Ever since Prime Day this year, eBay have been heavily marketing the message ‘We Don’t Do Memberships. We Do Deals‘. There are regularly banners on eBay UK and eBay.com punting this message and it’s a good message but it’s not quite true because eBay subscription memberships exist.
eBay Plus offers eBay subscription with eBay Germany and eBay Australia being the maverick eBay country sites. eBay Plus offers buyers fast and free premium shipping, simple free returns and premium customer service.
Sellers benefit from better visibility and eBay-paid returns and when processing all eBay Plus orders on the same working day, sellers receive an additional 20% discount on the sales commission.
eBay Plus is a key component of the new eBay Fulfilment and eBay Shipping programs launched this week in Germany. The new logistics programs are designed to support sellers and help them qualify their listings for eBay Plus. For buyers, the new logistics services will mean more products are available to buy with eBay Plus benefits making their eBay subscription membership more valuable.
Here at Tamebay we’re very much in favour of marketplaces putting in place optional programs to assist sellers and give them access to services which they may not be able to negotiate on their own due to scale. eBay should be flexing their muscles and negotiating decent courier rates and that’s exactly what’s happening in Germany. With eBay Fulfilment, we would expect scale to mean that orders can be despatched on weekends as well as weekdays and delivery should eventually become a seven day a week despatch and seven day a week delivery operation and that’s something we’d love to see eBay offer in the UK.
Not every seller will want to qualify their listings for eBay Plus out of their own warehouse using their own couriers. eBay Fulfilment and eBay Shipping provide options that will suit some businesses and at the same time build additional value for buyers with the eBay Plus subscription membership.
eBay may soon have to change their marketing messages through – they can’t carry on saying that they don’t do memberships when, at least in Germany and Australia, they do!
eBay Plus benefits for sellers
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Fee Discounts
20% off the sales commission on eBay Plus transactions
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Better Search Visibility
eBay Plus items are tagged with a logo and are easier to find through a search filter.
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Return Costs
eBay will pay for the return shipping costs and provide buyers with free return labels from Hermes.
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Increase in sales
Gain new customers and retain existing customers more strongly. Details can be found in the next section “Marketing Your eBay Plus Articles”.
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Flexibility
Decide for yourself which of your articles you would like to offer in the program.
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Seller protection
For shipment with tracking. If the item arrives at the buyer on time or if you have delivered the item to the shipping service provider in good time, you will receive:
- Defects for shipping time and supposedly not received items removed
- Negative and neutral reviews associated with shipping removed
