jeffrey r

The program is Microsoft Live Cashback. Ebay is just one of the participating merchants/vendors.

kayak99

Its a Microsoft Cashback program but I believe there is a lot of collaboration with merchants, including ebay. The cashback program is still in effect with various merchants but at a greatly reduced amount. At this writing Buy.com shows 1%, Sears is 2%, TigetDirect is 5%. etc., etc.

Jason

It's probably coming out of their advertising and promotion budget. And both of them are probably ponying up the cash for the really big amounts.

I imagine the regular 2-3% amounts are just affiliate fees.

BKenn01

I realize that it is a MS program, but I thought the amount paid out for this particualr program was funded and decided by ebay.

Al_Tahoe

I'm gonna buy me a shitload of gold!!!

jeffrey r

Not sure, to tell you the truth. But everything I've read about the program seems to be on the side of Microsoft paying the cashback. But I am sure ebay is kicking something back to them. Though there are obviously a lot of financial facets to this between the companies that we are not privy to. You're talking huge amounts of money involved in this promotion.

KOOBFACE KILLS

Someone on this forum has to know someone that works for microsoft that can tell us when this offer will start again and what days the 15, 20, 30 percent will be on cashback search!!! Anyone?? ...

KOOBFACE KILLS

HEY!! Don't mean to double post but I just did something cool. Supposedly the microsoft cashback is gone, BUT if you reload the page when you search for "cheap wii" and keep repeating the reload.... every tenth or twelvth time it will come up as 15 percent off!!! It's still working!!! Just not everytime!! COOL!

kayak99

You're right, I tried it and it works. Must be a random discount thing!

fyi I took it further. After I got the wii 15% to show, I went to the Ebay page and the 15% was still there. I changed the ebay search to ipod and yep, still there. Bought an ipod last week so I'm not getting another but the discount seems to be back, randomly! Shhhhh! Thanks koobface!

zombeaner

Weird, it is true. Wonder if I should still wait?

kayak99

Just my opinion but if you want the item or need the item as a Christmas present, go for it otherwise I think prices will go lower nearer to or after Christmas and there will be more deals. One thing I'd never predict is what Microsoft might do though.

I did my recent deals for 25% off and saved (on two items) close to $180. I wasn't waiting for another 30% deal.

Cheato

People that want predictable dates for when the discount will become active don't seem to understand basic economics. Knowing when a discount will become active will not help you in an auction situation, where supply and demand dynamically determine the selling prices. Price goes down, demand goes up, price goes back up. Quickly.

If it leaked out that live.com would begin, say, a 33 1/3% cashback on a certain date, then on that date, every Buy-it-Now price would increase by a large percentage, seriously reducing the discount (probably to about 10% or less, as any price increase across the board like that has to be partially borne by the seller, not just the buyer). The sellers want higher profits, and they know that people will start looking at the prices as being after-cashback, making higher prices much more attractive than they otherwise would have been.

Only truly clueless sellers would be caught at the lower prices, and their items would be snatched up damn quickly--probably mostly by other sellers, hoping to turn the items around for a quick profit. Within minutes of the new cashback going into effect, there would be virtually no truly good deals to be had (at least not if you were really expecting to see 33 1/3% lower prices.

So, discount is announced, sellers re-price BIN items for listing, buyers flock to eBay for the deals, all good deals are quickly snatched up, raising average prices, buyers see higher profits quickly, allowing them to reduce prices slighly to compete with each other, buyers flock to the newer, slightly lower prices, and the process repeats, with an equilibrium settling in, probably much closer to the sellers getting the lion's (or lions', in this case) share of the discount. The prices won't drop *too* low because most buyers are thinking about the final price after cashback, not the initial PayPal-charged price, and they're buying by price-comparing to non-eBay prices. As long as the after-cashback price is a better deal than, say, Circuit City's, the eBay item will sell.

Economically speaking, your cashback discounts would really be in large part going to the sellers, not to the buyers. eBay wll also be making much more money because more items will sell, and will sell at higher prices, meaning higher income from collecting fees from sellers, which certainly adds credence to earlier posters' statements that there must be some sharing of the cashback burden by eBay on Microsoft's behalf. I don't think MS is doing this as a Christmas present for eBay.

Bottom line: Stop asking when cashback discounts will go up, keep checking and be prepared to pounce on a deal when it occurs, and be happy with whatever you got, even if the discount increases. You can't just say "I could have saved $X" because chances are that you wouldn't have won the item that you did win, at the same price you did win it for, under the different, seemingly higher discount. That's seriously flawed logic.

Michael Corvin

I think you are seriously overestimating the number of sellers aware of the live.com cashback program. Sure a few BIN prices would go up, but for every 'smart' seller, there are a dozen others selling the same item that are in the dark about it.

Cheato

^Sorry, but you're wrong. I watched it happen when it first went to 30% two months ago. I didn't really pay attention to the first 35% incident prior to that, but after that, I was waiting, and had my searches set up in My eBay, and when I got the email alert about it, I went over there and started bidding on things. Within less than 30 minutes, all the 60GB PS3s that worked out to below $300 were gone. There used to be a lot of them that came out to about $350 delivered. Are there any now? No.

I lost out on two of them WHILE I was going through the checkout screens. I experienced the same thing getting a couple of 1.5TB drives, a Nintendo DS Lite, and a couple other things.

Hell, all you have to do is check out the forum over at slickdeals, and if you read through it, you'll see people reporting the exact same thing. The deals dried up very quickly, and sellers raised their prices.

Are there foolish sellers who do no research? Of course. There always are. That percentage isn't going to change, regardless of whether live.com's cashback exists. What you're claiming as justification for your point would have nothing whatsoever to do with price fluctuation during cashback rebates, any more that it would have something to do with price fluctuations during a full moon.

Most sellers, before pricing something with a BIN price, do a quick search to see what that something is and has been selling for. Again, the number of people doing this isn't going to change based on whether cashback exists or not, unless eBay actually tells them about it beforehand (which they actually did two weeks ago).

You do know that sellers got an email from eBay before Black Friday specifically telling them to keep an eye on Live.com for the eBay cashback deals (with some "up to" X% wording) and to price accordingly, right? You can read it in the slickdeals thread where a few people posted it.

A foolish seller is how I got my PS3, though. He put it up with a significantly lower BIN price than all the others, and I got it within 5 minutes after it was listed.

pork-chop123

It is now 8%.

C_Fletch

Seems like I can find the items I want without the cashback. If it was at 30% it would be a different story but 8% - bleh!!

kayak99

Cheato, if I read your posts correctly you seem to indicate the ebay sellers somehow receive less money for their items if the cashback is higher. Two sellers from whom I bought items had the same BIN prices regardless of the cashback percentage. I followed their auctions, past and present and their prices did not seem governed by cashback. I got the impression they were not a part of the program and received the same net monies, cashback or not. Is that not correct? Do the sellers receive less when the cashback is higher?

integra4

Cashback has nothing to due with the sellers. They do not get paid any less for any coupons you use or any cashback period.

They make the same amount with or without you using the ebay coupon or cashback.

I hope this cashback goes back up. I snoozed and missed out on my next purchases

zombeaner

Sellers are not involved in any way with the cashback program

Cheato

As integra4 and zombeaner said, nothing changes for the sellers at eBay while a 3rd-party is running a promotion.

However, eBay/PayPal did notify sellers that there would be special live.com promotions during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and that they should take that into account when deciding on their pricing. This text from this email is posted a few times by different people over at slickdeals.

What I said is that sellers will make more money, and eBay will make more money during a 3rd-party cashback program. Sellers can sell their BIN items at higher BIN prices because buyers will be mentally subtracting 30% or 20% or whatever. As a result of items selling at higher prices, sellers will make more money, and eBay will get higher income from fees. Most of the "discount" that sellers will be looking for will be eaten up by the sellers.

It's little more than inflation. If everyone in the country got a 10% raise, prices would go up by an average of slightly less than 10%. If the government gives a $2000 scholarship to every student that wants to go to college, within 2 years, every college would see an increase in tuition and fees of close to $2000 beyond what they otherwise would have been. Your "raise" would go to businesses. Your "scholarship" would go towards a school upgrading its facilities. Neither one would truly help you either (a) afford more things, or (b) go to school if you couldn't afford to before.

If you supply more money for something, the demand increases at the old price, shifting the supply/demand cost upwards. It's a simple equation: supplying more money increases costs of goods and services. This is easily seen in an auction situation where *prices* are determined dynamically. Since sellers have a lot of information they can use in pricing (by observing people's bidding patterns, for example), and can fairly easily change prices before listing something, they can easily respond to the demands of the market.

We see the other side of it in stores that have static prices, where inventory goes up and down, instead of prices. Something sold out? It was priced too low, or people had more money. Something isn't selling? It's priced too high, or people don't have enough money.

kayak99

Cheato, Et Al, thanks for clarifying.

Jason

Ebay is catering more and more to the large volume professional sellers. While the average schmuck unloading his old stuff may not have known about the promotion, the sellers with 20,000+ feedbacks knew all about it and priced things accordingly.

BKenn01

There were a ton of small sellers that picked up on it as well. The gift card category filled up during the promotion. $500 cards going for as much as $600or more.

BKenn01

Here is the thread I mentioned where the ebay employee refers to "We" are running the 30% promotion.

KOOBFACE KILLS

Hey all,

I just got scammed by some douchebag who sold me a Wii on Ebay. What a surprise, i know!! Anyway I used the cash back program and should receive 97 dollars cash back. Now that this guy has left me out 325 dollars, do I still get my 97 dollars if he does return my money to my paypal account after I filed a dispute? Anyone know what happens in this situation? Any help is appreciated. Thanks