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Joined: Dec 2001
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Brian Offline OP
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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.


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

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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.


B.Dudley
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Brian Offline OP
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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.


Brian
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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?

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

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That it will be Geo.

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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.


Bill Ferguson
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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.

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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.

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