Fees up for eBay sellers

By SIMON MOON
Updated:

 

ONLINE auction giant eBay today announced higher fees for some UK users and promised tougher action against ticket touts and sellers who charge rip-off postage rates.

Robbie Williams

Doug McCallum, managing director of eBay (UK), said price changes coming in next month would mainly affect shop listings, which offer instant sale rather than an auction. At the same time technical changes will make shop listings less visible when users search the site.

One reason for the change is to steer the company back towards its core business – buying and selling at auction.

In a message to sellers and buyers, McCallum said changes to the site in February had had unintended consequences. Search results had doubled and the huge number of shop listings had produced complaints from users that they could not easily and quickly find what they wanted to buy.

To overcome this, eBay intended to 'rebalance the marketplace' by reducing the visibility of shop listings in search and browse, he said. Separately, a spokesman said the prices changes would affect only a very small percentage of the company's 15m UK registered users.

McCallum said eBay had been working hard on 'trust and safety issues', including rip-off postage rates, which have become a serious issue. He said: 'It sets up unfair competition through fee avoidance and search manipulation. It is also eroding buyer trust in the eBay marketplace and reflects badly on decent, honest sellers who are abiding by the rules.

'We've been very reluctant about telling our sellers what they can charge . . . but it is also obvious that some sellers are clearly taking advantage of the system. You know the listings I mean: £1 Buy it Now items that charge £25.00 (or more) to post when we all know the actual cost of postage, packaging and handling is nowhere near that.'

McCallum adds: 'We are going to proactively target the worst offenders. We've already made a start on this, and we'll be ramping up our efforts over the next month or so.'

In an effort to control ticket touts charging massively inflated prices for top sporting events and pop concerts given by the likes of Robbie Williams, the company says all new listings offering tickets for resale must now specify the original face value of each ticket.

Ebay today also announced it expects to launch its new eBay Express site in time for Christmas. The site, says the company, will be 'a new marketplace built to complement eBay.co.uk'. It will be open to professional sellers, offering new items at a fixed price. Buyers are promised a new way to search for items, a shopping basket and easy checkout.

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