Ebay fees / charges BEWARE

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I recently sold a motorbike on EBay ... EBay charged me £45.

But you were using an upfront payment Classified Ad though, not an auction, weren't you?

£13.99 plus 0.9% of the final transaction (min. £21.99, max. £39.49).

In the old days, that would have gone to a local newspaper or newsagent noticeboard, or MCN, the money staying in the local economy, and had tax paid on it.

eBay paid less than £10m tax in the UK last year ... even as profits at its British arm doubled and revenue surged past £1bn.

Who wouldn't like to pay 1% tax each year.

Need to compare apples with apples. You wouldn't have sent it to an auction house unless it was a very rare vintage one.

An auction site taking commission on sales,who'd have thought it?

It isn't the commission, it's that the commission is too much (and the tax paid too little).

Wasn't the wonderful digital world meant to save us all money? In the old days auction houses had to pay for bricks and mortar, collection and storage of stock, handlers and publications etc. And tax.

[RecumbentRide]

Ebay charges are quite reasonable compared to a conventional auction house. 15% seller fees along with 15-20% buyers premium is not untypical. The buyers premium also reduces what the seller will receive as bidders build it into what they're prepared to pay.

I recently sold a motorbike on EBay, final price £4500 which was £500 more than I expected. EBay charged me £45. At a conventional auction house it probably wouldn't have gone for much over £3500 with buyers taking the 15% premium into account. Take off the 15% seller commission and I'd have ended up with about £3000. On EBay, after paying their fees, I got £4455. I've no complaints about their charges.

The final value fee is calculated as 12.8% on motors so how you only paid 1% in ebay costs is baffling and does not represent the normal course of eBay seller fees.

Ebay charges are quite reasonable compared to a conventional auction house.

I think most people would disagree and you are comparing apples with oranges. The cost structure for eBay and your local auction house are worlds apart.

I've no complaints about their charges.

Oh yea try selling it normally and say that after you've handed over £576!

[RecumbentRide]

As along time ebayer user there is a trend for more buy it now and less auction I guess people don’t want to wait.

Speaking personally (although I gave up recently due to the new commission extraction system), it is because auctions weren't getting good prices any more. People would just wait to snipe at the last minute instead.

Therefore, I stopped and just did 'Buy It Nows' for what I wanted (e.g. a fair price based on Completed Items), and was prepared to wait for it, while offering 'Best Offers' just in case. Most best offers just went straight into the trash but it was a good way of raising interest.

I think, perhaps, that in the early days it was sort of fun to do eBay, like it was a hobby so people weren't unhappy to let a few bargains go "for the gang", because you'd pick up a few bargains yourself ... but as the ungrateful mainstream came in, competition rose from mass Asian sellers (Indo-s and Chinese), and eBay became more officious in their handling of sellers, prioritising the rights of idiot buyers above them, people just thought to themselves "screw it" and started to charge.

It wasn't fun any more. It was more like having a boss telling you what you had to do all day for "their" customers, not yours.

I'd guess now most of the bargains come from new eBayers who have not learned this yet, nor experienced the fatigue, or aren't calculating their true costs of doing business out of desperation, i.e. their time.

Now it's more fun to just give stuff away to good people than deal with some moron stranger you'll never meet, half way across the nation, who's just left negative feedback on your 100% feedback, which will stick for a year, because they changed their mind about what they wanted, and lied to eBay about it.

Find myself agreeing with everything you've said. I remember when I lived in London scouring Loot for what I wanted. It was so exciting as you never knew what you'd find and the race was on to get an early edition and to get to the seller as soon as possible before another buyer did.

[RecumbentRide]

Yes pretty reasonable especially as they regularly have 70% off fees offer .

What!! Reasonable when they have 70% off (does that include the FVF). I havent' been a regular eBay user for a while hence my faux pas and question
OR
Reasonable when they take a FVF of ONLY 12.8%

[pete75]

Ebay charges are quite reasonable compared to a conventional auction house. 15% seller fees along with 15-20% buyers premium is not untypical. The buyers premium also reduces what the seller will receive as bidders build it into what they're prepared to pay.

I recently sold a motorbike on EBay, final price £4500 which was £500 more than I expected. EBay charged me £45. At a conventional auction house it probably wouldn't have gone for much over £3500 with buyers taking the 15% premium into account. Take off the 15% seller commission and I'd have ended up with about £3000. On EBay, after paying their fees, I got £4455. I've no complaints about their charges.
The final value fee is calculated as 12.8% on motors so how you only paid 1% in ebay costs is baffling and does not represent the normal course of eBay seller fees.

EBay final valuation fee for private vehicle sellers is, to quote from their website, "1% of the final transaction (min. £25, max. £45)". It's obvious you dislike Ebay but why tell untruths about their commission rates, claiming it's 12.8% when it's actually 1%. https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/fee ... rs?id=4127

Ebay charges are quite reasonable compared to a conventional auction house.

I think most people would disagree and you are comparing apples with oranges. The cost structure for eBay and your local auction house are worlds apart.

Hmmm most people wouldn't disagree. Many conventional auction houses charge 20% buyers premium which obviously reduces the amount folk will bid. They may well be charging 15% sellers commission too. A vendor is concerned about commission levels and hammer price when selling by auction not the cost structure of the chosen auction method. It's taht that they base their selling decision on not some tired old cliché about fruit.

I've no complaints about their charges.

Oh yea try selling it normally and say that after you've handed over £576!

See above - I did sell it normally

[pete75]

I recently sold a motorbike on EBay ... EBay charged me £45.

But you were using an upfront payment Classified Ad though, not an auction, weren't you?

£13.99 plus 0.9% of the final transaction (min. £21.99, max. £39.49).

In the old days, that would have gone to a local newspaper or newsagent noticeboard, or MCN, the money staying in the local economy, and had tax paid on it.

eBay paid less than £10m tax in the UK last year ... even as profits at its British arm doubled and revenue surged past £1bn.

Who wouldn't like to pay 1% tax each year.

Need to compare apples with apples. You wouldn't have sent it to an auction house unless it was a very rare vintage one.

An auction site taking commission on sales,who'd have thought it?

It isn't the commission, it's that the commission is too much (and the tax paid too little).

Wasn't the wonderful digital world meant to save us all money? In the old days auction houses had to pay for bricks and mortar, collection and storage of stock, handlers and publications etc. And tax.

No it was sold on an Ebay auction. You seem to know little about what sort of cars and motorbikes are sold at auction - namely all sorts. https://www.spicersauctioneers.com/cata ... arts-at-1/

[home]

EBay final valuation fee for private vehicle sellers is, to quote from their website, "1% of the final transaction (min. £25, max. £45)". It's obvious you dislike Ebay but why tell untruths about their commission rates, claiming it's 12.8% when it's actually 1%.

Because it is actually more than 12.8% for every other type of item.

No it was sold on an Ebay auction. You seem to know little about what sort of cars and motorbikes are sold at auction

It must have been on some special offer then because listing fee is £14.99, plus 1% of the final transaction (min. £25, max. £45).

It must have been £59.99, isn't it?

Show us.

Having written that, it's even more bizarre ... you'd pay less than half as much commission on selling a £4,500 motorcycle, than some guy selling a £1,200 bicycle (£160.80).

That's even more outrageous. Why? If you sold, say, a £4,500 pair of trainers, it would cost you £320 + 60 + 30p = £380.30.

30p is probably the actually costs.

Correct my maths, please.

Oh, I know very well about the police auction/Dodgy Den type of auctions, but you would send you stuff there to make money, just to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

[pete75]

EBay final valuation fee for private vehicle sellers is, to quote from their website, "1% of the final transaction (min. £25, max. £45)". It's obvious you dislike Ebay but why tell untruths about their commission rates, claiming it's 12.8% when it's actually 1%.

Because it is actually more than 12.8% for every other type of item.

No it was sold on an Ebay auction. You seem to know little about what sort of cars and motorbikes are sold at auction

It must have been on some special offer then because listing fee is £14.99, plus 1% of the final transaction (min. £25, max. £45).

It must have been £59.99, isn't it?

Show us.

Having written that, it's even more bizarre ... you'd pay less than half as much commission on selling a £4,500 motorcycle, than some guy selling a £1,200 bicycle (£160.80).

That's even more outrageous. Why? If you sold, say, a £4,500 pair of trainers, it would cost you £320 + 60 + 30p = £380.30.

30p is probably the actually costs.

Correct my maths, please.

Oh, I know very well about the police auction/Dodgy Den type of auctions, but you would send you stuff there to make money, just to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

Screen Shot 2022-07-06 at 19.26.05.png

The screen shot you've posted is not of the charges for private moto sales. I have linked above to the Ebay page which shows the amount of commission I paid i.e. 1%. It can be a lot less because £45 is the maximum and is all you'd pay on a £45,000 sale. Sometimes they charge a listing fee, sometimes they don't. They weren't doing so when I listed my bike. If they had been the sale would have cost me about 60 quid, so I'd have ended up with only £440 more than I expected to make. Big deal.

The link I posted was to a Spicers Auctioneers sale of vehicles. They are most certainly not a "police auction/Dodgy Den type of auction" being a long established and reputable Yorkshire auction house.

I'm now going to give you a valuable piece of advice, absolutely free of charge - If you think what Ebay charges is outrageous then don't buy or sell there.

I know what I sold and what I paid in commission.

[home]

The screen shot you've posted is not of the charges for private moto sales.

Yes, I know. it was to support the other poster who correctly said it was 12.8% (for other goods).

If they had been the sale would have cost me about 60 quid

And if you'd put it up as a Classified Ad, it would have only cost you £19.99 so, to save £5, cost you another £25. Are you a Yorkshireman?

I'm now going to give you a valuable piece of advice, absolutely free of charge - If you think what Ebay charges is outrageous then don't buy or sell there.

I'm now going to give you a valuable piece of response, also absolutely free of charge - I don't.

I've never really understood that attitude. It's something very typical of the American Rightwing which the internet - & latter the UK - has become sadly infected by. I mean why would someone feel 'well hard' about defending a large corporations right to screw the citizens of another nation up the a**e, and not pay taxes?

Usually to be soon followed by a "if you don't like it, go live in Russia/Cuba/Venezuela" riposte.

I mean, why would anyone want to take the corporation's side, rather than a consumers? Have you never benefited from the principle of collective bargaining?

These days, that £4,500 could have been for a bicycle, so why are bicycles charged at 11.8% more than motor vehicle? That's grounds for a civil war in its own right.


Thanks.

[pete75]

The screen shot you've posted is not of the charges for private moto sales.

Yes, I know. it was to support the other poster who correctly said it was 12.8% (for other goods).

If they had been the sale would have cost me about 60 quid

And if you'd put it up as a Classified Ad, it would have only cost you £19.99 so, to save £5, cost you another £25. Are you a Yorkshireman?

I'm now going to give you a valuable piece of advice, absolutely free of charge - If you think what Ebay charges is outrageous then don't buy or sell there.

I'm now going to give you a valuable piece of response, also absolutely free of charge - I don't.

I've never really understood that attitude. It's something very typical of the American Rightwing which the internet - & latter the UK - has become sadly infected by. I mean why would someone feel 'well hard' about defending a large corporations right to screw the citizens of another nation up the a**e, and not pay taxes?

Usually to be soon followed by a "if you don't like it, go live in Russia/Cuba/Venezuela" riposte.

I mean, why would anyone want to take the corporation's side, rather than a consumers? Have you never benefited from the principle of collective bargaining?

These days, that £4,500 could have been for a bicycle, so why are bicycles charged at 11.8% more than motor vehicle? That's grounds for a civil war in its own right.


Thanks.

Hmm saying don't use an online auction site if you don't like it is totally different to telling someone to go and live somewhere other than their native land if they dislike something about it. To compare the two is rather silly as is complaining about a buying and selling "service " you say you don't use.

If I'd put it on a classified ad I'd have asked £4000 , probably had to drop it a hundred or so during sales negotiations too - would have ended up with 500 quid or so less. Every time I've put something up for auction on EBay it's sold for more than I expected and not only that, it's virtually guaranteed to sell with a week. Ebay very often have 70% off fees or £1 max fees promotions and that's the time to sell stuff.



I'm a consumer and my experience of using Ebay has been favourable. Yours obviously hasn't been.

[LancsGirl]

I'm a consumer and my experience of using Ebay has been favourable. Yours obviously hasn't been.

Me too. I don't get all this whinging about eBay. I've bought and sold things on eBay, for decent prices, that I couldn't have done anywhere near as easily any other way.

Some of the things I've bought I just wouldn't have been able to find, at all, for any price.

And many of the things I've sold would have gone into a skip.*

If I sell something for £100 that would have gone into a skip*, and I have to give £10 to eBay, then I'm £90 better off. I'm sure there is some logical fallacy at work when people think this is "being ripped off by eBay"

*And yes, I once had something balanced on the edge of a skip. I paused, called a friend who was an expert on old hi-fi, he urged me not to throw it. I ebayed it and got £100 (or thereabouts). If I'd had to list that in Exchange and Mart or some such I just wouldn't have bothered. eBay made it nice and easy.

Still, people love to moan, don't they?

[LancsGirl]

As along time ebayer user there is a trend for more buy it now and less auction I guess people don’t want to wait.

Speaking personally (although I gave up recently due to the new commission extraction system), it is because auctions weren't getting good prices any more. People would just wait to snipe at the last minute instead.

I use one of the "snipe" applications a lot. For me personally they actually lead to a healthier approach to bidding, if it's an auction. Sometimes I win, sometimes I don't. But I'm not getting involved in some adrenaline fuelled competition. If everybody used sniping it would make the auctions more like sealed bid sales.

[RecumbentRide]

EBay final valuation fee for private vehicle sellers is, to quote from their website, "1% of the final transaction (min. £25, max. £45)". It's obvious you dislike Ebay but why tell untruths about their commission rates, claiming it's 12.8% when it's actually 1%. https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/fee ... rs?id=4127

I apologise I quickly googled rates for private sellers hence posting incorrect info. I dislike their high fee rates and I'm beginning to quickly dislike eBay itself and you'll find plenty of reasons why if you peruse their forums. But that is not the point of this thread.

Hmmm most people wouldn't disagree. Many conventional auction houses charge 20% buyers premium which obviously reduces the amount folk will bid. They may well be charging 15% sellers commission too. A vendor is concerned about commission levels and hammer price when selling by auction not the cost structure of the chosen auction method. It's taht that they base their selling decision on not some tired old cliché about fruit.

Like I said apples and oranges.

Ebay charges are quite reasonable compared to a conventional auction house.

Tell me Pete have you sold any bicycles on eBay and if so what did you pay in fees? Bet you waited for those offers, you crafty devil!!
Because I sold mine and I was charged £121.90 on a £950 sale
You sold your car for £4500 and you were charged a £45 max fee + £14.99 listing fee (was VAT added?)
So let me see you sold something worth c470% more than my bike but were charged 40-50% (VAT factor) less in fees than I paid

Damn Pete you're right what am I complaining about

I don't get all this whinging about eBay.

I guess I just like whinging cos I've absolutely no good reason to question eBay's fee structure, I must be

[home]

Still, people love to moan, don't they?

It depends what your hourly rate is, how many hours you have free in the week, how many sales you do, & how much you depend on them.

Strictly speaking, a vintage HiFi wouldn't just cost you £10. It would cost you, say, £10 + an hour to clean it up, and another hour to process and package properly (including finding a box and buying or recycle packing), plus addition to time to answer questions, drop it off as a PO or courier ... or waste half a day waiting for a MyHermes courier/buyer who never comes. Then if you're unlucky, and have a bad buyer, another 2 hours dealing with correspondence, customer service, return postage and waiting in again for a MyHermes courier who never comes.

So your £90 actually costs you a whole day.

Then repeat that a few times a month, and you're actually losing money/days on items.

At the very, very least, I'd say it cost you £10 + 2 or 3 hours of your time, hence the question, "what's your hourly rate?". If it's £15ph, it was actually, say, £45 + £10 = £55, and you really made half. Now sell half a dozen items a day (equals 12 hour + days).

If you're on the dole, well lucky you, it's a profit. Your time that was worth nothing has now converted into money ... but, be aware, the tax man/dole office is now coming for you (all transactions now have to go through your bank, there are limits to how much you can trade before becoming a business). Some people will work for £90 a day but to keep that up, you also end up turning your flat into a stock room, so your home becomes your work too.

I guess I am responding from the POV of small business rather than one off sales.


Read eBay's own forums to get an idea how bad things go. How badly people's business are effected by random, unannounced charges or algorithm changes etc. Incomes cut in half. Funds frozen in accounts for no or bogus reasons. Shops closed without explanation, and so on. The worst thing is, for me, recent changes have killed off a lot of the small independent traders who really made it all worthwhile, the "finders" they call them in the US. People who found all the interesting vintage stuff at obscure car boot sales.


I've never used a sniping application, how do they work? Can you tune them down to 1/10ths of a second to pile in at the end? It is, however, a good idea to set a figure you are will to pay and stick to it. To avoid that old "red eye" bidding madness at the last moment.

[LancsGirl]

Still, people love to moan, don't they?

It depends what your hourly rate is, how many hours you have free in the week, how many sales you do, & how much you depend on them.

Strictly speaking, a vintage HiFi wouldn't just cost you £10. It would cost you, say, £10 + an hour to clean it up, and another hour to process and package properly (including finding a box and buying or recycle packing), plus addition to time to answer questions, drop it off as a PO or courier ... or waste half a day waiting for a MyHermes courier/buyer who never comes. Then if you're unlucky, and have a bad buyer, another 2 hours dealing with correspondence, customer service, return postage and waiting in again for a MyHermes courier who never comes.

So your £90 actually costs you a whole day.

Then repeat that a few times a month, and you're actually losing money/days on items.

At the very, very least, I'd say it cost you £10 + 2 or 3 hours of your time, hence the question, "what's your hourly rate?". If it's £15ph, it was actually, say, £45 + £10 = £55, and you really made half. Now sell half a dozen items a day (equals 12 hour + days).

If you're on the dole, well lucky you, it's a profit. Your time that was worth nothing has now converted into money ... but, be aware, the tax man/dole office is now coming for you (all transactions now have to go through your bank, there are limits to how much you can trade before becoming a business). Some people will work for £90 a day but to keep that up, you also end up turning your flat into a stock room, so your home becomes your work too.

I guess I am responding from the POV of small business rather than one off sales.


Read eBay's own forums to get an idea how bad things go. How badly people's business are effected by random, unannounced charges or algorithm changes etc. Incomes cut in half. Funds frozen in accounts for no or bogus reasons. Shops closed without explanation, and so on. The worst thing is, for me, recent changes have killed off a lot of the small independent traders who really made it all worthwhile, the "finders" they call them in the US. People who found all the interesting vintage stuff at obscure car boot sales.


I've never used a sniping application, how do they work? Can you tune them down to 1/10ths of a second to pile in at the end? It is, however, a good idea to set a figure you are will to pay and stick to it. To avoid that old "red eye" bidding madness at the last moment.

Deepest apologies for not quoting in the way you seem to expect.

You seem to have a deep antipathy towards eBay. I think we've all got the message. My experience has been overwhelmingly positive, both as a buyer and seller. I've bought and sold a variety of objects varying in price from the low £s up to c. £1400. There has been the occasional hiccup, but nothing serious.

I can assure you that my "hourly rate" is considerably more than £15. But eBay isn't my full time job. I use it to buy things I can't find through other channels, and to sell things that would be difficult to sell any other way. I don't spend a huge amount of time either buying or selling, but as I do use it fairly often, I've got into a few habits regarding packaging material that enable me to complete a sale relatively quickly. You seem to have been doing it as a business. It seems to me that in the online sales world, those businesses that are swift and efficient will succeed, those who aren't, won't.

You ask about sniping services. As somebody so experienced in eBay, and with so much to say about it, I'm surprised that you don't seem aware how they work. So I'll explain. With the service I use, I place a maximum bid. The service remembers that bid, but doesn't place it with eBay yet. Then, in the last 5 seconds it places the bid. I can adjust that time period I think, but never have. The bid includes postage, it's for the total amount. Sometimes I win, sometimes I don't. Sometimes it is clear that two snipers have competed against each other. As I say, it's a better way of bidding, for me. I don't get wrapped up in the "excitement" of the auction.

I don't using the sniping service all the time. If I see something I definitely want, a unique item (from my point of view), with a Buy It Now price, then I just buy. But for the majority of items that are on sale via auction, I use the sniping service.

Hope this information helps.