EBay Inc. has cut prices and plans to improve customer service for sellers on its online auction site.

In a Sunday letter to the company's seller community, Bill Cobb, president of EBay North America, said prices were dropped as of Monday following complaints over fee increases, particularly the increase in "store inventory format final value fees."

Pricing for having a store starts at $15.95 a month, plus an "insertion fee" for each item. The final value fee is what sellers pay EBay when an item is sold. The fee is based on a specific formula. Store inventory format refers to pricing related to items sellers list in their eBay stores.

In the letter posted on EBay Sunday, Cobb said the company would "stand behind" its decision to increase fees related to store inventory format listings. However, the company would credit sellers $15.95, a month's basic store subscription, in May to all sellers who operated an EBay store in April.

In addition, the minimum fees for inserting most types of standalone listings on EBay was dropped to 25 cents from 30 cents, and to 30 cents from 35 cents in California.

Cobb acknowledged that EBay hadn't invested enough in giving customer-support representatives the "flexibility and tools they need to really take care" of sellers. As a result, within the next 90 days, EBay planned to shut down most of its automated email responses, and replace them with email responses from people. Auto-responses would only be used to acknowledge receipt of spam or policy violation reports.

The company also planned to expand its phone support, which had been limited to power sellers on the site, to all EBay store owners, as of April 1.