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Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.
Wonderful! Now we can buy more commodity products of inferior quality just like on Amazon.
It’s so laughably pathetic just how badly eBay copies Amazon.
It is a great scam….I mean scheme.
Buyer pays $49 to get free postage on items, and free returns.
For Sellers to get the badge they have to offer free postage on their items, and encouraged to offer free returns.
So not entirely sure what the buyer is paying for?
For the Seller…
Ebay decides whether your items get the badge or not – not the seller. You have a choice to ‘opt out’ (but that appears to be for your Store not individual items).
You have to also have a 0-1 day handling time, Offer Express Post, and upload tracking. Sellers have been doing things like changing handling to 5 days to get rid of the badge and it still stays like a bad smell.
Going by the various comments on forums, Sellers are NOT impressed.
One of the new things is if your buyer lives in a metro area and an ebayplus member then you have to post the item to them Express Post (Ebay then will pay you $4.00 to cover it).
The very first day this was introduced i had a buyer purchase a $10-ish item, (listed as free post or $10 extra if they wanted it Express). I was then paid $4 and had to post it Express Post – cheapest Express Post is around $12.00. So that transaction ended up costing me more than the actual item was worth.
Not to mention the obvious….. it costs exactly the same to post to rural areas as it does to metro. Rural areas will on average take 1 day longer to arrive via Express Post. So same service.
So…. rural and metro members pay the SAME membership amount. Yet if the rural member wants their item Express Post then they have to pay for it whilst the metro one gets it for free!
Latest email stated –
“When your listing has an ebay plus badge, we will protect you when a buyer falsely claims the item wasnt described correctly or returns an item after using it or damaging it”.
I leave you to pick your jaw up over that one. Ebay Seller Protection has nothing to do with protecting honest Sellers after all……
As I said – NOT IMPRESSED!
They must really consider us stupid.
Free postage – great – easy to arrange if only sellers offering free postage can generate a Prime listing.
This is glaringly obvious to buyers on the listings.
This is the offer you make when you aren’t making an offer!
“sellers must ship eBay Plus orders themselves”
Sounds a lot like Ebay guaranteed delivery to me. And here in the states we all know how that turned the tables on Amazon. Brought Ebay right to the top and beat Amazon hands down. Killed Amazon with it!
Look at it this way from now on. Ebay is the person who just realized they have to start to do physical excersise, they’ve been going for about 6 months, and decide to enter a marathon. But their competitor is a gold medal triathlon , and former marathon champ built to the max.
Who do you think is going to win. unreal they just waste more and more money and time over this fantasy. You need to put skin in the game ebay….buy warehouses, hire staff. Thats the difference between a bunch of workers who dont own the company vs a very large stake holder in the company. Ebay will never be what Amazon is. They are headless basically. No one at ebay wants to put in the work.
They are so pathetic. They’ve been chasing amazon for years, I used to talk to my account rep about it back 15 years ago, they are so old and clunky, Best job is ceo of ebay, go in every day, look at what amazon is doing, sit with your think tank, try to copy amazon and re-name it. Problem is, its always mutated. Thank God I took my life back 3 years ago and cut ebay out cold turkey. Was easy to do, made a decision, are my sleepless nights, never being “present” at home, always worried about what was going to happen next, living under stress worth it? No! Not for me, I sold full time with many family responsibilities, told my wife, one of 2 things happens today, a heart attack, or I close ebay. Without hesitation, she told me close, and I did, no regrets. This is not only this mutated venue, but its ALL corporate America.
When they started eBay plus it was free shipping on all Plus listings. Then they made sellers offer free shipping to get the Plus tag. eBay still spruiks “free shipping” as a perk for buyers subscribing to Plus. It’s a lie. Misleading and deceptive. All buyers get free shipping on those listings because the seller has to offer it to qualify. False advertising. They are a disgrace
What are the benefits of eBay Plus?
– Free delivery on eBay Plus purchases
https://www.ebay.com.au/ebayplus/home