Do As I Say Not As I Do says eBay

ITs an amazing thing. We have had free shipping pushed down our throats for three solid months. eBay InkBlog had a post in June about a survey for PayPal conducted by comScore from March 25 to April 18, 2008. This survey has been previously offered as supporting VP, Seller Experience Dinesh Lathi's statement at the PeSA Summit on April 24th 2008 "The fact of the matter is that free shipping is the standard for eCommerce now. Sellers who want to meet buyer expectations need to aspire to that."
Buy this COOL refrigerator magnet for $3 plus $2.25 S&H!

Reading the press release on the survey it quickly becomes obvious that the survey was of online shoppers in the U.S. who recently abandoned the checkout flow on either a large or small merchant Web site, not on eBay.

The sub heading on the press release blares High Shipping Fees and Unexpected Costs Are Most Common Reasons for Checkout Abandonment More than one in five shoppers didn't complete purchases because their preferred payment option was not offered on the merchant's Web site.

Maybe eBay needs to go back and study their own survey, or read the press release.

I visited the newly refurbished and redesigned eBay Store this morning.

The first surprise was that this is not an eBay store. It is a stand alone website which seems very strange.

On the whole prices really aren't that bad. I carefully read the entire customer service page which contains the FAQ's, privacy policy and contact information. There is a toll free telephone number and an email address, neither of which would be permissible on eBay.

What payment methods can I use at The eBay Shop? PayPal is an accepted method of payment. We also accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover.

The only shipping methods are FedEx and UPS, this surprised me but did not delight because they are the two most expensive methods of shipping to my home state.

I chose a nice keychain for $4.95 and proceeded to register as part of the checkout. Not your standard eBay checkout, this was a shopping cart. I think the eBay store owners would enjoy having a shopping cart too. I used my South Dakota business address and to my surprise shipping on my one little keychain was $7. Changing to my Hawaii address the shipping was $29.20.

I abandoned my cart. Yes I did.



Y'all come back!