I have 2 problems with the new fee structure.
1) Every time Ebay has increased fees, good buyers disappear. I have been selling since 1998 and so many important buyers will not return to Ebay. It takes nearly a year to build sales back up. This is Ebay's loss as well as the sellers.

2)There should be a separate fee structure for shipping antiques. These buyers do not want to be gouged, but they do want superior packing and double boxing and will pay for that. This additional fee will give more money to Ebay if and only if these buyers stay on Ebay. Larger handling fees will make them disappear as well.

I am left feeling that Ebay does not care about antiques sellers. I find your actions thoughtless and unconsciencable.

I have been moderately involved in ebay sales for a bit over a year now. I target a small but prolific sales demographic based on interest in model railroading - particularly O Gauge (Lionel, etc.) What I offer is an alternative to cheap, overpriced imported products or otherwise inflated items that are damaging this hobby in a delicate economical time (oh yeah, anyone notice how we are making an economic recovery everytime you drive into a fuel station?). My "casual" interest is not based on a specific need to sell items as a business but a chance to keep occupied and perhaps make some others happy. Frankly, based on sales and feedback I would say I have achieved this goal.
Gripes with ebay are not something I wish to focus on here. Actually I do have a few based on their menial customer service, etc. My problem is they way they simply are compounding fees base on final value. Now assessing shipping as well? Shipping is rediculous! Especially in the scope that I use it. My packages weigh nothing but can size range between 12" squared and 16" squared. UPS and the USPS are not timid about their costs and point to the escalating costs of fuel to support their frequent price hikes.
I have estimated shipping based on what I percieve as "high averages". A similar package to a west coast destination (I am located in the east), etc. It was ALWAYS my practice to return unused portions of a shipping charge to a customer if it was in excess of a dollar! Frankly, I really didn't understand "handling fees" that some were applying. To pay for a box? A piece of tape? I try to include a percentage of this in my overall pricing while also trying to keep the cost to a potential buyer down.
I do not sell nickle and dime packages. I would say, based on many standards I have seen on ebay, that what I sell is medium or upper range. However, now I have no choice but to bump up my shipping charges as "handling fees" to escape another percentage attached by ebay.
I seldom buy general items on ebay and limit my purchases to collectible items within my interests. I see that many people have "stores" and frankly, what I see charged for new or common items does reflect the increasing burden ebay is placing on the good people selling their wares in a fractured economy! This isn't going to change when greed continues and more fees are applied.
There has to be a suitable alternative to ebay. I need to look at a recognized "market place" a bit closer to see if I was wrong about their seemingly excessive fees.
You tell me that after nearly twenty years of unparalled success ebay has not figured out methods of incentive that benifits their constituency from both a buyers perspective and a sellers perspective? How about a pre-arranged date on a reoccuring basis when final value fees are "cut in half" or totally eliminated? I, as a seller would certainly take advantage of this and lower prices to attract more sales!
You mean to tell me for the amount of sales that requre shipping that ebay can not work with private carriers to establish promotional rates that are somewhat cheaper that can benifit the buyer as well?
It has been my experience in the past year to actually have direct contact with this company. It would better serve them to become a bit more proactive because generally when I see this type of flagrant disregard forced on patrons, it would indicate that perhaps a "bell is tolling"?

Ebay can kiss my feeless ass. Do they think that people are stupid by trying to make us believe they are doing this to help the seller and the buyer. They are just making the rich richer and the poor poorer, what better time to pull this off when the economy is suffering, the higher cost to sell and buy should fit this economy real good with this rediculous brain fart that ebay board members desided to have. If they think people really believe there is a such thing as free shipping that is the day where i believe in sant claus.I am not going to bend over so ebay can stick it in my rear. As soon as i get rid of my inventory, i'm done selling with these crooks. And that is a promise. PS. can ebay charge a fee for making a promise? That might be in there next brain fart meeting full of stupid ideas.

Why is a fee increase by eBay, obviously a plan to help boost profits, being rolled out under the ruse of a benefit for buyers and sellers? Even if there is a margin of sellers who will in fact have lower fees due to this change, why does eBay employ blanket policies as if sellers are all selling the same size item under the same circumstance?

Where is the precedence for this? What industry standard is eBay trying to compete with by trying to encourage free shipping? Plenty of other shopping sites and e-stores charge shipping, especially on large items.

I have read through the forums and it would appear the feedback from sellers is 99% negative towards charging FVFs on shipping charges. Charging final value fees on shipping makes having a separate section for stating shipping charges almost pointless, and certainly discourages multiple sales from a single buyer to lower the shipping cost for a large order. It would seem all but obvious that this will raise costs for both buyers and sellers, so what makes me most upset is that this is presented as a benefit. It certainly invokes a certain sense of mistrust for the company we all work with, a feeling that seems to have been increasing lately as seller benefits continue to shrink and disappear.

It seems that the eBay employee forum responses are only coming in the form of robotic answers to questions asking about particular details of the changes (that mostly can be found answered in other sections). I have not seen any reasonable replies to the actual real concerns that are being voiced here. Why should people who ship larger or smaller items be penalized by charging FVFs for shipping costs? Is it not enough that we are all already losing money by struggling to charge the lowest shipping possible to achieve satisfactory DSR's, or else we are banned from selling on eBay?

Please let me just say that a system rating sellers performance based on buyer opinion with ABSOLUTELY NO ACCOUNTABILITY to the buyer and no achievable standard is ridiculous. What is the standard that eBay sets to achieve 5 stars for communication? Or for Item as described? Any buyer having a bad day or in a grouchy mood can decide to take it out on a sellers DSR without a second thought. How can this be worked into calculating a top rated seller evaluation unless the system is inherently flawed? How can achieving / maintaining TRS status (fee discounts) be so random and uneven unless someone was directly benefiting from having a minimal amount of Top Rated Sellers?

Large items take longer to ship, and cost more. More handling is also usually involved. Sellers will now be penalized for shipping large items. Large items typically take a bit longer to ship. Have fun achieving TSR status if you ship freight items.

I could go on and on... Internatianal DSR's? More buyers with no accountability impacting sellers livelihood, even if they ship within 24hrs?

Why does eBay offer First Class International as a service if it cannot be backed by eBay? Why not take it off the site as a shipping option if the "acceptable global standard" is not to use it?

Why does eBay not take responsibility to explain to all buyers that sellers are not accountable for customs fees and taxes? Why require sellers to boldly state this in the top half of the listings when eBay can simply relay this information in the sign up user agreements for members worldwide? Or are other eBay sites held to a different, lower standard?

Here's a clue- different countries postal systems work differently. There is no standard for tracking or electronic information for a parcel once it is in the destination countries hands. Stop putting it onto the seller to adjust services appropriate to an area "where they think they have received some low DSR's". eBay should educate the buyer in each area about local service reliability, or encourage buyers to educate themselves before purchasing. If the service is not completely backed by eBay, then TAKE IT OFF OF EBAY.

New sellers funds being held? Don't you make enough interest, eBay? How does this encourage new growth?

- Tip of the Iceberg

Lets be honest here,The only one to benefit from fees on shipping is EBAY. For Ebay to claim otherwise, is simply dishonest..
Ebay fees were already unreasonable and this change makes them even more unreasonable.
We can only hope that someone such as Google starts a competing service. Competition is the only way to control an Ebay monolopy that continues to charge obscene fees. to pad their bottom line.

I do agree in most of what you said. Paypal when I started selling holded all the money for up to 5 days or so I belive. So ebay is just doing what paypal already does, the thing here is that instead of paypal getting the money on hold is ebay, so not a big diference for the seller but yes it's a big one for ebay, now they can add a profit out of it.

Some of the countries out there have unreliable postal services, and they hold the items on customs for as long as 10 or more days, so the DSR will go down for all of us for sure, that way our Top Rated status will be likely to disapear over time. DSR is already bad, since even if you describe all item perfect, the seller can do whatever he feels like, same for the other rating, dosen't matter if you ship it 10 minutes after the auction or a week later, all what matter is if the buyer feels he recieved it on time, and for a long wait because of customs that will dramatically change thier point of view. So I will consider droping those countries I know are bad.

On the other hand to avoid those ebay fees on shipping I'll offer free shipping and just add it to the auction price, I can do it since I do crafts and sell them, so the impact on the actual cost is minimun since people pay me mostly for my hand work. But I do agree that in fact is making the buyer pay more, since when he buys 2 auctions from me he won't get shipping discounts and will have to pay full shipping value up front on the item itself.

Now with the 50 free auctions do benefit me since I can do it anytime, before I was just waitnig for whenever they did the free auctions.

In short I do not see the benefit of FVF on shipping (actually is all the oposite), and I do see that stores users that pay the most to ebay, get the worst deals.

Funny dont see any replies from the pinks in here today!

Guess they figures their pom pom propaganda wont work on this thread!

Good Job GREEDBAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These changes are TOO MUCH to take ! ebay sellers will take action - like the people in Egypt or Libya -