eBay Plus to roll out late summer, as an answer to Amazon Prime

[HEXUS]

A free and fast shipping and returns service enhancement for around $20 per annum.

Read more.

[edzieba]

Depending on what items the free delivery applies to that could either be a great deal, or utterly worthless.

[Saracen]

Yeah, but .... it's eBay.

[cheesemp]

Hmmm. Interesting - Prime is just too expensive currently. If they can launch it for this sort of cost over here I could definitely be tempted...

[shaithis]

I've already started looking for the Argos Reserve and Collect options when using the bay......of course that may not be as convenient for everyone.

$20 per year does seem the right price....although what's the betting it will be £30-40 over here?

[crossy]

The enhanced eBay+ service will offer paying subscribers "free, fast shipping and returns," says the WSJ. The fee to willing subscribers will be quite modest, according to German press reports, and be in the region of €15 to €20 (approx $17 to $22) per annum.

Dear Amazon, please note that this is how you're supposed to run a "Prime" service. Not then ladle on a whole lot of "value added" extras that quite a lot of people don't want and double the price.

eBay announcement is interesting, but to be blunt I don't buy enough from eBay to make it worthwhile. Of course, if Amazon continue to annoy me then that might well change...

[Chadders87]

I have stopped using eBay since they went from public auctions to retailer focused business model. eBays customer service is practically non-existent / useless when anything went wrong. Now if I want something from a retailer I will google the best price... or use Amazon purely so I get there customer service.

[ZaO]

Like Prime, only gonna be worth it for very frequent users of the service. I'd love it if they could do something to protect sellers better from scammers without making us sign up to some premium service. I would've thought the standard 10% cut they take would be enough. They've had a lot of fees out of me over the years, but done very little to help me when buyers have messed me around and caused me to lose money. I've only asked for their help once or twice too..

[Saracen]

....

eBay announcement is interesting, but to be blunt I don't buy enough from eBay to make it worthwhile. Of course, if Amazon continue to annoy me then that might well change...

Jumping from mildly hot frying pan into the hottest fires of hell?

I don't use eBay much either, but wouldn't divert Amazon to eBay. I'm more likely to divert Amazon to virtually anywhere but eBay. Personally, of course.

[aniilv]

returns in eu should already be free lol ebay

[DavyJ]

Basically they will coerce eBay seller's into using Plus by making non-adopters' listings less visible or not showing up on searches. Adopters' profit margins will shrink even more while non-adopters sales will plummet. Buyers will be able to steal parts off of items, or buy anything they want without reading the listing, and then not take any responsibility for their actions, sending items back at cost to the sellers.

Intel, Microsoft, and even telecommunications / ISPs have significant more competition than eBay.