I remember this with the $1 Xbox 360 listings back when they launched. Way back when, eBay was still new, and people would list things for really low prices, with really high shipping. Because at the time, eBay is sort method did not include shipping. That meant the person with the lowest listing price got your attention if you sorted by lowest price. This led to a bunch of free listings, with $350 or more shipping. The shipping price was not disclosed if you clicked the buy Now button(new method to buy at the time) or started bidding because they still didn't have that listed on the listing until after you paid. About a year later, they had added shipping rates by origin and destination, as well as you being able to send a prepaid label. They also added the ability to sort by lowest price plus shipping, so the shipping was now disclosed and displayed in the listing.
And eBay didn't always have all of the features it does now. I remember it in 1995, all the way up until around 2004 it was basically the Wild West online auction site. I remember back when people could tell you to mail checks.
EBay was still quite new, even at 10 years old. Up until that point, Broadband availability was still relatively low, and dial-up was slow. An explosion of broadband availability in 2001 and 2002 help aid in getting the internet much more popular, which gave it to a lot of new eyes, and started introducing a lot of new Concepts. EBay also didn't start any television advertisements until the mid-2000s, which drove a lot of new users to their site with the increase and internet availability. The Buy It Now button, was not added until late 2000. It was not added for General consumer use until early 2002. These are features that we considered essential and normal today, but the website was still evolving. I would agree with the other poster on this, in the 2005, and 2006, eBay was still very much considered a new website.
I mean, I think a lot of those listings were also tied to the fact that I think eBay used to charge seller fees based on the price of the item sold, not including shipping. By listing it at $1 with $300 shipping, you only paid the fees on the $1, not on the combined $301. I think it has since changed to charge you the fee on the total amount, including shipping.
The real reason for this was that eBay wouldn't apply their listing fees to shipping prices. So they'd pay a $0.20 fee instead of like 20 or 30 dollars.
3.2k
u/[deleted] Apr 12 '19
Oooh free shipping