Quote:
Originally Posted by FiveStarWholesale
I can understand your frustration but I think you are wrong in your assertion that Paypal fees are too high. They are only slightly above what you would pay for a Merchant Account (Depending on volume). Credit/Debit Card processing fees are expensive across the board, even Tesco have complainted about them recently, so Paypal's fees, and the added services they provide are, in my opinion, fair.
I don't personally agree with eBay's 'Paypal Only' move, but I can understand it.
RE offering Tax Breaks to others to set up a rival business - Why would they do that? The government aren't about to take up arms against eBay. Would the government offer incentives for software companies to develop a rival to Google? no, they wouldn't.
eBay offer a service, if people aren't happy with it, then they should look at other selling venues.
Businesses need to be nimble and ready to react to changes - If eBay is changing, then so do the sellers.
Simple really!
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OK lets do some forward thinking and step into your future, where the government don't do anything. Sales on the internet are going to keep increasing for a long time yet. So ebay will carry on the way they are and get bigger & bigger. 30% of online time now in the UK is already spent on ebay, so god knows what it will be in a few years. Most things you can think of can be bought there so why should buyers bother going anywhere else. The sellers aren't going to leave ebay because all the buyers are there. So really most sellers are going to be on ebay and probably have their own website too. But if they just had a website will they be able to survive? It's the same as what the big supermarkets are doing to your high street greengrocer, they are gradually killing them off. Fair enough websites are cheap to run but as ebay gets bigger & bigger there won't be any business going through them. Your existing customers may keep coming back but all the new ones will be on ebay. So looking into the future if you are a seller and not on ebay you're not going to be able to survive. Ebay control the fees they charge the sellers and the sellers set their prices accordingly. So in the future inflation is going to be partly controlled by how much ebay put up their fees. And basically they can charge what they want because there is nowhere else for sellers to go. Is that what the goverment really wants? Consumers paying higher prices just because they didn't step in and do something about ebay sooner.
Now step into my vision of the future where the goverment actually does something and through generous tax breaks persuades a rival such as google to set up an auction site. In the future there will be an alternative to ebay, so if ebay charges the sellers too much they can go to google and vice versa. It's healthy competition and it keeps the fees lower for the sellers who will in turn have lower prices and it will help lower inflation.
Competition is healthy in every market place and the same applies to the internet as anywhere else.