
understood Horst,
Ebay v Germany
its 0-0 at the moment ,though the ref is an Ebay fan and they have just been awarded a penalty 😀
One of the problems of cross border buying is if the seller does not accept paypal (or similar) the cost of a bankers draft or sending cash by registered mail is quite high from the UK.
I often shop on ebay.de, but if a seller does not accept paypal will look for one that does.
I recently bought a bundle of Injet cartridges (much cheaper than UK) and the tranacation went ok.
Recently bought some lugage, and although the listing stated the seller took payapl, the check out sent us to another after auction check out that acted as a third party between the seller & paypal.
The upshot was that the exchange rate Euro to £ was less using the 3rd party check out, hence the item cost us more, but on top of this my bank charged us £1.50p for a foreign use of a debit card. Obviously I would not have bought the items if I’d known this to start with.
As a buyer mainly on ebay.de, I prefer to have paypal in between us & the seller, particularly if things go wrong (which they have in the past). This of course applies to all international tranactions, not only on .de
Has anyone looked into the feasibility of having a premium shop hosted on .de, yet using the UK 30 day BINs?
I’m currently using a shop (winkel!) hosted through eBay.be at a rather reasonable subscription of 1.95 Euro per month, but list items via the UK SYI form and pay the UK insertion fee, and administer all sales through the UK site. Currently it all works very well, but I’m not sure of the implications from next month. If I took a .de premium shop at 299 Euro, (compared to a UK £350 Anchor shop) what would my 30 day BIN insertion fee be if listed through the UK – would it be 1p, or 40p…? Would the UK pricing structure recognise the shop level hosted on another site?
#Gerry I agree its a problem for UK-buyers.But not only €-countries but also Denmark and Sweden are no prob as their goverments signed the necessary EU-agreement for cheap transfers.So for the German seller it is even loose out the few possible UK buyers or many of the rest of Europe as accepting Paypal means extra expenses as Ebay since 2004 forbids surcharging to recover this expenses.To recover this Paypal expenses seller would have to rise his price and therefor be in disadvantage to other sellers who are cheaper cause they don`t offer Paypal.And most customers on the continent arn`t willing to pay more only cause of Paypal.So the sellers decision is easy unless he is planning anyway to sell to the UK or out of Europe.
Little tip:You could always pay using auctionchex.
@7
Sounds like a loophole that Ebay would soon close if it was possible.
Ebay like to close loopholes, unless you keep them quiet 🙂
Mark
#8 Horst.
Anyone that sells online, needs acredit card provider, that charges fees. This will always be there, as we could not trade internationally with cheques & PO all the time.
Many, many years ago Barclaycard (as a merchant) banned the selling of different prices between cash & Credit cards. This is the way of the would now, everyone wants a bit of your action, and frankly if I still make the profit & the money comes in, then so be it.
Only when the % gets to much in Paypal’s favor can we start to worry.
#10 Gerry
Not true for Germany.Not only that on Ebay.de the common form of payment is BACS but also a friend of mine up to a few month ago my friend was running quiet succesfull his website(had to close it for private reasons) also payment BACS. This is quiet easy and almost free for €-zone + Sweden + Denmark. According to EU a inner European €-transfer may not cost any more than a home transfer.I also list on Ebay.es and Ebay.nl and many customers from there also prefer this payment.
#11 Horst
The problem only really arises when cross border selling is euros & £.
British banks love to make BIG £££££ profit.
Funny enough if you have a UK bank account in euro dominations, this problem does not arise.
we recently received a bank transfer from Germany , it took two weeks
though we were not bothered it cost us nowt