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eBay Scraps Transaction Fees in China
PlayCleverFully writes "The US online auction service eBay scrapped all sellers' transaction fees in China, in an effort to compete with local competitors offering free services, including Yahoo-invested Alibaba.com. The online auctioneer announced the changes on its China auction website, saying transaction fees would be waived, but small fees would continue to be charged for listing products on the site's webspace and for "feature" products. eBay's China unit, Eachnet, would also require all sellers to provide authorized online payment mechanisms to improve its credit environment, including PayPal and other escrow services, the announcement said. The move means that sellers won't get paid until the buyers receive and are satisfied with the products, it said."
Indeed, countries like China and India will be where the 21st century will take place.
But in the big picture, it is just the typical East-West reversal. Remember, in centuries past China and India were the major world civilizations. The Europe of today is much like the China of the 1200s. And the China of tomorrow will be much like the Europe of today.
The East was on top for a while, and then various events lead to the West becoming more prosperous. But we see the tide turning one again, this time in favour of the East. In three or four centuries it will no doubt switch back towards the West's favour, and soon enough there'll be yet another switch.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
because eBay just raised fees for US sellers again.
Ebay just raised their "mid-tranche" fees to 8% (oh yea, they prefaced that by lowering their insertion fees for "low-tranche" items by $.05) ... IMHO the fees ebay charges have gotten way too high! I sold a $92 item and after paying for the ebay and paypal fees came away with a little less than $80
12/92 = 13%!
I think they're just shooting themselves in the foot because I'm not using ebay half as much as I used to and I'm sure I'm not the only one they've turned off.
Indeed. And as is often shown, spamming is a very lucrative business. If you can base your business around a large volume sales, even at a few pence per sale, you'll often be very well off.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
My time in China showed me that Ebay is failing, not because of competetive pricing, or a poor cost model but because their major competetor is home grown and plays to the Chinese cultural prefrences. Ebay has been hesitant to branch their code base to make Ebay-China more Chinese friendly -- and therefore no cost cutting measure is going to save Ebay in China. Just look at how wonderful Ebay did in Japan. http://news.com.com/2100-1017-845099.html It's the cuture stupids , it's the culture!
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
Does anyone know of any other good online auctions?
Pretty much they all suck, with Yahoo sucking the least. The problem is really a chicken and egg problem. To attract buyers you need a lot of items available. But to attract sellers you need a lot of buyers. With both those groups settled on ebay to do auctions it's very hard for another auctioneer to get a foothold, even with cheap or free listing fees. I've looked at yahoo auctions before in the hopes I'd get a better deal because of the smaller amount of buyers, but I can almost never find what I'm looking for on yahoo auctions. Because of this I essentially forget that Yahoo even does auctions.
The real competitors to ebay is still people selling things locally and privately. Craigslist is probbably the biggest competitor to ebay because you can get things the same day, there's no fees to anyone, and there's no shipping as it's all designed for a local city.
AccountKiller
in China, the government has the right to move people for national causes.
in America, the government has (unconstitutionally) given the right to businesses to move people if the business will use the land for more profit and taxes.
which is scarier?