Business Bytes
Renee Oricchio

EBay's Changes for Fall

 

Just in time for fall (and the here-before-you-know-it holiday shopping season), EBay has been rolling out some pretty significant changes over the past couple of weeks.

1. First off, there will be no more payments by cash, check or money order. Sellers can now only use PayPal (owned by EBay, of course) or credit card. No, this isn't self-serving.

2. EBay's latest relased quarterly report shows 43% of all sales are now fixed price. That doesn't include all of the auction sales that involve a single bidder (which in effect is kind of the same thing).

3. EBay is rejiggering its algorhythms in its search engine to bring those sellers higher up in the rankings that rule in the following areas; the lowest shipping costs, the lowest prices and what EBay considers "the best inventory in that category".

4. EBay has reduced it's listing fee for fixed priced items to .35 cents for 30 days, as opposed to seven days.

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My thoughts:

- If EBay is tinkering with its search engine to bring certain established, high volume power sellers that can afford deep discounts and free shipping; what happens to the EBay start-up? You know; that sub set of enterpreneur that built EBay up to what it is today, so it can now toss them aside? Where's the loyalty?

- PayPal is so turnkey, of course, on EBay. Yes, there are sellers that have their own credit card processing service. But, we all know who is going to clean up with this new "no cash, no check, no money order" policy. Maybe it's all part of the plan to balance out those lowered listing fees?

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio