Online shopping getting more expensive as sellers pay higher commission

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Buying from online market places is getting costlier as ecommerce companies are hiking the commission they charge from sellers.

The vendors in turn are passing on the hike to consumers or buyers on these marketplaces, even resulting in drop in sales in some categories.

Flipkart increased the commission by 5-6% for sellers across multiple categories such as apparel and mobile accessories, with effect June 15.  Flipkart will launch two new fee structures for merchants on its platform — a fixed component, as well as the one which will charge sellers about 2.5% payment collection fee for the products being sold.

Not just the cost of products is likely to go up on Flipkart, the ecommerce company has also reduced the window for reducing the products bought on its platform.

Flipkart has reduced the timeframe when a customer can send back a product bought on its platform to 10 days from the previous 30 days on most of the categories. 

Last month, Amazon India increased the commission it charges from sellers on its marketplace by up to 9%. With many sellers passing on the rise in cost to buyers, sales have begin dropping, even falling up to 60 percent in some categories.

Snapdeal, on the other hand, have cuts its commission to sellers to boost falling sales. 

All doesn't seem well in the backyard of ecommerce companies. From cutting down manpower hiring to increasing or decreasing commissions to cut short their losses, consumers buying online will not remain unaffected for long.