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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/.
I know that Ebay charges I believe $49.99 to be in the Ebay Plus and the free shipping on all of their qualified items. As we all know, Ebay almost always shows those listings where they make the most money or have these little perks associated with them. I do not ever seem to remember seeing a response to the question about how the Seller who issues this free shipping ever gets any reimbursement for eating the shipping charges all while Ebay collected the annual fee for Buyers on this service.
I hope there is one or once again it is just Ebay reaching deeper and deeper in the Sellers pockets for another “Cost of Doing Business” on Ebay while Ebay rakes in the extra cash for a service they do not provide. If I have just missed this answer, I would greatly appreciate a link to the Ebay policy showing this.
As usual, eBay tries to ape Amazon but without any of the skill but plenty of malice:
Where is the incentive for a buyer to sign up and fork out their $49.99?
The only listings that can qualify for the program must be “free” postage anyway.
eBay will sponsor Express Postage at $4 a time to the seller but they are probably counting on late delivery back charges counterbalancing that as “Express” delivery in Australia is NOT nation wide, it relies on the recipient residing within the Post Office’s “express post network” (not all postcodes).
The networked area is really quite limited to major cities or parts thereof.
Country and remote areas can be serviced by “Express” but delivery within the network timeframes are specifically NOT guaranteed or implied (a fact eBay conveniently chooses to ignore).
According to eBay’s magical thinking, any late express deliveries will be the sellers fault and they will be penalised financially for same.
Amazon, on the other hand, will always charge an amount for shipping which is ignored for members so there is some justification for going Prime if you buy frequently from the site.
There are also other benefits like the Prime streaming service.
Buyers can also pay monthly or yearly for membership.
Amazon fulfills the orders themselves so has skin in the game. They have also plugged their warehousing directly in to the Australia Post network and they have accounted for the express network deficiencies.
eBay’s Plus program offers little of tangible benefit and quite significant downside for participating sellers.
I foresee low subscription rates ending its miserable existence in reasonably short order.