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."

Comments

The 21st century will belong to China.

[CyricZ]

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.

That's great

[Anonymous Coward]

because eBay just raised fees for US sellers again.

Re:That's great

[CyricZ]

And, like it or not, the Chinese market dwarfs the American market. Remember, that holds true even today, without the full Chinese market being completely realized and integrated. Once the Chinese market really gets going, coupled with that of India and other Asian nations, traditional markets will look quite irrelevant.

Even with significant wealth, a 300 million body US market is still quite insignificant when compared to the 2 billion person Indian and Chinese markets.

EBay is quite lucky to be able to tap into such fantastic financial resources so early on. If they can maintain a foothold in those markets, they will become extremely prosperous.

Re:Where is the online auction competition in NA?

[Vellmont]

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.