Question about new Ebay Authenticity Program???

[FrankWakefield]

What Leon said... "definitely going to charge for that service"

It is a fancy box. And the fancy box is in a nice shipping box. When we buy/sell on eBay, they assess a varying fee. And the service (not the best word, because some of us want to not be 'served') is paid for by eBay from the money they collect from us. So all eBay participants are paying for it, just like we indirectly pay for the salaries of eBay employees, for the computer hardware they use, for their health insurance and such... We are paying for it, it just isn't a line item that we easily see, like we see our state sales tax.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

What Leon said... "definitely going to charge for that service"

It is a fancy box. And the fancy box is in a nice shipping box. When we buy/sell on eBay, they assess a varying fee.

It's certainly possible that they will charge for this "service" in the future. The cost to provide it has got to be $10 (maybe more) per item, by the time you add up shipping, packaging, and inspection, plus just the infrastructure of managing it all.

At the same time, I suspect that it also saves eBay by reducing the number of disputes over items that were not shipped, or were not as described. I suspect that the annual dollar amount in prior years for settling fraud disputes on their platform can't have been small.

Even if it just keeps honest buyers/sellers from getting cheesed at eBay from having a bad experience when they get hosed by an unscrupulous counterparty, then that seems like a win for them.

Of course, the counterpoint is that around these parts, there seems to be no shortage of people who are cheesed at the very existence of the program. So it cuts both ways!

[Gorditadogg]

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

What Leon said... "definitely going to charge for that service"



It is a fancy box. And the fancy box is in a nice shipping box. When we buy/sell on eBay, they assess a varying fee. And the service (not the best word, because some of us want to not be 'served') is paid for by eBay from the money they collect from us. So all eBay participants are paying for it, just like we indirectly pay for the salaries of eBay employees, for the computer hardware they use, for their health insurance and such... We are paying for it, it just isn't a line item that we easily see, like we see our state sales tax.

That's not the way a free market works. Retailers charge what the market will bear, the ones with the lowest expenses make the most money.

As Nicolo says, ebay is probably reducing their costs with this program.

On the topic, I do have a large stack of those cases that the authenticated cards come in. Has anybody figured out anything useful to do with them?

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[Leon]

Originally Posted by Gorditadogg

That's not the way a free market works. Retailers charge what the market will bear, the ones with the lowest expenses make the most money.

As Nicolo says, ebay is probably reducing their costs with this program.

On the topic, I do have a large stack of those cases that the authenticated cards come in. Has anybody figured out anything useful to do with them?

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I just have a hard time believing they are reducing costs with this program. That's a lot of manpower, and expense, to have this function.
.

[Eric72]

Originally Posted by Leon

I just have a hard time believing they are reducing costs with this program. That's a lot of manpower, and expense, to have this function.
.

Given the number of scammers polluting the hobby these past few years, I imagine there were significant expenses dealing with fraud.

There were, of course, times where eBay ate the costs associated with scams. I'm sure they also spent considerable time (read, payroll expenses) dealing with the scammers.

The eBay execs probably crunched the numbers, chose the more profitable route, and put the new program in place. Considering the fees they collect on $250+ card sales, spending $10 or so per card really isn't that much. Besides, they've already increased seller fees at least once (maybe twice) since launching this.