San Francisco (CA) - Ebay has further cut fees for putting music, movies, video games and books up for auction, responding to pressure from its high-volume sellers.

Ebay announced a new fee structure earlier this year, enraging some of the auction site's loyal and powerful users.  The new system will cause people who sell certain items to pay higher commission fees.

The site also charges a flat fee for every listing.  The new system proposed a structure that would cause these flat rates to effectively increase.  As such, people who sell smaller items in bulk, such as games and DVDs, were poised to get hit the hardest.

Some of Ebay's "power sellers" list tens of thousands of home media items every year.  "I don't believe it was their (eBay's) intent to discourage listings from happening in the first place, but that may have been an unintended consequence, particularly in the media category," said Derek Brown, a Cantor Fitzgerald analyst, in an AP story.

"We heard your comments about the need for media and category-specific pricing," said Ebay president of global marketplace organization Lorrie Norrington in a posting on the site.  As a result, the site said it will cut listing fees by nearly half of the earlier proposed rate for all items under the "media" category.

User

Feb 12, 2008 16:31     

The fee cut for the insertion is a welcome news for sellers. However, the limited seller's feedback feature is not so welcome to many sellers. There will always be bad sellers and buyers. When there is a bad user, whether this individual is a buyer or seller, the market community would like to know. This way, sellers would avoid doing business with so-called "bad" buyers that abuse the system. I am looking to try alternative sites, such as loudheart, craigslist (eBay has a 25% stake in it), esty, etc... These sites offer free postings.

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