Ebay's Final Value Fees Too High!

[blondtxnurse]

Am I the only one that is concerned with ebay's recent increase in final value fees?  Ebay is making it hard to make even a small profit off items sold!

[audiobeep]

me too. I sold about $600 and I realized my fees are $101, this is not counting paypal fees. That's 15% plus 3% for paypal. I cancelled some auction items and ended up paying a fee and also I am seeing a shipping fee...I don't know if I can continue. I am litteraly losing now with just first start up. Even big stores don't barely make 15% so I am not sure what are they thinking about. The first opportunity to sell elsewhere at a lower fee I am jumping fence.

[speedyalchemist62]

When did the fees go up?  10%?  Are they out of their minds?  And on shipping, too.  This has gotten too much.  Frankly, I'd rather sell stuff on a local FB group for less money -- it doesn't end up "less" in the long run.

I won't be putting anything up until the fees comes down.  But they don't really care, do they?

[judges4u]

This is totally OUTRAGEOUS!!!!  10% is highway robbery!  This injustice was a cold calculated move by EBay.  They devised a strategic plan to rsise these insane gross greedy fees when Ebay reached a "monopoly" status!!!!!  They planned this a long time ago. Now we are stuck with one company who has the entire world market and they know this!!!!!  GREED!!!  By their quest for filling their coffers with money, Ebay has proved that money is the root of all evil!  

Ebay now sucks like a leach for money from final price FVF, shipping FVF, and Paypal final value fee!!!!!  We are at their mercy.  The idiot who said tack in FVF to the price of your suction is wrong!!!

[lotus_boy]

I too think that eBay is now taking the p**s with the size of the fees. What we need is a credible alternative that eBay's most established sellers can all migrate to. Only when there is an element of competition will eBay listen and respond, until then they will keep screwing everyone.

[college_dude20]

I started selling in May after an 8 month break. I sold a few stuff and I was under impression that I am making good profit. But when I saw my invoice and found out about the new 10% final value fee, I realized the actual profit that I made was about 50% of what I was thinking I made. 

WTF? 15% of the total? We hardly make 15% profit even if selling it on Craigslist for cash. How does that make sense? And ebay owns paypal as well. So they're the ones making both commissions. This is OUTRAGEOUS!! We really need a good alternative and let them know we are MAD. 

[gancannypet]

I am so mad at Ebays pricing games. Would move in a second if I found a better site! Shame on Ebay, their greed makes me sick!!!!!!!!!!!

BETTER....as in CHEAPER.??

Go ahead, try them, there's dozens of crappy auction sites out there, and none of them can hold a candle to eBay.

In this world, you have to spend money, to make money..:^O

[studioguy57]

As a 12 year seller I have sold about about $79,000+ so far and purchased nearly this much as well and because I do not selling 1,000 items a month I cannot even get a discount!

When the FV was capped at $100 and no FV on shipping it was reasonable. The PayPal fees were also smaller.

My latest sale has $208 in fees including $46.99 for the PayPal fee. For what? To electronically move money moving between two solid accounts that no human even touches?

Even my "Uncle Sharky" bank does not charge fees anywhere near that.

It is really getting way out of hand. More and more buyers that bid for "fun" do not pay, no way to make them accountable (never mind gently warning others of their poor behavior) , buyers to whom you provide a refund to on an item THEY damaged and then they refuse to even agree to cancel the transaction (do not know why as I have been very polite and more than reasonable) so now you are out of the FV fee as well.

I agree Ebay is now firmly unreasonable slanted towards the buyer and hitting the folks that make them money the hardest.

I am going to work my way out of selling and perhaps buy only. You cannot increase your selling prices to cover even part of the new high selling costs as you will price yourself out of the competition. It is a shame. I used to promote Ebay as a good way to sell and buy used gear. No longer.

I realize it is unlikely that anyone from Ebay is looking or even caring about what us folks write in these type of forums and probably would have a good snicker at our expense. But I guess there is some solace in lamenting with others.

Best of luck to you all in the future.

[downrigger-depot]

I will agree to do that!

I sell about $6,000 monthly.........and these fees of 9% is outrageous!!!

Why has there not been other competition been thrown at Ebay??? They have a lock on these bidding stuff.........

[3dotbe]

It will keep going up as long as they are number one auction site! Back in the day used to be 3% even lower.

[3dotbe]

For eBay store is 9% it is 10% for everyone else, when you add the paypal fees for an item you selling for $300 it will be $41 fees. $30 ebay + $11 paypal

[351wmustang_gt]

I agree 100%!!!! There was one start up company about a year and a half ago but I don't know what happened to it, it was promoted by Glenn Beck but Ebay prob squashed it. Not only is Ebay screwing the seller with fees they also took the little bit of teeth we had when they stopped letting us give negative feedback. We the sellers are the ones who made and make Ebay and we are the ones they continue to put pressure on. They own Paypal and they collect fees from that too. You can list for free if you start your bid price at .99 cents but they nail you at the other end when your item sells. Don't know what the answer is, I enjoy selling on Ebay but I can't keep losing money either. Any ideas?

[kcoutouzis11]

I agree with you wholeheartedly. Since they boosted the listing price from 10 cents to 30 cents after the first 50 listings I have done the math and found the profit margins to be negligible. With all the fees added in I found that I was making pennies or losing money off what I posted. So, I cut back and only post products with big margins for profit. Ebay tried to sell me on a store. I did the math and found it would save me just over $8 a month. It is something, but had they not raised the prices I would have made a ton more than that.

I was posting 200-300 items a month and selling around 200+ of those. Since they raised the prices I have raised my shipping fee and cut back to posting around 60-70 items a month. Ebay must have noticed this because I got an email for an Ebay survey asking me what I thought were the biggest problems. This was my biggest issue and I let them know.

The second issue would be the buyers that lie and say they never received their goods and want a refund as well as those that win an auction and then do not pay. Ebay will refund me the 10% fee they charge, but they don't refund the listing fee if there was one and they don't refund the 8 cents they take from shipping. So, I lose money every time someone doesn't pay, but Ebay still makes money off my loss. I was averaging 2-3 people a week that didn't pay. Over time that adds up to big losses.

I have scaled back and will not ramp up selling again until they bring those fees down. They are going to lose money hand over fist as a result and based on the survey I think they are seeing that overall with sellers cutting back or moving to other forums.

Not to beat a dead horse, but the more money that we make from lower fees the more profit we will make. The more profit that we make means we will post a greater quantity, thus the more revenue that Ebay collects from the increase in postings. It is like raising taxes. When people have less money because the government takes it, that means they have less as a consumer to spend. Thus they go out to eat less and buy fewer things. When that happens companies make less and cut back on expenses which includes, but is not limited to laying people off. When people lose their jobs there is less income coming into the government. When companies have smaller profits that means the government takes less revenue as well.

[pcworldwidexpress]

Cost of technology keeps going down.... so theoretically eBay should be cheaper to sell on today than it was 15 years ago but with no real competition..

essentially all they do is host small amounts of data and process a transaction for each sale, there is no legitimate reason for the 'fee' structures to vary on auction types/categories

[bushvideo]

Ebay's 9% final value fee is killing my razor thin markup on the sewing machines that I sell.

The fee caps out at $250.00, so if you sell anything for $2,800.00 or less you get charged 9%.

That being said, I feel that the fee structure is totally unfair and targets (my guess) at least 95% or more of eBay sellers as I bet most sell items that cost less than $2,800.00. 

The average price of the machines that I sell are right around that $2,800.00 mark so I am hit very hard by this fee structure.

The unfair part is that if you sell something for $5,000.00 your final value fee is still $250.00. Sell something for $10,000.00 your fee is still $250.00. So the person who sells a $2,800.00 item pays the same fee as someone who sells a $10,000.00 plus item. Any sale from $2,801.00 on up pays the same final value fee. Is that a fair fee structure? It is set up to target the vast majority of eBay sellers and the high end sellers ( items selling for over $2,800.00 ) get away with a capped out fee of $250.00.

The impact for me is a big one. Last year (2012) there was a fee increase but I found out from another eBay member that if I opened a basic eBay store that the fee increase would not affect me. So I opened a basic store. Now I find no advantage of having a store unless you sell a large amount of items.

Ebay's Power seller and top seller programs are all set up for those who sell lots of items. I can make 3 sales in a month that total up to $9,000.00 in gross sales, yet the person who sells 50 , $5.00 items a month who grosses $250.00 in total sales, qualifies to be a Power seller. Till this eBay policy was changed, I think back around 2010, I was a Power Seller and being a Power seller I at least got a 10% discount off of my eBay fees. Now I get nothing! Seems I am getting the shaft from eBay for being a loyal, long time, high dollar seller with 100% feedback and a very long list of happy customers.

The bottom line is that my final value fees went from around $110.00 - $125.00, to the current fee of $250.00 for each sewing/embroidery machine that I sell. Last month eBay took over $800.00 out of my checking account for total selling fees and that was for only 3 sewing/embroidery machines!

If I got the machines for free that would not be that bad, but I don't. Like any retailer I need to make big purchases to get my best possible price. I purchase at least $20,000.00 worth of machines at one shot to get my best possible price and that is going up all of the time. So between what I pay for what I sell and the ever increasing selling, Paypal and shipping fees I am being squeezed out of business! A business that I have spent the past 11 plus years building up.

[seaside_computer]

I agree with almost every post I have read here. I sold some items in 2011 and haven't sold since 2013. I didn't clearly remember what the fees were back in 2011 but since selling again in 2013 I have felt as I was paying too much to sell on here. Now after reading this thread I understand why. Its a shame that I cant be a profitable small fish on ebay after all the fees. There goes my used iPod business!