Quote:
Originally Posted by Leon
I would be willing to bet a soda that eventually eBay charges for this service. I think there is a 98% chance... They don't do anything that won't make them more money. My guess, and it's only a guess, is they are still evaluating how much they can charge, if they can charge for it at all. If they can't, I see the program going away.
and cards
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I'll take that bet. Everybody has their own crystal ball, but my guess is this is already a success for ebay, for a couple reasons. It's probably a lot easier and a lot cheaper to manage their fake card problem this way than before. I expect they used to spend a lot of time and money chasing down sellers for refunds for the fakes they sold, and trying to decide disputes when the seller said they sent a card and the buyer said they didn't get it, or got something not as described. They compensated buyers in many cases even when they couldn't collect from the sellers. I don't know how high a cost that ebay had for fraud, but I am sure it was a lot.
I also expect that ebay is making more money now because transaction volume has likely gone up. Buyers and sellers both can have more confidence that large transactions are legit, which should result in more items put up for sale, and more bidding on them.
Ebay fees are too high already. They need to continue to look at ways to be more efficient, so they can start taking their fees down. Paying a 15% transaction cost on card sales is ridiculous, it suppresses the market. I think many of us would put more cards up for sale if fees were lower. I don't see ebay raising their fees again.