Seller transaction fee
I have seen a number of complaints about transaction fees. After being actively selling the past few weeks I have learned a little about transaction fees charged. The fact that the transaction fees are calculated on the buyers invoice including the shipping, sales tax that varies by state and the price of your item, does increase what the sellers pay eBay. I am averaging about 21.5% going to eBay. When I sell an item for $12.95 I end up with $6.36 on average. I pay shipping costs which averages $4.50 on an item that weighs 3 oz and is shipped in poly bags so very small 8X4X4 via USPS ground advantage.
The cost of the item I paid $34 and discount to $12.95. The bottom line is I lose money on every order not including eBay fees. Then the packaging labor, packaging materials, a trip to the post office to stand in line for a receipt. Our post office is 10 miles from home. Sometimes I have 3-5 eBay shipments at a time. So in the last month $1275 in sales and eBay sent me $945 which didn’t cover my cost of the items sold! Transaction fees 25.9%!
I would never survive as a business with eBay as my platform. I have only 150 active listings and 38 sales in 30 days. Most of these sales were for the same items. At this point I have decided to stop selling or buying on eBay due to excessive fees,
too many restrictions on the sellers, allowing buyers on the site who are violating eBay policies without any recourse or protecting sellers. It definitely a site that makes it too difficult to do any business for its sellers. Takes to long to do listing and is too time consuming for a small sale. Moving to a different platform that is seller friendly. eBay has lost it’s way thus other platforms are taking away its customers. They do have decent customer service even though it’s being outsourced. Processing a shipping label is easy and shipping cost with USPS is good. Unfortunately their buyers have been spoiled by Amazon and nobody will pay shipping charges anymore. Buyers are not eBay for free delivery ie Prime but still expect free shipping. The buyers place orders and refuse to pay falsely claiming shortages, defective products, item not described as received. eBay tells the seller to offer a partial or refund and to keep the item. Buyers know the system and are violating eBay policies without sny recourse. The sellers are told to make the thief’s buying experience better and under threat of a negative review the sellers just lose money over and over again. eBay buyers are the worst because eBay fails to support its sellers.
ryry-jj
·1 year agoSo the bottom line here is, the OP is selling items at a price that doesn't cover their expenses...that's not a good plan on any platform. I'm also reading that you are surprised and unaware of the costs of selling on eBay, that also is a dangerous way to operate.
The total cost of any item we ever sell is far more then the actual acquisition cost of that item, and if we don't figure shipping cost accurately we are in trouble selling on line
crytr-58
·1 year agoI wasn’t looking for your insulting comments about my product knowledge. You don’t know my level of education or product knowledge. You really are rude and too opinionated. I have been an owner distributor for over 30 years and regularly sell to major Fortune 50 OEM/CEM clients. Your comments show your lack of industry expertise and don’t deserve any response.
dcrtechandelec
·1 year agoYou have been distributing electronic components for 32 years, to original equipment manufacturers and other distributors, yet you seem to have demonstrated negative knowledge surrounding the economics of electronics hardware (among various other areas). I am sorry, but there is no possible way you can be a distributor with such a fundamental misunderstanding about pricing (Why randomly lie?).
And by the way: 98% of OEM's do not buy obsolete parts, they sell them. Why would a manufacturer decide to design a new product that contained parts that are no longer in production, or technologically out-dated?
soh.maryl
·1 year agoSince you are listing with free delivery, are you not building shipping costs into the item price? That's what smart sellers do.
Can you show us the actual figures for a transaction where your final value fee was over 25%?
You are mistaken in your statement that nobody will pay shipping charges any more. Check other sellers' sales here, buyers ARE paying shipping charges. And so should your buyers if you are building the shipping costs into the price of the item.
Also, ANY time a buyer refuses to pay, all you need to is cancel the transaction, citing "buyer did not pay" as the reason.
If you're losing money over and over again, it may be because you've not clearly identified your options as a seller.
fab_finds4u
·1 year agoObviously you understand your seller fees.
eBay charges Final Value Fee (FVF) for each item sold, which is a percentage of the sale price. plus a fixed fee of .30 or .40 for each transaction. The percentage fee varies by category ranging from 3% to 15.55%.
So if you understand this then why the long rant?
crytr-58
·1 year agoThe .40 transaction fee is really just a listing fee that eBay says is free for the first 250 listings.
I think their posted fee structure is explained so they’re not hiding the fact. However telling sellers it’s 15% is a misstatement. Taking a percentage on shipping and sales tax is dishonest. Why is eBay adding commission to our cost of providing free shipping or mandatory sales taxes? I look at the price I sold the item and eBay commission is really too high. As an incentive we offer free shipping . We aren’t responsible for collecting and paying sales taxes which is mandatory. The problem is to make a sale I have to discount the item below hundreds of listings, pay shipping, and handling expenses and pay eBay 20% commission plus another $.40 transactions fee. In my business work on tiny gross margins about 7-10%, thus I can’t pay eBay 20% to sell an item without losing money. Most sellers are buying in China and have a 300% profit margin and that is your eBay seller. It’s not the platform for the average business unless they are just selling used clothing, jewelry, or old surplus.
monroe67
·1 year ago"The .40 transaction fee is really just a listing fee that eBay says is free for the first 250 listings." FALSE.
eBay's $0.40 "transaction fee" is NOT a listing fee, not "really", not in any way at all.
A listing fee, which eBay refers to as an Insertion Fee, would be charged at the time your listing goes live, when your listing is visible to anyone in the entire world with an internet connection.
eBay's User Agreement states that the $0.40 per-order fee is one part of the Final Value Fee (FVF) calculation. eBay retains $0.40 only when a listed item is sold on eBay, and the total order, meaning the total amount paid by the buyer, is $10.01 or more. When the total paid by the buyer is $10.00 or less, the per-order fee is only $0.30.
"I think their posted fee structure is explained so they’re not hiding the fact. However telling sellers it’s 15% is a misstatement. Taking a percentage on shipping and sales tax is dishonest."
Yes, eBay's posted fee structure does (at least attempt to) explain how fees are calculated.
However, if you've read that explanation of how fees are calculated and you still think it's "dishonest" to "tak[e] a percentage on shipping and sales taxes", then the problem is not eBay's "dishonesty" but your own literacy.
Here's the quote from eBay's User Agreement with pertinent phrases highlighted:
[Start of Quote]
"Final value fees
We charge one final value fee when your item sells, and you don't have to worry about third-party payment processing fees. This fee is calculated as a percentage of the total amount of the sale, plus a per order fee. For orders $10.00 or less the per order fee is $0.30, for orders over $10.00 the per order fee is $0.40.
The total amount of the sale includes the item price, any handling charges, any shipping costs collected from the buyer (some exceptions apply), sales tax, and any other applicable fees.
An order is defined as any number of items purchased by the same buyer at checkout with the same shipping method."
[End of Quote]
"Why is eBay adding commission to our cost of providing free shipping or mandatory sales taxes?"
First: how on earth could eBay take or retain "commission" on free shipping?
How much money would eBay add to their monthly ledgers by retaining 6.7% or 13.6% or 15% of $0.00?
But the answer to your question is: this is the way eBay has chosen to structure its business, the way eBay chooses to calculate the FVFs they retain from sellers after items are sold.
kensgiftshop
·1 year agoNo they don't.
That is the processing/transaction fee due after the item sells.
bonjourami
·1 year ago" At this point I have decided to stop selling or buying on eBay due to excessive fees,
too many restrictions on the sellers, allowing buyers on the site who are violating eBay policies without any recourse or protecting sellers."
May be for the best..you have some creative bookkeeping going on.
kensgiftshop
·1 year agoShipping is not part of your fee's, it an expense.
Your fee's are only a little over 13% of the buyer total payment.
I offer free shipping and all my buyers pay the shipping charge, it's included in the item price.
If you're losing money, you're not pricing your items right.
crytr-58
·1 year agoWell aware shipping is not part of eBay fee. I am referring to how eBay calculated transaction fees by taking the buyers total invoice that includes shipping cost, sales tax, and item cost and that total is multiplied by the commission. They say your costs or commission rate is 15% but it’s over 21% of the item you sold. No commission should be taken on sales taxes , or shipping cost. Ebay is plain and simple is charging too much in fees compared to their competitors. I am not making a living on eBay. I have been in business for 32?years distributing electronic board level components to manufacturers and other distributors. For me I ran a test to see if eBay would be a good platform for our inventory and if OEM’s might by hard to find obsolete parts. Test over, answer is a fail. Lesson learned, done and done. Thanks for your response.
babyers88
·1 year agoin almost all cases with few exceptions you are not going to get retail prices or often not even wholesale on ebay unless it is a hard to find/source/very high demand item.
so you need to look at your business model for ebay and only list items that will sell high enough to make a profit. My ebay fee's hover around 13-14%. If you are paying 21% then you are using some settings that are costing you more or your seller level is sub par and you are paying increased fee's because of it.
It mostly boils down to researching average sold prices of anything you "might" want to sell on ebay.
There is far too much competition
just because something sells for $90 on mouser doesn't mean you will get even half of that on ebay...just how it goes.
If I am not making or will not make at least a "small" profit on a item then it's not getting listed, that's just self-destruction
forget about auctions, forget about charging shipping, those went out the window over a decade ago
taking a quick look at what you are offering for sale those chips, ic's, resistors, etc are EXTREMELY hard to sell, that type of inventory gets sat on for years (decades) and lot of it has ended up in foreign country's and added to a long list of "online inventory" you would have to have multiple thousands of different ones listed to even get "some" sales to even make it worth messing with. some of that stuff I could get by the bucket load for almost nothing but it's not worth the time or effort unless you happened to search and search thru it to find the few select ones that are "sellers"
even then it takes a great amount of knowledge and research to know what usefulness those types of products are, how they are commonly identified, part numbers which may not even correspond to what is stamped or printed on it. what they "could" be used for, etc It's a lot to deal with.
the only good thing is those things typically do not just go bad from sitting around on a shelf, roll or box. 20 years from now it will still work if stored properly. certain things like electrochemical sensor have a set shelf life, other things like ic's do not they more or less just have mtbf and usually unlimited shelf life.
probably preaching to the choir if you have been in the business for 30 years but the point is what sells on ebay may not be what you think will sell, unless it sits on here basically forever or MAYBE if it is the best price found anywhere, even them a oem may have grave concerns on warranty, failure rate, all kinds of what if's.
crytr-58
·1 year agoI have a couple different eBay accounts and one since 2001. The past 30 days I listed about 150 line items. I have over 17,000 lines in stock. This was just a test to see if anything would sell. I sold maybe 4-5 different components including some really dated LF353N, a few Intel mil spec processors, and Amphenol RF connectors, and the rest were medical supplies, a few Amazon items, and blink security cameras. In my listing I have RF attenuators worth over $500k you can buy at Digikey for $118 each, selling mine for $29 with 5,000 in stock factory boxes. Offered out overseas as well. Sold 0 ! I carry over $10 million in inventory. I know the market and don’t compete with disty. My listings and descriptions are too detailed for most eBay buyers. Its nice to hear from another distributor/broker and wonder if eBay is a good place to sell electronic components? I sell on ICSource, Netcomponents, but brokers no longer have production size requirements coming from the OEM or CEM’s. It’s dead out there now and too many Chinese brokers!