you know why they are doing this right..? they dont get a percentage of the shipping cost , only the final sale price before shipping, so they know that if they force you to build in your shipping price their percentage draw goes up. I guess they have too though since there are so many sellers now who are selling their items at .99 with $90 shipping so they dont have to pay ebay.
Yes, they want more money in their pockets. BUT, as a volume seller we also know the pains of dealing with customers who can't understand that we have to pay for items to be shipped and that it is expensive. And when a customer orders more than 1 item they want the shipping combined and accurate, so they want any overage refunded to them. It's a real pain to spend time refunding 20 people $1.50 every day. But, if we don't they'll give us a negative and low DSR scores, which gives us lowered exposure and fewer sales.
The .99 cent listings with $90 shipping are a thing of the past. The DSR scores are pretty much taken care of every seller doing that crap. Just a few low scores on shipping really bites into your exposure and sales. Any seller who wants to sell something won't do that anymore. 3 years ago almost every seller had to in order to stay in business on ebay since fee's were so high.
The major impact will come from the fact the offering free shipping means the seller needs to calculate the furthest domestic distance (where does it cost the most to ship to domestically)... then they have to add 16.5% to that amount, and that's the amount they have to raise their prices.
NOW... when a domestic customer buys more than one item, they are paying the price as if they were buying them seperately and we were shipping them seperately. It puts more money in the sellers pockets, and more money in ebay's pockets.
I personally don't like it. I don't think someone who lives 100 miles away should pay the same amount for shipping as someone who lives 1000 miles away. It's not right and it's not fair. But, according to ebay, customers have been screaming for free shipping for years now. This is the solution.
NOW.....
Foreign orders. Foreigners are still charged a shipping cost. The regular shipping cost. So, they have to pay the increased amount due to free domestic shipping PLUS what it costs to ship to their location (super inflation).
Ebay doesn't take 11% of what it costs to ship to foreign countries, instead they calculate your lowest domestic shipping cost and take 11% of that for foreign orders. So, if you offer free shipping domestically they only take 11% of the item cost for foreign orders.
Get this....
We raised an items price from $138.00 to $177.00 in order to give it free domestic shipping (it weighs 11 pounds and ships priority USPS). A guy in Cyprus just bought 3 of them. So he had to pay $117 MORE than he would have if the domestic ebay shoppers weren't such bi7ches about paying regular shipping costs.
The further we get into talking about this, the more complex and unfair it really becomes for all the buyers. Sellers are making more money, ebay is making more money, but the buyers are really getting screwed and it's forcing inflation.
But, after everybody raises prices and things settle down, who will remember what it used to be like?
The newer generations of online buyers will never know how good things USED to be.
Just like the older generations tell us young'uns how good things used to be and we smile but don't really understand.
