eBay service metrics penalties, high shipping fees on Etsy and Amazon Turkey #tamebayTV

10 Responses

1. With EBay what will happen is that EBay will find this +%4 fine a new revenue stream where EBay will then abuse that and pena!use genuine and good sellers. Where all those good sellers that have been unjustly penalised will then close shop with EBay and open up with Amazon. EBay will lose sellers and Amazon will gain sellers.

   The majority of bad sellers on EBay will all be from China selling counterfeit goods and those sellers will give a bad service and have high shipping costs.

   Etsy is trying to compete with Amazon and that is why it is trying to reduce its shipping costs.

2. ebay claim if buyers get a bad experience they don’t come back to buy again. Guess the same can be said for sellers when they have had enough of ebays bad selling experience.

   I worked at a international hotel chain while at uni for a year and during the induction remember them saying about how mistakes or problems are a chance to be turned into a positive as it was often one of the few times they got to interact with guests.

   ebays way is, all returns are soon to be a full refund or automatic return label. No chance to go above and beyond to sort problems out and give a customer a good experience. Turning a negative in to a positive and hopefully get them to come back.

3. Too true Lucy. I’m moving my inventory after the Xmas rush to another platform before February arrives so they cannot have the chance to take an extra 4%. Which for ebay is a backward step as they won’t get monthly fees off me again as well. If they say that this idea has been moth balled then i will stay otherwise I’m not going to be held over a barrel with metrics I cannot see. They way I see it is if you are not happy with a service then take it somewhere else who will appreciate it, so bye bye ebay.

4. Just apply for the job no matter where you live in the world and claim you live in Ireland. Can’t be any different to the sellers who claim to be in the UK but thousands of miles away in China or Israel

5. This unfairly penalises sellers and especially those based outside the US. I am based in the UK and sell mainly to the US on Etsy. I already subsidise every parcel sent overseas by around £5 per item. I have to send items tracked for safety. My postage charges are low for overseas shipping, but Etsy clearly thinks I should personally bear the whole of these costs. This is unfair to small businesses that are already under pressure.

   How can I offer free postage on items when I am already price-matching what I sell? An average parcel costs me £11 to send (tracked to the US). I don’t want to ‘hide’ the postage price in the selling price of my items and offer ‘free’ shipping, because it will make my prices look uncompetitive, but this is what Etsy is forcing sellers to do.

   Buyers are not stupid and they know that postage has to be paid for somehow. Surely it is more honest to add the price for postage separately rather than raising all your stock prices to cover (or part-cover in my case) postage costs.

   As a buyer, I am always happy to pay reasonable postage charges. There’s no such thing as a ‘free lunch’. I suppose my listings will be dropping to the bottom of the searches now. I wondered why my shop had previously been busy and then suddenly hardly any sales.

6. Hi Gill,

   I work at eTail-USA – we are an ecommerce shipper from UK to USA helping UK online sellers grow their sales in USA due to our rates for tracked being around 50% of Royal Mail rates.

   We have many users of our service who sell at Etsy in USA (as well as Amazon/eBay of course).

   Also, our service is US domestic, that is to say we fly the parcels over to New York and inject them into the US postal service at our NY facility as a TSA approved ‘known shipper’ which allows our UK sellers to choose whether they wish to display quicker shipping times (shipping out of NY) or continue to display the longer UK shipping times.

   Those customers of ours that have chosen to display the US domestic shipping times (+ 1 day for line haul from UK to US) have told us that by doing so they achieve 30% – 35% more sales, yet only pay around half of what they did previously with RM.

   I would hate to see your listing drop and sales slow as you mention above so I would be very interested to work with you to ensure this does not happen by offering you our eTail-usa tracked service . Our rates start at £2.99 (100g/tier 1 volume).

   Regards
   Peter.

7. What the hell
   Been selling vinyl for 20 years.
   They kick me off eBay for being 99% feedback. 4/5 years ago.
   Stating my rating is below standard on shipping. Having to many customers claiming postage is to high even when it is at cost price.

   When I rang them, they stated “go on sale” get more sales and boost your rating up.
   2 weeks later. I was closed done and banned for life.

   So you wanted to make money from my stock through fees and then still put me in the bin anyway.

   I have over 1 million items for sale.
   Years of listing wiped out.

   Now they are promoting vinyl …..
   Stop it…. first re instate my account.

   Let’s see if tamebay can get in contact with someone further up the call Center to look into getting my account activiated again.

8. Finally, only 5 years late to the game, lets see how good it is

   Would be nice of them to open up their tracking api again so the tracking aggregator apps can work again