eBay's fee obsessiveness could cause its demise

Sheldon Liber with BloggingStocks has written with great precision over the last few weeks on the situation eBay has with its recent raising of fees for sellers along with all the standard backlash that comes along when eBay increases its fees. But this time, something was different.

I agree with Sheldon that the most intelligent, well-versed comments we've seen in quite some time came from eBay sellers who formed cohesive and logical thoughts and responses to recent eBay posts. In fact, Meg Whitman and other eBay execs should be listening to their customers more often., or they'll find themselves being figuratively fired in the middle of the town square. They appear to know what is needed to survive as a seller on eBay more than the company itself.

In this article from theinquirer.net, the recent eBay fee increase may be leading to a slow but sure death of eBay, the world's largest online auction sire. For a company that recently made the best profits in its history (PDF link) in the first quarter of the year, that's quite a statement, let alone a prediction of doom.

But with fees everywhere from the initiation and completion of listed auctions to all the fees for the PayPal payment service, listing an auction and completing an eBay transaction has gotten quite costly lately. eBay's refusal to let Google's Checkout payment service be used at the auction site just fans the flames of unfair competition in the guise of "consumer safety" nonsense.

As an EBAY investor, what do you think of all the different fees that the eBay/PayPal system of selling presents and demands to sellers? Could this cause an exodus of sellers from eBay to, well, some other alternative (if there is one)? If so, sellers will take their fees with them and eBay will be left with less and less seller revenue -- a huge problem that it faces if it continues to alienate some of its core base of sellers.