New COMC Fees: Your Thoughts?

[zebrastar]

Lets say you were to send in 100, $1 cards to get listed on COMC. It’s fair to assume that a seller may be able to pick up a lot like this on eBay for around $50 to try to resell on COMC, this is incredibly common and how a lot of people on COMC “make it”. However, with this new price hike it makes it pointless to stay.

cost of shipping to COMC= $10
processing fee = $25
hidden shipping fees that the seller will eat if he doesn’t raise his prices= $25
cashout fee= $20

total in fees= $80
total in cash= $20
total percentage of fees= 80%

my math is correct on this, right?

[XL5]

Originally Posted by zebrastar

seller will eat if he doesn’t raise his prices= $25

I think the prices are raised automatically so if you list all the cards for $1, the buyer has to pay $1.25.

When we release this update, all published prices will be inflated by our per-item S&H fee. When sellers set asking prices we will make it easy to specify how much they want for an item or to specify how much they want the item listed for.

I guess you could tell them you want the list price to be $1 and that would actually be $0.75 after shipping. In that case yeah, you'd eat the $25 but you don't have to.

[rarthur]

Originally Posted by zebrastar

Lets say you were to send in 100, $1 cards to get listed on COMC. It’s fair to assume that a seller may be able to pick up a lot like this on eBay for around $50 to try to resell on COMC, this is incredibly common and how a lot of people on COMC “make it”. However, with this new price hike it makes it pointless to stay.

cost of shipping to COMC= $10
processing fee = $25
hidden shipping fees that the seller will eat if he doesn’t raise his prices= $25
cashout fee= $20

total in fees= $80
total in cash= $20
total percentage of fees= 80%

my math is correct on this, right?

I see several points of contention here. One is that shipping to COMC can be much cheaper. It cost me $6.10 to ship 110 cards with D/C in a small priority flat rate box to COMC. Also from what I have heard is that people rarely "cash out" and find ways to avoid that fee by either getting different cards or a BO gift card.

[TheHeel]

I cash out all the time. With all these new fees, I wish they would lower it to 15%

[zebrastar]

Originally Posted by XL5

I think the prices are raised automatically so if you list all the cards for $1, the buyer has to pay $1.25.



I guess you could tell them you want the list price to be $1 and that would actually be $0.75 after shipping. In that case yeah, you'd eat the $25 but you don't have to.

True, the seller can choose to pass this fee on to the buyer... but he will have to keep that in mind when setting the price for his card.

BEFORE:
I want $1 for my card that I know won't sell for anymore than $1
so I list it for $1 and somebody buys it
pretty freaking simple

NOW:
I want $1 for my card, so the buyer has to now pay $1.25 OR I have to lower the price I'm willing to accept to .75 in order for the card to get purchased.

On small end items, a simple quarter can make a big difference between what gets bought and what sits forever.

All it means is that cards on COMC will be priced EVEN HIGHER.

I just don't know why the shipping charges need to be built into the price of the card, and then they need to charge a base shipping charge ON TOP of that. They say this is simplifying things but it is actually making it very convoluted. Buyers know that it's going to cost money to get a card shipped to them.

[dlab85]

Originally Posted by rarthur

I see several points of contention here. One is that shipping to COMC can be much cheaper. It cost me $6.10 to ship 110 cards with D/C in a small priority flat rate box to COMC. Also from what I have heard is that people rarely "cash out" and find ways to avoid that fee by either getting different cards or a BO gift card.

I have not taken the cash out and probably will not, but it does require a little extra effort. Plenty of people do it. eBay + paypal fees range from about 10-15% depending on a few factors. It was inevitable that fees would eventually go up. They do much of the legwork for sellers. My LCS takes a much higher percentage if I was to have him sell the card for me.

[JohnAndrew]

Originally Posted by dlab85

I have not taken the cash out and probably will not, but it does require a little extra effort. Plenty of people do it. eBay + paypal fees range from about 10-15% depending on a few factors. It was inevitable that fees would eventually go up. They do much of the legwork for sellers. My LCS takes a much higher percentage if I was to have him sell the card for me.

I think I take for granted sometimes just how much work these folks do for us. The 20% cash-out option does seem like a lot at first, but when you take into consideration the eBay fees, the storage, the manual labor required to actually log every single one of your cards...heck, you might even be getting a deal.

[marklemerchants]

For $1 cards COMC is the way to go, but they might sit there awhile. I have my ebay/paypal set up so that I make .31 on a 99 cent card with free shipping. On COMC I would make about .45 but there are a lot of cards on ebay that will sell for $1 that are on COMC for 0.30.

Even when you go to $2 cards ebay becomes a better option IMO. I will make 1.15 or so on ebay, where on COMC I would make $1.35, but to get that $1.35 I have to wait until I have $200 in my account, plus the low-balling on COMC with people trying to flip is pretty outrageous.

For me it comes down to the fact that I have the time and have no problem listing stuff on ebay. It also helps to have 2 paypal accounts. With the fees COMC charges, they should have your stuff listed much faster in my opinion.

[mschub]

Originally Posted by zebrastar

I just don't know why the shipping charges need to be built into the price of the card, and then they need to charge a base shipping charge ON TOP of that. They say this is simplifying things but it is actually making it very convoluted. Buyers know that it's going to cost money to get a card shipped to them.

I think is a key point. If buyers were perfectly rational, they could be counted on to do the calculation themselves (card costs 1.00; shipping costs 3.99 + .25 per item). But obviously they're not, and I suspect (without evidence) that there is a subset of people who would happily buy a card for $1.00 + $4.25 shipping, but would balk at paying $1.25 + $4.00 shipping. (That is, I think that for a lot of people, "shipping" is something that is considered separately from the rest of the purchase. First I decide whether I want to buy a given card at a given price; THEN I decide how I want to ship it.)

I suspect there's also some intentional transference going on here on the part of COMC. Under the old fee structure, the CARD price was set by the seller and the SHIPPING price was set by COMC. $4.00 + .25 per item seems high? Not the seller's fault; take it up with COMC. Now, on the other hand, COMC charges an eminently reasonable $4 flat fee, while the sellers' card prices seem higher than they ought to be. (Note that I'm not saying COMC is necessarily wrong to structure things this way; I'm just saying that in the aggregate, this new fee structure will tend to make COMC look more reasonable and sellers look less reasonable.)

(Forgive the CAPS and typos; hazards of typing on a phone.)