Tensions Between Abebooks and Dealers At Abe Summit

[amy]

No luck in finding out why Abe's Half.com store is "on vacation", but I did find a link to this article on their public forums:

Abebooks held their much ballyhooed dealer summit early last month. It's not clear what their purpose was in holding the summit, but if it was to relieve the tensions that have developed over the past year between the site and some of its dealers, it was probably not a huge success. Abe started with an announcement that they would be taking over the processing of all credit card orders made through the site. Previously, dealers had the option to use Abe's services or their own. Processing through Abe is now mandatory. What upset dealers even more was the fee: 5 1/2%. Few booksellers are paying anything like 5 1/2% to process their credit cards. While Abe's cost is not publicly known, large users generally pay 1%-1 1/2% for card processing. It is hard not to see this as a 3% or 4% price increase...

full article: http://www.americanaexchange.com/NewAE/a...le.asp?f=1&id=345&page=1&start