By Jim Finkle
EBay Inc. plans no near-term rate increases for online auction sellers, Bill Cobb, president of its North American business, told the company's annual sales conference on Thursday.
A year ago at the same conference, the online auction leader raised fees to list items on stores within eBay's site. Those fee increases had varied, depending on the final sales price of items. The changes took effect in August 2006.
"There will be no increase in selling fees this July," Cobb told the crowd of roughly 4,000 of its "power-sellers" who attended the opening night of "eBay Live" in Boston.
An eBay spokesman said Cobb was committing to no new fee increases over the next few months, seeking to reassure the crowd that "what happened last year ... wasn't going to happen this year."
Several power-sellers in the audience said they remained skeptical more fee increases would not arrive sooner or later. "We battle constant fee increases," said Milvy Carrasco, director of customer service for eBay store Auction Inn.
"It makes it more and more difficult for power sellers to sell on eBay," said Carrasco of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She said such increases drive her company to do more business on other e-commerce sites, including Amazon.com Inc.
Power-sellers, many of whom make their living from eBay, are worried that Yahoo Inc.'s recent move to shut down a far smaller auction site will give eBay more pricing power.
EBay's core auction business has been undergoing constant changes in the past several years as the world's largest online auctioneer seeks to retain its stable of high-volume sellers, who are becoming more sophisticated about sales alternatives.
In April, eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman signaled to Wall Street analysts that the company may be gun-shy about contemplating further fee increases over the next two years.
"As we think about fees, as you know, we typically do something once a year. January would be sort of the time that we would do something, and we have not made any decisions at this juncture," Whitman said on a quarterly conference call.
"But I would not be putting fee increases necessarily into your model for 2008 and 2009," she told analysts, referring to the spreadsheet models they use to predict future results.
Rather than boosting price, she said eBay aimed to make money by driving increased volumes and average selling prices.
Ahead of speeches by top executives, the all-ages crowd was entertained by a folk group dressed up as hippies singing a variant of the 1960s anthem of "Age of Aquarius." Lyrics were changed to "Sell on eBay and pay with Pay with PayPal and call on Skype," referring to the three pillars of eBay's business.
(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in San Francisco)
Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.
NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at