Ebay fees / charges BEWARE

[simonineaston]

As an occasional ebay user, I agree that their charges can appear aggressive. I also agree that they, like most terms and conditions, require a beady eye open to fully understand them. However, there are one or two tools available to the domestic user that can help. ebay have their own discussion community and the mse forum - by definition! - is a useful place to discuss charges and how best to keep them low.
As has been mentioned, ebay has regular promotions one way or another and considerable savings can be made by biding one's time, if in no hurry to sell.
On the plus side, items made available to sell have considerable exposure and are highly likely to sell. I once joked that one could probably sell dog doo on ebay as well as buy a nine bob note and both turned out to be true - albeit the former in the form of a plastic poop...

[toontra]

Sorry if you already know this but ebay special offers only apply if the item is sold in the first sale period. If it is re-listed by ebay after the original time period, you will be charged the full 13% sale fee.

I know someone who got caught out by this clause in ebay's agreement and ended up losing money on a sale.

True enough. If the item doesn't sell after the 7-day offer is up then I de-list it and wait for the next one. Easy to get stung if you don't remember to do that. "Dark pattern" policies

[home]

So this is a word of warning to those who like me think these charges are extortionate. I won't be making that mistake again.

Ha. You should have been here a few days ago, we were just discussing the ethics of scamming eBay out of their extortionate commissions.

Cancel the deal. Get the guy to do a "return". Then sell it back to them.

The fees for selling are proportionate to sale price.

FWIW, does eBay incur greater costs for more expensive items? If not, then why are they proportionate? (I am not really addressing this at you, but just asking the question. The obvious answer is, no and just 'profit').

EBay net income for the twelve months ending March 31, 2022 was $11.626B, a 301.45% increase year-over-year. EBay annual net income for 2021 was $13.608B, a 140.13% increase from 2020. EBay annual net income for 2020 was $5.667B, a 217.3% increase from 2019.

However,

eBay's total sales in the first quarter were $2.48 billion. This is down 5.9% from the comparable period of 2021. eBay Inc. reported total gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $19.35 billion in its first fiscal quarter of 2022. This a drop of 20% from a year earlier and the fourth consecutive quarter of declines (10% in last two).

So, it seems they are making more from less. The new payment system was cause for a lot of small sellers to give up.

Funnily enough, this is something that's often discussed, or should it be disgusted, on eBay forums. There's a general conclusion that eBay don't really make any money on smaller/small time sellers but depend on the big, mass sellers (it's claimed the top 20% of sellers who in fact generate the top 75% of GMV). I have no idea if it's true but from purely anecdotal experiences, I always had far more hassle with buyers for low cost or bargain items than high values one. Given how quickly a sour deal can eat up hours dealing with the customer disservice department, I suspect it's the same for them.

I always compare with the typical commission values with e-retailers, especially in IT but increasing in all areas, who might be down to single figure % commission rates, while having to hold stock, pay for warehousing, management etc.

[simonineaston]

Consider the example of the sellers who I've visited frequently to buy v. small quantities of fasteners, often buying 10 screws, say, at £2.75, with no extra cost for packaging and postage. The cost of p&p isn't actually free of course, as it'll be factored into their pricing. But think of the net profit margin, both to the seller and to ebay - pence! There are however hundreds of thousands of similar transactions, going on all the time.

[rogerzilla]

I have actually bought more than one plastic poo on eBay

[RecumbentRide]

I have actually bought more than one plastic poo on eBay

Some good suggestions being posted.

As for the poo it feels like eBay is the one taking a dump on it's users

[home]

Consider the example of the sellers who I've visited frequently to buy v. small quantities of fasteners, often buying 10 screws, say, at £2.75, with no extra cost for packaging and postage.

I hope it's the excellent Falcon Workshop (Massiveattack007 on eBay), that's where I indulge in my A4/316 stainless steel fetish. There was a time I'd buy stuff from them simply because I need some jiffy bags to send other stuff out. As grateful as I was for their service, I think they need to work out a better 'multiple items' shipping rate, e.g. if you buy, say, 4 x 10 of some items in one bag (combined shipping), it cost the same as 4 x 1 jiffy bag of 10 items (individual shipping).

Sinner that I am, I'd just put in 4 separate orders to get 4 separate bags to recycle & send stuff out in & make enough profit off the savings, to buy more from them! I hope they have some robots to do the sorting & picking rather than underpaid, overexploited workers.

However, stainless steel fasteners are shoes or socks as an adults. There comes a certain age you're going to be sure of your sizes, & should really buy in bulk.

[fastpedaller]

I wonder how some sellers can make a profit..... A few years ago I bought a stainless steel milk saucepan off Ebay after scouring the local shops with no success - It was to use as a paint kettle (not more kitchen equipment ). The price (UK seller) of the postage was on the package, and out of curiosity I worked out the fees and the most he could have made out of the deal was 34p. That's if his packaging was free! He either had lots of oompah-Loompas doing unpaid packaging and runs to the post office, or was selling thousands of the things?
Saucepan was good and still in use (though never in the kitchen)

[Barrowman]

My neighbour sells lots of fishing gear (he has a legit source) he has quit E Bay and now sells via Facebook because of the e Bay fees. Don't know the details just a recent discussion over the fence.

[UpWrong]

Next time I'll plan ahead and sell on here or a similar bicycle site, whilst it will be a waiting game I'll be happy to not add to the Ebay shareholders profits.

It's not been a good year for selling bents this year. Prices seem to have fallen. Usually worth trying here or the BHPC forum though.

[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.

[PedallingSquares]

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

[squeaker]

Next time I'll plan ahead and sell on here or a similar bicycle site, whilst it will be a waiting game I'll be happy to not add to the Ebay shareholders profits.

It's not been a good year for selling bents this year. Prices seem to have fallen. Usually worth trying here or the BHPC forum though.

My thoughts too. (It's a good job I was on holiday otherwise you might have got more for it )

[steve.y.griffith]

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

One thing to beware of the charge for adding a reserve price is 4% of final selling price .

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

I also notice many old bike bits listed with far too high BIN or starting bids . To get an idea of real value do a search for the item and under advanced tick the sold box . This will show you actual sale prices which can use to negotiate with a seller asking too much .

[home]

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.