eBay Pushes Prices Up Yet Again

I think eBay gets jealous of the Post Office or something. They are addicted to raising their prices on a pretty regular basis. Which is fine, I guess, I stopped using eBay to sell things a while ago. Its a hassle and expensive and the "sales" I've made in the last year have been losses.

So, keep raising your prices, eBay, raise them high enough for some better company to come in and deliver better service at a lower price. Here's how the email from Bill Cobb begins, I love the tone of we're-doing-this-for-you when its obvious they're doing it to make more on the bottom line for themselves and their investors.

"Today, I'm here to tell you about fee adjustments for eBay.com and eBay Motors which go into effect on January 30, 2007.

Let me say that, while we believe these changes are modest, we consider any changes that may impact our sellers with great care. These adjustments are the result of careful analysis and we believe they're the right thing to do to keep the marketplace strong for our eBay.com and eBay Motors sellers."

The right thing to do? The right thing to do is to provide more bang for the bucks people are spending on your site. Raising insertion fees from $.35 to $.40 and the final eBay selling fee from 3% of the selling price to 3.25% isn't a huge jump but I'm sure the projected added income is greater than the projected attrition from disgruntled ex-users.

Bah!

I'll just keep using Craigslist anyway.

Tags: eBay, prices, higher prices, craigslist