New COMC Fees: Your Thoughts?

[rarthur]

CheckOutMyCards.com Blog


I can't decide my feelings on this. I'm not huge into COMC, but I do use it from time to time. There seem to be positives and negatives but regardless, hopefully adding more collectible capability will increase exposure.

[jlcherry2477]

just when I'm about to submit some cards...for those that have been COMC sellers, what does this do as far as fees are concerned. Let's say for example 500 cards that range in value from $1-20. Is the $50/month membership a good idea for new customers?? I'm really thinking about just taking them to The Nationals and talking to someone there.

[bear0555]

Yikes! That is a really sneaky way to slip in a transaction fee. So now, buyers have to pay an additional 25 cents to buy a card whether they want the card shipped or to resell. I was never a big fan of the site but it seems to work really well for people. It's now starting to remind me more and more of ebay, though that may not be a bad thing.

[mnvikingstwins]

Originally Posted by bear0555

Yikes! That is a really sneaky way to slip in a transaction fee. So now, buyers have to pay an additional 25 cents to buy a card whether they want the card shipped or to resell. I was never a big fan of the site but it seems to work really well for people. It's now starting to remind me more and more of ebay, though that may not be a bad thing.

Didn't they already charge $.25 per card to get them shipped, and now it's just a flat shipping fee? So really no different, just like KFC offering free potatoes but charging the full normal price, they make shipping seem cheaper when it's really the same.

[rarthur]

Originally Posted by mnvikingstwins

Didn't they already charge $.25 per card to get them shipped, and now it's just a flat shipping fee? So really no different, just like KFC offering free potatoes but charging the full normal price, they make shipping seem cheaper when it's really the same.

I think it will be interesting to see how the $0.25 fee is absorbed by sellers and flippers. So one would assume that at first the original seller who added the card to the site would charge an extra $0.25 per card. But then once you get to the flipper, if a price is increased do they charge an additional $0.25 knowing that is what someone would have to pay elsewhere? It really just seems that it will be sellers going $0.01 lower than the next cheapest seller so it will be interesting to see how it all pans out.

[go_steelers07]

Originally Posted by rarthur

I think it will be interesting to see how the $0.25 fee is absorbed by sellers and flippers. So one would assume that at first the original seller who added the card to the site would charge an extra $0.25 per card. But then once you get to the flipper, if a price is increased do they charge an additional $0.25 knowing that is what someone would have to pay elsewhere? It really just seems that it will be sellers going $0.01 lower than the next cheapest seller so it will be interesting to see how it all pans out.

read the entire blog... it's all there.

[dlab85]

Doesn't bother me as a seller... Kinda irks me for flipping though. Many of the cards I buy are never shipped. Processing fees going up 5 cents sucks

[rarthur]

Originally Posted by go_steelers07

read the entire blog... it's all there.

I understand its all there. The flipper isn't charged an additional $0.25. But would the seller artificially bump it up $0.25 more than he would have. It will be a battle of who can go lower

[patchgenie]

COMC adding a fee for the flippers is a bad idea as it will probably lower the number of transactions on the site that keeps things going. A very dumb idea on their part. I liked it better just paying the 25 cent fee before my items were shipped and had no problem with that.

[dlab85]

I just re-read it. Flipping is not a problem. When it's bought the second time, you will get the S+H fee the new buyer pays deposited into your account. Makes me feel a little better.

[mjbuchanan80]

I knew their pricing structure wouldn't survive very long without increases. COMC's business model requires a TON of overhead and manual labor. I wouldn't be surprised if they are in the red. You'll see prices rise again withing the next couple of years or you will see them diversify their business greatly to increase revenue streams.

[anusinha]

They want to make it to the big time, start selling wax. Be kinda like a public version of dealernet.

[houdini]

Originally Posted by anusinha

They want to make it to the big time, start selling wax. Be kinda like a public version of dealernet.

They have a partnership with blowout. This is why blowout does not sell singles like their competitors and why you will not see comc selling wax.

Coins, comics, and memorabilia... that is another issue. :0

[mwolfson22]

Comics would definitely be a plus... Pricing Structure make it tougher $1-$3 cards it seems like. That is my bread and butter so I might have to pull back and do something else.

[dlab85]

Here is my latest blog post on my interpretations of the COMC increase

COMC and Their New Pricing Structure... Let's Not Have A Freak Out! Edit Blog Entry
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dlab85
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Anytime we hear pricing going up, we immediately think of all the bad that comes with it. Prices rarely go down in life and are always almost certain to rise. At the prodding of my good buddy WilsonValdez (and Brandon Belt coming around asking me if I wanted to get high! Damn You Brandon Belt!) I've decided to dive into COMCs most recent pricing updates

So let's take a closer look at the new adjustments and I will do my best to interpret all of their changes


Simplified the Fees For Buyers

OK, obviously any site you are selling on is going to benefit the buyer. The more I read about people #####ing that eBay doesn't care about the sellers, the more my eyes roll. Without buyers, You and eBay are out of business. The same can be applied to COMC. There are 2000 sellers and 40000 buyers, 20-1 odds. COMC is going to cater to the 95%. Unfortunately for sellers we have some complicated language in where not much is really changing for us while simplifying it for our customer base. In all reality, it is necessary for our customers to have a GREAT buying experience so that they will come back. COMC does just that for us.

So what are they doing? They are building the shipping fee into the cost. You list a card for .75, the buyer buys it for $1. Easy right?

My first concern when I read this was flipping. I don't make much money flipping (maybe 5-10% of my sales in a given month), but does .25 need to now be built into my pricing for future cards? No! Here's how:

I see a 2011 Bowman Chrome Draft Blake Snell Auto up for $1.00. I purchase it. The seller has it listed for .75 cents and COMC automatically builds in the .25. I can list it for .76 and when someone purchases it, they will have paid 1.01 for the card and COMC will deposit the additional .25 cents into my account as shipping on the card has already been paid for. Ultimately, it means you will be putting up additional money up front on flips. But this will also work like a credit that you can start building up for the next time you want to have something shipped. Downside is that they now control more of your money. I'm not the biggest fan of this new change, but it is definitely livable. They stated on their blog that "these fees could be waived for port sales." I would sure as hell hope so. I wouldn't be trying to pay an extra .25 per card X 1000, 2000 whatever the case may be.

Reaction: My overall gripe with this change is who was really that confused with the shipping fees in the first place? They seemed pretty straight forward to me. I guess I can live with it, but my buying for flips will be a lot more calculated when this goes into effect.

Simplified Shipping & Handling

This is now easier because you are already paying .25 per card up front. Pricing isn't bad, but This sucks mainly because the limited time economy option of 3.99 for 10 cards and then .20 per additional will be over in two weeks. That was a cheaper option than all of the ones presented. But the Free Local Pickup at my LCS (assuming he gets into their network or whatever, details were pretty sketchy on this) sounds kind of exciting. Free is better that 3.99 + .20

Shipping Guarantee

I don't really care about meeting time tables... Whatever. I know my cards will get to me eventually. Probably not the same for buyers who are very excited to receive certain cards, so I do understand.

Simplified Fees for Sellers

I don't know that I would call this plan simplified... You have millions of dollars in Book Value listed on your site and are going to have a lot of pissed off sellers. But they do some nice things here I guess.

3 simple processing services
One day processing is pretty cool. If you had a bunch of Harper or Trout stuff you wanted to get up during the craze, you certainly could do it. I will never use it, but it is a good option. Hell, I will never even use one week processing.

$3 batch fee gone

"If you send 500 cards... it will cost you $125 as opposed to $100, but you will save $3 on your batch fee!" You act like you're doing me some sort of favor, COMC. Gee, Thanks

Reduced storage fees
This, I like. Now some of these Nervous Nellies can stop listing stuff for .25 because it is the free threshold. List your stuff for .75, dammit! Someone is going to buy it! Really, they are!

Free premium options

Finally, I don't have to pay for auto-accept and minimum offer. It's about damn time. So basically with this and the reduced storage fees, it's kind of like we are all getting the $15 per month account upgrade, if you want to look at it monetarily

Now here is where it starts to hurt a little bit, kind of like when you find out Santa isn't real or your find out your first girlfriend is kissing another guy behind your back on the schoolyard...

Simplified Processing Fees for Sellers

Big changes... basically the fee goes from .20 to .25. I am not really bothered by this. Perhaps folks would be apprehensive to list their cards for .20 or below and may now resort to listing them at .25 (or closer to their free storage threshold...what a concept!)

So here they are:
One Month Processing
$0.25 / Card for raw trading cards
$0.50 / Item for all other supported collectibles
$5.00 Minimum processing fee per submission

One Week Processing
$0.50 / Card for raw trading cards
$0.75 / Item for all other supported collectibles
$5.00 Minimum processing fee per submission

One Day Processing
$1.00 / Card for raw trading cards
$1.00 / Item for all other supported collectibles
$5.00 Minimum processing fee per submission

Prices actually go down on Oversized items, which is good because graded cards will now be cheaper to send in (.50 same as an eBay BIN) This also includes the "all other supported collectibles" Comics, Memrobilia, Coins, etc.


In Closing

Basically, we, the sports card hobbyists are paying more for COMC's eventual venture into Coins, Comics and other CRAP. (Check Out My Crap, as in DLab dont give a crap about comics because even though I'm a sports card nerd... at least I'm not a comic books nerd...Jesus Christ that would be awful. I played real sports as a kid and collected my favorite ball players, not dress up in my pajamas and run around like I had super powers or something. I have never been to a Star Wars premiere and have never been to a movie in costume. But I digress...) This is disappointing because I feel like COMC had carved out a nice little niche. I'm sure they will do well with Comics, but your bread and butter shouldn't be forced to go through extreme changes to facilitate your expansion into the comics arena. Make no mistake about it, the fee simplification is to do just that.

I don't have a large problem with the fees to add going to .25 from .20. When you consider the work that must go into this site, and the surge in popularity, I somedays struggle to see where they would turn a profit. The .5 per card is the cost of doing business. Just read my other article on what not to send and you should be OK. This change does not scare me away in the least.

My largest gripe is the flipping problem. I buy cards to flip. Some of them are long term investments and probably will not be realized for months. I do not want to hand over .25 per card to COMC for them to hold for months until I finally sell the item. Ultimately I will get that money back, but I am just granting them a No-Interest loan. This should (and hopefully will) be addressed. Many people who sell on COMC are flippers. It is one of the things that makes COMC great. Building shipping fees into cards and other items should be reconsidered.

Ultimately we will get used to the new methods and look at it as business as usual. I would hate to see fees get out of control here. I wish they could have just raised the fee to add to .25 and left S & H alone. If you had a third grade education, you should have been able to understand the shipping structure of old. I feel it is actually being made more confusing than ever. Will this impact what I send in to COMC? Probably not, but it will definitely impact how I feel about buying to flip and resell on COMC. That aspect of my business may be over once the new fees go into place.

[dlab85]

And yes, this did inspire the title of my blog

[tonedef2oo8]

checkoutmyfees.com

[mnvikingstwins]

So now with this shipping thing, could you flip a card by pricing it for 10 cents less than it originally was, and make 15 cents off of them? Buy a card for $1, list it for $.90, and get $.25 back into your account?

[Brad]

Originally Posted by houdini

They have a partnership with blowout. This is why blowout does not sell singles like their competitors and why you will not see comc selling wax.

BO never sold singles, even before COMC existed. The reasoning always seemed to be that customers could "trust" BO not to cherry pick boxes from sealed cases for themselves because they didn't sell singles themselves.

[anusinha]

Originally Posted by houdini

They have a partnership with blowout. This is why blowout does not sell singles like their competitors and why you will not see comc selling wax.

Coins, comics, and memorabilia... that is another issue. :0

The partnership isnt written in stone though, once the contract is up, theyll take a look and see if selling wax is viable.

[XL5]

Originally Posted by mnvikingstwins

So now with this shipping thing, could you flip a card by pricing it for 10 cents less than it originally was, and make 15 cents off of them? Buy a card for $1, list it for $.90, and get $.25 back into your account?

No, you don't get the shipping back. It is now attached to the card. From COMC:

If a seller is trying to relist (aka flip) an item which already has S&H paid, the asking price will be the same as the list price, and the seller will get the full list price upon sale because the per-item S&H was already paid.

If you buy a card for $1 (0.75 +0.25 shipping) and then sell it for $0.90, you get $0.90. You paid 10 cents of the buyer's shipping. Very kind of you.

[dlab85]

Originally Posted by XL5

No, you don't get the shipping back. It is now attached to the card. From COMC:



If you buy a card for $1 (0.75 +0.25 shipping) and then sell it for $0.90, you get $0.90. You paid 10 cents of the buyer's shipping. Very kind of you.

If you buy the card for $1 and list it for .90, the buyer will be paying 1.15. You would make .15, because you have already paid the shipping. COMC deposits the future shipping into your account

[mainerunr]

Originally Posted by dlab85

If you buy the card for $1 and list it for .90, the buyer will be paying 1.15. You would make .15, because you have already paid the shipping. COMC deposits the future shipping into your account

no, if you buy a card for $1.00 and list it for 0.90, whoever buys it gets it for 0.90 because you already paid the .25 shipping as part of the dollar...so you lose 10 cents. If you want to make anything, you list it for more than a buck.

[XL5]

Originally Posted by dlab85

If you buy the card for $1 and list it for .90, the buyer will be paying 1.15. You would make .15, because you have already paid the shipping. COMC deposits the future shipping into your account

No, shipping is only charged once. Read the blog. Heck, read the part I quoted.

[dlab85]

Originally Posted by XL5

No, shipping is only charged once. Read the blog. Heck, read the part I quoted.

My bad... re-read it again... certainly confusing. I don't see how this is simplifying anything. Judging by the feedback on the blog, hopefully they will shoot it down.