I have been a seller on Gunbroker for more than 15 years.
Today I received notification from Gunbroker on a bunch of changes that are supposed to make a better experience!!!

Now Gunbroker is going to be charging commission on shipping. eliminating buyer registration fees etc. and increasing seller fees and costs.

They want us to use their preferred shippers, use their check out system etc. They want sellers to accept credit cards; among other things.
Maybe I don't want to accept credit cards and I am willing to accept the risk of not having many potential buyers as that. My choice.

I am sure buyers look at it as a plus. But the reality is that the sellers are Gunbroker customers. WE are their source of revenue, not the buyer. Yes you cannot have sellers without buyers, I get that. But Gunbroker looks at sellers the same way Ebay does. As a cash cow to be bent over and our wallets pulled from our pockets.

Basically forcing sellers to accept credit cards and of course it just so happens that Gunbroker GunBroker "has partnerships with several merchant account providers and can help you with the technical aspects of setting up Immediate Checkout. " Meaning they get a kick back on all credit card sales.

here is their message in its entirety:

The GunBroker.com Team has the following message for you. If you have questions about this message, please reply to this email for prioritized service. Submitting a separate support issue may slow your response time.

Subject: GunBroker Spring Seller Update 2018

We want to keep you, our valued sellers, up to date with the changes being made to GunBroker.com. Included in this letter is information regarding changes in the GunBroker buyer experience, seller tools, and fee changes. We are also announcing changes related to customer support and our marketing efforts. This is the summary of the changes.


THE GUNBROKER BUYER EXPERIENCE

Over the last several years much work has been done to improve the buying experience on GunBroker.com. We have substantially improved site functionality on mobile devices. We have improved the site search to provide relevant products instead of more technically oriented keyword-only searches. We have implemented a Checkout system and driven adoption of the Immediate Checkout process to more sellers. We have recently launched our Take a Shot system to allow buyers to negotiate price directly with sellers.

Keep in mind, the buyer is the one who is purchasing your goods. Without buyers you will not be making a sale. Buyers have a lot of choice in where they choose to spend their money. To generate sales the site has to function well and the seller has to deliver in a reasonable amount of time.

Not every aspect of the buyer experience can be controlled through technology or by GunBroker the company. You, the seller, are the one who creates the item listing, sets pricing, ships the product, and provides tracking information. The number one complaint we hear from buyers is the inconsistency of the post-bid process. Some sellers use Immediate Checkout to allow the buyer to pay immediately, without a phone call or need to mail a money order. Some sellers ship quickly and provide tracking information. The sellers who do not make it easy to pay and do not ship quickly or do not provide tracking information hurt the overall buying experience for the sellers who do. It is important to the customer to get a consistent experience regardless of who the seller is.

Effective in December of last year, we made the decision to make thumbnails free on all listings. We are making that change permanent. Thumbnails drive views of the item being sold, and views lead to sales. Sales have been up meaningfully since the thumbnail experiment.

Effective in February of this year, we eliminated identity verification fees for buyers. Buyers disliked those fees, so they have been discontinued. We are still verifying buyers but we are no longer charging the buyers for the verification. Additionally we are streamlining the registration process to make it easier for people to register to buy. More buyers inevitably lead to more sales.

To provide a more consistent experience overall, GunBroker.com is going to implement or increase fees on things buyers hate, like Reserve Price auctions, and 1 Day and 3 Day Auctions. We will be providing financial incentives to sellers who use Immediate Checkout and our current and future shipping options. We are going to announce integrated payments and expanded shipping and tracking options in the coming months to make it easier and faster for buyers to pay, and to keep buyers informed when an item is shipped, when it is expected to be delivered, and when it arrives.


FEE CHANGES

Reserve Price Fees

We are now charging a fee to create a Reserve Price listing, and limiting the amount of time Reserve Price listings can be relisted for free. Buyers do not want to waste their time bidding on what they perceive to be overpriced items which tend to clog up the overall site. We recognize that Reserve Price items have a purpose in some cases so they are not being eliminated. If you do not want to pay the Reserve Price fee, create a listing using Take a Shot to let buyers make you an offer on the item.

1 Day and 3 Day Auctions

1 Day and 3 Day Auctions are being abused by sellers, especially those who use our API to list items for sale. At one time, listings were being sorted from “Ending Soonest” down, so the ending date made a difference. That is no longer the case. Listings are now sorted by relevance. There is no reason to constantly list 1 Day and 3 Day Auctions to stay at the top of the listings. Anyone who lists a lot of product via our API should make sure that they are not using 1 Day or 3 Day Auctions. Instead, use one of our fixed price BuyNow formats.

Elimination of Infinite Relists

We are no longer allowing unsold items to be relisted indefinitely. Unsold items will be permitted to be relisted free of charge for up to 90 days, except for Reserve Price and 1 Day and 3 Day Auctions which have their own rules. If these items are relisted after the initial period, fees will apply. If an item does not sell within 90 days then likely something is wrong: the price is too high or the terms are unacceptable to the buyers in mass. As with Reserve Price items buyers do not want to see a lot of over-priced or otherwise unsellable items.

Excessive Shipping

GunBroker is following the lead of other top ecommerce sites and will begin charging its selling fees on the total cost of the sale including shipping (but not including sales tax). Sellers who use GunBroker’s integrated shipping options will receive a credit back on the fees paid on the actual shipping cost. This policy is meant to discourage sellers from listing a low price and charging excessive shipping to appear to present a lower price to customers or to avoid paying fees. Buyers get irritated when they see an item priced at $450 with $75 shipping, and that hurts the overall buyer experience on the site. Please take the time to set a reasonable shipping price that does not turn off the buyer.

This change is taking effect on July 1, 2018.

Final Value Fees

We have changed our Final Value Fees to provide a base fee structure for all sellers, with discounted fees for our Top 100 Sellers and Top 1000 Sellers. For volume sellers, we will be rolling out tools to help you understand where you rank and what you need to do to get into the next higher tier. Your rank will be re-evaluated quarterly.

This change is taking effect on April 1, 2018.

Immediate Checkout

To qualify for a reduced rate tier, a seller must accept credit card payments through the GunBroker Immediate Checkout feature. We are giving sellers until June 15, 2018 to enable Immediate Checkout on their listings. We strongly recommend that you do not delay. Internet enabled merchant accounts can take a month or more to establish if your current processor does not offer them. GunBroker has partnerships with several merchant account providers and can help you with the technical aspects of setting up Immediate Checkout.


CUSTOMER SERVICE AND MARKETING

Customer Service

GunBroker.com wants all of its customers, buyers and sellers alike, to have the best customer service possible. Over the last few years we have upgraded our support system to use ZenDesk, rolled out real time chat-based support, and worked hard to improve our response times. We are committed to increasing our customer support staff. We are looking to increase our support hours and providing telephone support for our sellers.

Marketing

GunBroker has been increasing its marketing efforts to drive more traffic to your listings. We will continue to step up marketing and advertising efforts to drive more buyers and generate more sales volume.

On-Site and Off-Site Advertising Opportunities

GunBroker is working on a new advertising vehicle similar to other sites’ Promoted or Sponsored Listings. This approach will let you target customers by demographics, interests, and search terms to generate additional exposure to brands and Individual listings. We are setting this up to be a self-service system where you can decide how much to spend and what listings you wish to promote. The new advertising can be run on the GunBroker.com site or on other sites like GunGenius.com. We will announce the new advertising solution within a few months. As a bonus, much of the current ad placements will go away, and we know people are going to be excited about that.

As a buyer I see most of the changes as a plus. I can see where a seller wouldn't though.

Charging commission on shipping is ridiculous, like ebay does now. But, i understand why they do it. As they say, a low priced item with high shipping to compensate for the loss on the sale price. But... my question is, how many sellers are actually doing that???

And what do they deem as excessive shipping charges? I see the example of $75 for shipping. Which, in most cases is excessive. But i have seen some comments on this board that suggest that $40-50 for shipping is “money making”. That is simply not the case. If a seller is assigning a fixed shipping price on an item, they dont know where the buyer is going to be located. Odds are, they are going to be at the farthest point from them. And shipping a gun across the country can easily cost $40 or more. Especially if insurance is purchased. And, shipping materials have to be factored in too. Proper boxes and packing materials are not cheap. So, for a 2-3 day priority service, $40-50 is not really excessive.

And the whole tiered commission thing is just going to be confusing.

And i am all for discouraging reserve auctions. They are pointless and just clog up the site.

I stopped selling on Ebay when their combined fees took about 20% out of every sale.
Gunbroker is moving in the same direction. GREED.
I can guarantee you that Gunbroker will not be nearly as receptive to the feedback from buyers.

I buy and sell on Gunbroker. For me, if I don't like the buyers terms or shipping fees, I don't buy from them.

I agree they are modeling themselves a lot like EBay but that's a mixed bag as far as I am concerned. Most of the changes won't be directly seen by the buyers so they won't complain. The top sellers won't be hit as hard as the small sellers so they won't put up a fuss. The midlevel and small dealers will be hit the hardest but even though they have the numbers they don't have the sales to make GunBroker not do this. Taking CC is a mixed bag. Easy checkout but the sale will nit be done until the CC says it is. First customer who calls his CC company and demands a refund for some bogus reason will be a sellers nightmare. Then if the gun is returned damaged good luck getting paid for it. CC company will not reverse again. Sellers will be a risk more than ever.

On the flip side they are making dealers stop relisting guns after 90 days or pay a listing fees. They are charging for Reserve listing which almost always have such high reserves they never sell. They are pointing out that most unsold guns are priced at unrealistic prices and will never sell. In short if they follow through about half the unselling crap will be gone in a few months. Wonder how long that will last?

Whatever they do to GB, it will still be better than searching thru the old "Shotgun News"...Geo

That it will be Geo.

I have always resented the clutter of Gunbroker with ads for irrelevant crap. If they now want to gouge their advertisers with these kinds of changes, I say bail out and use Gunsinternational.

Just getting rid of all those guns which never sell, after 90 days, will be a service. I've seen some of those overpriced guns on there for multiple years. If there are 2500 side by sides a full third of them have been listed for years. Truth is if you can't sell a gun in 90 days you either have it valued too high, you are not in the right site to sell it, you need to lower your price or you need to sell it some other way. Nothing like a $500.00gun listed for $2,000 and then relished for years. Just crap to click past. Do an advanced search and see how many times some of these guns have been listed with zero bids. Pointless.

I'll also be happy to see the grossly over-priced guns and those with high reserves weeded out. I don't fault a seller for wanting to get the best price he can, but when a gun is priced at $2,000 when comparable guns are listed for five or six hundred, what is he thinking? It just wastes my time when I scan through the listings.

I just arranged shipping for a gun I bought on Gunbroker. The seller says he is using a shipping service called ShipMyGun. ShipMyGun had my FFL in their database, so I did not have to get an FFL copy to send to the seller. The total cost for shipping was $30.00 including $500.00 insurance. Shipping distance is over 1000 miles. I do not yet know how well they will pack my gun for shipping, so can't comment on that yet.

I agree that Gunbroker should have done something about excessive and Reserve auctions that are repeated for years in the hopes of reeling in a sucker. If they needed more revenue, they could have started charging a sliding listing fee that increases each time a gun is relisted. But I can see how that would be hard to enforce if a seller merely changed something when relisting a gun for the umteenth time. It would enhance my experience if we could at least filter out the sucker fishermen when we do our searches.

I can see where this will hurt the small seller who only has a few products to sell or even the one off seller. The complications of shipping, payment and 20% fees make it easier to use an auction house. I can also see the opportunity for a new selling site to establish itself that avoids the discouragements Gunbroker is moving towards.

You mean like 200 plus Stevens .410 sxs listed for 800!

There are other ways of doing things.
usedguns.com.au
ozgunsales.com
As a buyer I deal direct with the seller & have nothing more to do with the web site after finding information there on the gun & seller contact.
Have a look at their advert conditions, cost & times.

You may want to start your own sellers site.
O.M

What about this one ?
https://www.buyusedguns.com.au/pages/advertise.html
O.M

Do you think I should buy the 10 gauge Pedersoli percussion ?
O.M

charging fee on shipping does nothing to reduce the sellers fees. It just adds revenue to Gunbroker. Just call a spade a spade, don't blow smoke up our collective butts.
Gunbroker is moving to an EBay system. I no doubt think that their [politics will too. they are adopting the EBay philosophy and business model of screwing over sellers (their cusomters) for the sake of buyers (who Gunbroker does not earn a dime off of.

Shipmygun shows 29.95 min. to ship and that doesn't include insurance.
I asked Shipmygunsome questions. 'The main one is how do they get UPS to pay a damage claim on a $5000.00 gun when UPS will not pay more than $1000 damages or loss for a collectable firearm. That's not rumor, that is form UPS (and FEDEX) website.

An Australian website does us a whole lot of good!

I have sold some items on gunbroker. The only stuff I have is the is cheap stuff that just will not go away, I think the gun broker buyers are trolling for under priced bargains.
When I have tried to put a nice gun on GB, lots of lookers, no buyers. So, I will not care about the new seller fees. Some of the changes I do agree with. I see some sellers put up stuff and it just stays there. Just cheap advertising.

John Boyd

I agree. I see lots of guys bidding low dollars on high dollar items then going away. No serious bids.

I will like to see the retailers go away using GB as a retail store such as Wholesalehunter and lg-outdoors. Retail prices plus high shipping cost.

I posted that as an example of another way of doing things.
I still say that if you want it done better, do it yourself.
O.M

This will prove interesting. I have sold a few over the years on GB and bought a few as well. Like others I get very very PO'd about guns that have been on the site for years with endless relists. Look up completed auctions on particular item and then see how long an over priced item has been for sale. I actually don't even look at reserve auctions at all and use their filter to remove those from that I look at.

PS. I will have to try to list something and see what the new fee's and process will be like and decide if Guns International is where I try to sell a few items. Seems almost like a better way to go these days.

The credit card issue is going to present a real problem for the casual seller with a desire to sell one or two guns out of a collection. I have some guns I was considering listing, but I'm not going to qualify to take credit cards to do so.

Nowhere does GB mandate credit cards. They will be offering a reduced fee structure to those that do accept them but you can still utilize other payments.

I sell a few guns on gunbroker, mostly lower dollar, lower condition stuff. I just recently sold four guns to three different bidders which had been listed a very long time. One went to a large dealer who will resell it I would think. The market is really slow. Price is only one factor. Low interest and high inventory is not helping. I do not take CCs nor do I want to. I will be looking at other options including gunsinternational and using my own website in a more efficient manner. I see very few of these changes being beneficial to me. It will certainly change the site. If you look at the current fees taking the example they use, a 1500$ gun has 58$ in sales fees currently and they plan on raising that. Multiply that by several guns and all in the sudden you have a bunch of options for selling your inventory that are more appealing.

It's really going to change the marketing plan for one Kansas dealer who has had some doubles listed for at least ten years. As a buyer I'm looking forward to a cleaned up site.

GB earns money from buyers because it's the buyers money that makes the transaction happen. Sellers surely figure their fees into the price of the gun. Any businessman would. There are few really great deals on GB once you figure price + shipping + transfer.

Sellers seem to operate under the mistaken assumption that the seller is the only one who makes the system function.

gunauction.com

A while back I listed two DHE 20-ga. Parker Repros, one on gunbroker.com, the other on gunsinternational.com. Both were listed at $3800 each and both sold within a couple days. It cost me ~$63 in fees to sell the one gun on GB and $12 in fees to sell the other on GI.

Why would I want to sell another gun on GB?

So when I list the occasional gun on GB, I will then figure shipping + insurance + 20% and add that to the price of the gun listed and advertise straight up price to the buyer. USPS, UPS and FedEx all have insurance schedules we can use. If we figure weight of gun + packaging we get shipping weight and can figure that cost too. We don't have to take a hit.

No wonder there's a glut of overpriced guns on GB.

Ok, got it. wasn't quite sure!!

They don't but they make enticements (you get lower costs) to get you
to take them. Of course they have vendors who they get a cut from. again its all about Gunbroker developing new income streams at the expense of the sellers.

Hopefully, this will cut down on the sellers with overpriced items that just sit and sit.

I do feel sorry for the sellers having to adjust to these new rules

As I was reading this thread I was thinking the same exact thing regarding that dealer.

Really? So the few times I sell a gun on GB I am supposed to take a 20% hit on the shipping/insurance? If you think that will contribute to a glut of overpriced guns on that site then me thinks you had a few too many adult beverages. I don't know any successful business that eats costs like that.

I keep seeing 20% being kicked around. So are you saying that on a $2500 gun sale I will pay $500? Something doesn't sound right.

That's because it isn't 20%. Following is GB's fee schedule not including any optional services.

Final Value Final Value Fee*
$0 – $250 6.0% of the final value
Over $250 6.0% of the first $250 ($15.00), plus 3.5% of the remaining value

For comparison, my all-in costs for selling on EBay including PayPal fees is approx. 10% - not 20% as an earlier poster stated.

Yes, that Kansas dealer had some rather overpriced guns. GB has been very unhelpful the last few times I've had to contact them as a seller, and this is the second rate hike lately. I spoke with the owner of Gunsinternational at the Dallas SCI convention, his site is looking better and better to me for selling, but as a buyer some of these changes are for the better

One huge difference between GB and Ebay; there is no PayPal equivalent usable on GB (that I am aware of). Gil

brian.
interesting you say that.
back in 2011, i answered a gb forum posters observation to the very same topic youre mentioning. and just for being part of the topic, the dork admin captfun banished me from the forum AND disolved my sellers account without warning. i was one of the founding members back when it was called (for the hunt,)with 12 years senority and 600 deals. nice, huh?
but the fact still remains....gb has gotten too big for its britches and forgot the little guys who helped build their empire and now cow tawe to dealers.
dealers inflated gun values to pay for their overheads.
in doing this, they have created a fake market of false values.
little guys get greedy, and try the same game, flooding the website with over priced junk.
to this day, i will not shop or even look at gb.
i refer to it as...gunBROKEN .com
and from what has been posted about the latest gb changes, it is indeed obvious that its following in ebays footsteps.
i got thrown off for mentioning the truth.
love it!
with that said, there is a auction site still left that deals old school old fashioned, no stupid rules. come on over to www.gunauction.com and breathe some new air into an old website. its been around way before gunbroken and is run by a retired navy veteran. he has had my support since 1999. join us.

The latest GB policy changes and fee increases is a guarantee that I will never return to Gunbroker to sell. But, I had already stopped selling on GB mainly due to the "flea market" mentality of buyers. I have observed that with selling on GB vs GI, you will most likely make out better on GI. I just recently observed another sale of a Fox A grade 20 gauge on a penny auction stall out at $4580 (minus the $115.75 selling fee), but at about the same time on GI, two similar Fox A grade guns in 16 gauge sold for $900 & $1100 higher, all three very close in condition to each other. This is not the first time I have seen this happen. And then on top of that I only pay $12 to list my gun for sale on GI. To be realistic though, I do expect all good features of GI to some day come to an end, like they all seem to do.

I needed to launch a new website anyway and the changes at GB were the motivation I needed. New site, lots of pictures next week. That and GI and I should be fine.

FYI, i just got a message from gunbroker about reserve auctions and the fees for auctions with reserves changing april 30.

They said that several of my listings had reserve prices. When NONE of mine have actual reserves. I realized they are even considering higher start prices (though not unrealistic) as reserves. They are telling to rather list them as fixed price vs an auction.

I personally lost my items at the minimum that i want to sell them at, and usually they are also reasonable prices for the items. Not inflated prices. There is still room for bidders to get involved and drive the price up.

I would really like to know, from gunbroker, at what point is a start price not a considered a reserve price??? I find it hard to beleive that everyone is going to be willing to just list their stuff at a dollar and risk loosing their butt.

Gunbroker more and more has come to resemble a cheap flea market.......

As a potential buyer I really enjoy GB. It seems to be the place where grandma's double which has been sitting in a closet for 60 years might show up. Over the years I've picked up a number of very nice guns there. GI is more dealer oriented and while I'm there every day looking at new listings I have only bought one or two in a dozen years.

Good point. I was probably too harsh with my previous Post.

That said IMO the quality of listings has steadily gone downhill on GB over the last couple of years and more and more junk has appeared.