The nation's largest online auctioneer Yahoo-Kimo Inc (
"The number of products listed has dropped by 10 percent since we announced the charging policy last month," Charlene Hung (洪小玲), director of Yahoo-Kimo's e-commerce business service division, said yesterday.
Yahoo-Kimo had 4 million products listed for sale prior to the March 18 announcement, and the figure dropped to 3.6 million items at present, Hung said.
In the past three weeks, a majority of Yahoo-Kimo's sellers let the company know that they wanted the site to continue to be a free service, while some said that it should charge on items that are sold, she said.
According to its March 18 announcement, sellers would be required to pay NT$3 for each item posted for 10 days. Higher-priced products will be charged more, but the postings are for 15 days.
For example, postings for motorcycles are charged NT$30, while postings for cars and real estate are NT$100 per item. Sellers who want to set floor prices for their products have to pay an additional NT$5 per item.
Buyers, however, are not charged for using the site.
After users complained that the listing period is too short, Yahoo-Kimo adjusted the listing period to up to 30 days, Hung said.
She said the charges are reasonable and are lower than Yahoo auction sites in other countries.
In the US, Yahoo charges listing fees ranging from US$0.20 to US$2.25 depending on the value of the item being sold. Yahoo Japan has charged a monthly fee of ?280 per user since March 2001, along with a listing fee of ?10 for each item. As of March last year it began charging a selling fee of ?500.
Hung said the company decided to charge a listing fee rather than conclusion fee in order to weed out low-quality or pseudo sales items. She cited the example of a user selling a small packet of ketchup, the kind that is provided free to convenience store customers buying hot food.
Despite the significant drop in listings, Hung said the volume of transactions last month increased by 10 percent. She said the company has not yet determined whether the increase was due to last-minute sales before the charge policy went into effect.
Meanwhile, eBay has seen the number of its listed items surge by over 100 percent, from 200,000 to more than 400,000 now, said Angel Cheng (
To get as many new members -- or unhappy former Yahoo-Kimo users -- as possible, eBay yesterday launched a series of promotions that will last until May 10. The deals include giving away a total of 4,752 prizes to winning bidders and providing NT$100 in postage per item to sellers who don't set delivery charges for their buyers. Sellers can apply for the postage subsidy for up to 10 items within a month.
"We have no plan to charge our users so far, but are focusing on expanding our market share as much as possible," Cheng said.
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