What if ebay...

moursund

It doesn't look like there will be an "ebay alternative" which offers all the advantages of ebay, but also protects customers better.
(copied from other thread, because it is really a separate topic)...

If lawsuit pressure and/or legal ruling caused ebay to significantly change its policies and practices (e.g. better background checks, some way to keep NARUd clients from simply joining under a new name, better policing and enforcing of anti-shilling rules, etc), this would presumably result in higher ebay costs, and potentially loss of ebay revenue (as they stop "looking the other way" to power seller infractions). Would this result in higher ebay fees for all auctions? Would it be worth it?

What if ebay tried to start charging, say, 1% fee to BUYERS for each auction won? When you set up an ebay account, you had to establish a paypal account balance, and you couldn't bid on an aution unless your balance would cover the (non-refundable) fee (which would automatically be charged if you won the auction). Would buyers stand for this?

am

nwcs

What would probably happen is the same thing that happened to malls. The merchants got angry and set up their own shop. You'd see more regular e-commerce sites spring up. Because once the cost of doing it yourself is less than having ebay host it's worth moving out.

robertpr

eBay will never be dumb enough to charge a fee to the buyers. The buyers are the ones bid bid bidding stuff up so eBay can get a nice final value fee from the seller. Discouraging bidding by charging for it will drastically reduce the final value fees. There are a bunch of other reasons they will never charge the buyers, but it all boils down to the fact that they want as many people bidding as possible.