Just seen that Ebay have found another way to squeeze more money out of sellers .

When I list an item it always offers the option to re-list for free if it does not sell. From 17th August there will be a fee.

Easy to avoid if you know about it but I suspect not everyone reads the fine print so I thought I would post here. Only applies to private sellers.

It's not a surprise, but it is what eBay does to sellers. They reach a large market for sellers.

That's terrible. This is why I don't sell on eBay anymore. When I first sold on there in 2003, the fees were reasonable. Now, eBay owns paypal and together they take like 14% of what you make, and then you have to ship it. Sometimes I buy boxes of cards off eBay for cheap already then it comes shipped all nicely with bubble wrap. How do these sellers do it?

Eventually this will hurt the buyers though, because less sellers will be on eBay. Imagine how many more sellers and how much more stuff we could find on eBay if the fees were like they were in 2003. It's sort of like the minimum wage. At first it seems superficially attractive to keep the minimum wage low and be greedy, but then all the workers don't have money to buy stuff and it hurts the rich people. This is like what eBay is doing, they're being greedy not realizing they're hurting themselves in the long run.

They are separating from Paypal now, so they'll be separate companies soon, according to a notice that's been at the top of our Ebay page for a month or two now. I don't think any fees will be going down from either though, whatever happens or whatever it may mean.
Ebay still offers the best chance to sell the widest assortment of new and used items, and the sellers are being made to pay for that.

Pretty much correct chesspieceface. In my experience, the one thing eBay have that most of the other sites cannot offer is.....buyers As long as that remains true, they will keep extracting constantly increasing fees from sellers. However, as their changes drive more and more small sellers away leaving just the large companies, e.g. Argos here in the UK now have a huge section devoted to selling their DSR returns that they cannot resell as new new, the buyers will leave as well as it will be just another large online retail site selling the same stuff as everywhere else. The unusual stuff you used to be able to find on eBay is a dwindling commodity, so less people will go there as time goes on. Such is life and capitalism

quote:

Originally posted by Kevin F:
The unusual stuff you used to be able to find on eBay is a dwindling commodity, so less people will go there as time goes on. Such is life and capitalism

There was a time when I fantasized about being a casual eBay seller someday, when I had the time, and getting back some of my money on the load of odd stuff that I have managed to accumulate for no particular reason that I can remember.

I have given up on that idea. For one thing, the value of most of my surefire collectibles has plummeted. For another, you need supplies, you need the proper connections with eBay and PayPal, you need the right papers on file. You need to be a true business because that is what they want.

You're right, eBay will just be a retail site competing with Amazon and Yahoo and Google eventually or it may even merge with one of them. That seems to be the name of the game anyway and none of them are interested in helping you get rid of your grandmother's collection of ceramic cows anyhow.

I've actually been able to sell there for over 15 years and do pretty much what you wanted to do, Raven, but you are right, they really do want Ebay sellers to think of what they are doing as a "business", which I will categorically and forever reject. It would simply remove all the fun from the hobby for me to have to consider some kind of bottom line.

If the day ever arrives that I was made to do that, I'd stop selling there entirely.

about all these fees......



I REALLY DON'T CARE.....

average Consignments in any store are anywhere from 15 -30%

this is for the average person....

Other option.....

Open a Store..... 3k a month easy
Hire a staff , ADVERTISE your Store...Pay Electric & Taxes & Credit Card Fees and pray to break even every month............................

Plus, You have to buy Inventory in one of the most competitive fields I've ever seen ....

That's why I do so many 1/1 items

ebay has no real set up fee...anyone can sell.

if you open an eBay Store or sell on eBay as a collector...you reach the ENTIRE WORLD, basically for FREE!

I pay like $15 a month for my eBay Store....

I try to keep it updated usually about 200 items a month.....

I sell 24 hours a bay! I have even shipped to Norway!.....


15-18% is More than Fair if you ask me......

It's a wonderful feeling going to sleep with No Sales & Waking Up w/ more than you make in a week at your Day Job........

it's just a great feeling

Yes, the fees are getting more and more sneaky and annoying. I particularly object to having a fee on my postage charges. You can offer free postage and incorporate postage into your starting price or Buy It Now...but there is a little psychology to selling that sometimes makes it more attractive to have a lower price but still charge postage. It can work the other way too.
But it's a bit of a joke to pay a fee on a service that ebay are not providing.

I never let ebay do anything automatically on my account except file unpaid item cases, so I shouldn't get caught with the relisting fees.

Despite those slight moans and groans about fees, I looked into other options for my few bits and pieces of collectables, cards and WW1 medals that I sell now and again:
1) An alternative to ebay in the UK is ebid...but that has such a low exposure to buyers. Gumtree is also full of problems...much more than people have experienced on ebay(even though I believe they're part of the same group).
2)Set up or join a facebook sales site. Nearly everyone I've heard selling through sites on facebook have way more issues than ebay and are harder to resolve.
3)Sell on Amazon. For an occasional seller the costs work out around the same as ebay, although you are allowed a postage allowance on each item. I'm still not totally convinced of Amazon for an occasional seller. But the Marketplace is expanding all the time and I've bought from a lot of sellers on there.
4)Sell in an auction house locally. Fees in the UK range from 15% - 21% commission PLUS VAT(20%) added on to the commission fee. Some auctions houses also charge a fee for each item you enter in their auctions. And buyers pay a commission fee and VAT too making some things sell for less than on ebay.

So the result is that I'll still grumble about fees, because hey, we all want more of the cash in our own pockets, but fees and taxes are a fact of life and while ebay will always be far from perfect they are still cheaper, and more satisfactory, than other options. And ultimately items are seen by many more buyers than any other method. And more buyers and browsers means the chance of more sales and higher values. And more chance that your junk will become someone else's treasure. Some things are harder to sell than others now, but I think that's just down to buyers being more careful with their money at the moment and being choosy.

eBay fees alone might be tolerable if they actually gave the seller a good service for those fees, but now you can't even leave negative feedback for buyers, while the buyers can still leave negative feedback for sellers.

The last time I sold a batch of stuff on eBay one of my auctions for a lot of action figures sold for nearly $250, days and days went by with no payment. Eventually I sent the winning bidder a message and they wrote back "sorry, my 8 year old was using my account. I can't pay you." I'm pretty sure they were lying. A lot of people seem to get drunk on Sunday nights and go on bidding sprees then wake up the next morning and say "whoops, well no problem, I just won't pay"

In another auction for a lot of card packs, I had another non-paying bidder. I sent him a message asking if he was going to pay and he wrote back that "he'd think about it."

Another person won multiple auctions from me, each with their own stated shipping cost. This time I actually got a payment, but they only paid for one item's shipping cost, and sent the message "I'm sure you'll be able to ship everything for this amount." So I had to, because if I were to protest or refuse, I have no doubt I'd have received bad feedback.

So the fees are one big issue, the entitled non-paying and/or rude bidders are another. Buy hey I understand the bad behavior from eBay bidders, if I was in a position where I could treat people anyway I wanted and there were no real repercussions to speak of, maybe that would bring out the worst in me also.

quote:

Originally posted by ewok7:

Another person won multiple auctions from me, each with their own stated shipping cost. This time I actually got a payment, but they only paid for one item's shipping cost, and sent the message "I'm sure you'll be able to ship everything for this amount."

I can understand this, I saw lots of cards I liked the other week from the same seller but each time I won a card he just doubled the postage. 10 cards could have been sent for the one postage rate but he now wanted 10 times as much, needless to say I did not buy anything.

As a buyer, I absolutely cherish Ebay. I've gotten things from there for my collection that there's just no realistic way I would have had access to were it not for Ebay (or some similar monolith in its place) offering what they do, that is, worldwide access to a wide variety of items with solid protection (for the buyer, anyway) against fraud.

While I have (naturally) always been a model buyer and have never taken advantage of a seller in any way, I have been burned a few times as a seller, and that does sting. It mostly occurs when a buyer claims to have not received something it's very likely they did receive, but now that tracking is used on all items, that can't really happen anymore. A negative aspect of that peace of mind, however, is that it has essentially eliminated international shipping for me.

The cost of the registered mail service, the cheapest method of international tracking, adds about $14 to the shipping rate, which has also doubled in the last 5 years or so, from about $4 for a well-protected card to about $8. Add that to the tracking and you've got $22 for one lightweight package, which is often more than the items themselves used to cost back when I could send it for $4. But that system really was an honor system.

Most people are honorable, I've found, but those who aren't are particularly hard for me to stomach, and while the mandatory tracking has removed me from the mercy of those few bad eggs, it's also essentially ended overseas shipping of anything I sell unless the value is about $75 or higher to justify the $20+ shipping charge. I'm of the mind that even if a person is willing to pay $22 in shipping for a $20 item, I don't want them to, and besides that, I don't like to get $42 payments that I only get to keep about $16 of after the postage and Ebay/Paypal fees. Paypal also charges 1% more for international payments. A penny out of a dollar isn't too big a deal on it's own, but with the other 14 cents going to Ebay/Paypal, it makes it 15% on the dot. Even so, I do still find that to be a very reasonable fee to sell something to a buyer on the other side of the planet who absolutely never would have seen my item otherwise. It's just too bad the rise in shipping costs has rendered selling anything other than mid to higher value items overseas so impractical.

With this in mind, I would say my selling/buying relationship with Ebay is:
Like/Love, but it used to be Love/Love. I really enjoyed having a bagful of packages to send all around the world, and at a nice value for the buyer, but, as tends to happen in all respects, things do change...

Slow paying buyers and the ones that vanish are a pain in the backside, and that's not just on ebay, but in life in general. But that's much more of a problem on other selling sites. After getting fed up with waiting the usual 5-7 days for payment I altered my settings to automatically file an unpaid item case after 4 days. I also make that very clear in my listings. Since I did that, I haven't had many slow paying buyers.

As to feedback, if you have filed a case and/or have not been paid, the buyer cannot leave negative feedback.

If they don't pay they get a strike. I have set all my buying rules to block bidders with so many warnings and strikes in 12 months. There's all levels of settings that can help keep the time wasters away. If paying up in 4 days is a problem then the person was never serious in the first place. Unless they have messaged you and specifically asked for an extension.

Some of the problem with postage on Buy It Now is that things require immediate payment and cannot be combined. If that happens with me any time(not often as I don't sell that much) and they've paid before I can combine an invoice, then I refund the postage difference. I'm honest, a lot aren't.

Well what I was selling that time were minifigures in the style of M.U.S.C.L.E. I had already started the auction really low thinking the shipping would make up some of it, if I remember he won the figures for like a quarter each.

I probably wouldn't have minded combining the shipping anyway but he didn't ask, he basically just flat out said "this is how much I'm giving you" and I couldn't protest or I would get negative feedback.

That's why I say, I don't know how the sellers do it. Most of the time I buy stuff on eBay I feel like the sellers are doing me a favor. I've bought stuff off there where it seems there's no way the sellers are even making a profit, and it still comes shipped to me in bubble wrap all nice and stuff. You have to think too, it's more than just what the shipping costs them, it's the time they spend packing everything up so nice and going to the post office too. That alone is worth at least $5 in my opinion.

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:
The cost of the registered mail service, the cheapest method of international tracking, adds about $14 to the shipping rate, which has also doubled in the last 5 years or so, from about $4 for a well-protected card to about $8. Add that to the tracking and you've got $22 for one lightweight package, which is often more than the items themselves used to cost back when I could send it for $4. But that system really was an honor system.

Most people are honorable, I've found, but those who aren't are particularly hard for me to stomach, and while the mandatory tracking has removed me from the mercy of those few bad eggs, it's also essentially ended overseas shipping of anything I sell unless the value is about $75 or higher to justify the $20+ shipping charge. I'm of the mind that even if a person is willing to pay $22 in shipping for a $20 item, I don't want them to, and besides that, I don't like to get $42 payments that I only get to keep about $16 of after the postage and Ebay/Paypal fees. Paypal also charges 1% more for international payments. A penny out of a dollar isn't too big a deal on it's own, but with the other 14 cents going to Ebay/Paypal, it makes it 15% on the dot. Even so, I do still find that to be a very reasonable fee to sell something to a buyer on the other side of the planet who absolutely never would have seen my item otherwise. It's just too bad the rise in shipping costs has rendered selling anything other than mid to higher value items overseas so impractical.

With this in mind, I would say my selling/buying relationship with Ebay is:
Like/Love, but it used to be Love/Love. I really enjoyed having a bagful of packages to send all around the world, and at a nice value for the buyer, but, as tends to happen in all respects, things do change...

If you utilize Paypal/eBay shipping, 1st class package rates have included tracking for some time. The majority of what I list gets an $8 shipping charge internationally. Only bulky and/or higher priced items will cause me to charge for Priority or Express.

I'll look into that. Thanks!

I don't mind losing 15% on sales - I agree that it's better value than auction commissions and shop leases etc, particularly for the casual seller. But I very much object to listing fees that mean the loss is much bigger if you are trying to sell something with a small market (like rare cards). The advantage of eBay is the access to the few people in the world who know what the item is, but it's necessary to put a BIN or minimum price on because only one of those people may want to buy - auctions only work with multiple buyers. eBay solved the problem when they introduced some free listings, but the rules are very unclear if the item is unsold and relisted.