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Insertion Fees paid on ahead
I had unlimited free listings (or I had a huge number that it seemed unlimited, I can't remember) and now I've only have 250 p/ month just like when I started 10 years ago — and Ebay is charging insertion fees before the listings even sell. Isn't that nice?
Can someone tell me when did these changes came about? It seems I've missed yet another fantastic seller update somewhere back.
30 comments
kh-shakhib
·1 year agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
smitty1967
·1 year agoI and others I have talked to say are getting ready to quit selling on Ebay due to all the charges they keep tackling on, most sellers making very little but eBay is wanting it all
jonathanbrightlight
·1 year agoOld thread
ulfesharpe
OP2 years agoThank you all!
ulfesharpe
OP2 years ago@reallynicestamps
To me it's less important than the other info, so it's greyed out.
And it's not hidden. It's there, you've seen it and so did the rest of the world. It's got nothing to do with dishonesty.
I'm actually removing that info in future listings, it's an text inheritance from older listings and it doesn't make sense any more. There might have been a motive why i put it there like that years ago. I don't remember. I used to spend a lot of time on Ebay but after continuous degradation of selling conditions here (rising costs, more rules, monopoly of processes, etc) it lost my full attention.
I don't mean to sound rude or anything, but I have no interest in becoming a specialised seller, I'm simply a collector who occasionally sells pencils to buy more pencils. For that reason, I liked it better when Ebay was like a garage sale at a worldwide scale.
ulfesharpe
OP2 years agoThank you I will @pjcdn2005
12345jamesstamps
·2 years agoAlso, any "refunds" are withdrawn from "available funds" immediately....and anything "promoted" the fee is withdrawn immediately from "available funds". Yes, I do end up in the negative sometimes in "available funds".
Its a learning experience.
ulfesharpe
OP2 years ago@lacemaker3
Wow. In fact I went back to check and Gallery Plus was on on every listing! But I know I never selected it bc I relisted them all in bulk.
So is this a new trick from ebay to squeeze more money from us — gallery plus being on by default and you have to de-select it?????
pjcdn2005
·2 years agoAs I mentioned in my post gallery plus is supposed to be free in collectibles which is what your listings are in. Also the upgrade charge for fixed price listings is $1 which is what you are using. The .35 rate is for auctions. I don’t know what the charge is for but I suspect it is a mistake so you should be able to get it credited if you contact customer service.
lacemaker3
·2 years ago@ulfesharpe,
@pjcdn2005 made some good comments ... I had forgotten about Gallery Plus being free in some categories. That is why it was on by default, they do that in the categories where it is free. Also, I missed that it costs differently for a fixed-price listing (like yours, at $1.00) compared to an auction ($0.35).
That makes it much less likely that the fee was for Gallery Plus, even though it was on. But gallery plus for auctions, and the insertion fee for second category, or listings in excess of 250 in the calendar month, are the only insertion fees that cost $0.35, so it has to be one of those. But maybe being charged in error.
By any chance, do you end your fixed-price listings early, and relist them? With only 9 listings currently, and one sold this month, it seems unlikely that you could have used all your 250 free-insertion-fee listings, but that's the only other option. I did see that you have ended several listings this month, which have not been relisted and don't show up under completed because they didn't end organically.
Can you check your account and see how many of your 250 free-insertion-fee listings you have used, and how many you have left?
reallynicestamps
·2 years agoShipping as a gift means you are encouraging the customer to smuggle in the pen.
US residents have an $800 duty free allowance, so it isn't even useful to them.
No Returns does not mean No Refunds. Your buyer is still covered by eBay's Money Back Guarantee as well as the Buyer Protection policy of Paypal and by the chargeback provisions of their credit card.
The "brand new unused unopened" condition is made incorrect by inking the pen "for testing".
ulfesharpe
OP2 years agoInteresting ideas no doubt, but why are you bringing this up?
reallynicestamps
·2 years agoShipping as a gift means you are encouraging the customer to smuggle in the pen.
US residents have an $800 duty free allowance, so it isn't even useful to them.
When you encourage criminal actions, your customer is more likely to be a criminal - or of a criminal mind.
And if they are happy to cheat their government,they will be equally happy to cheat you.
You have two errors on your listings, either of which could lead to problems in future. Putting them in smaller print and in grey rather than black doesn't mean they will go unnoticed
ulfesharpe
OP2 years ago@reallynicestamps
Not sure I'm following you —
Private Sale means you're not a store but an individual — it's only there to signify that I am normally unable to do replacements, repairs. It is especially useful when you sell fountain pens (which I usually avoid doing because buyers can be picky) but in fact it is has no legal value especially on an international site that has it's own rules. It's in grey and small letters because it's not very important not because I'm trying to disguise some sort of mandatory disclaimer.
But what I really don't get is your "shipping as gift etc", "encouraging smuggling" comment... Are you deducing this from the "private sale" footnote? Again, that's not what it means and it has absolutely nothing to do with shipping terms.
reallynicestamps
·2 years agoYou have this on your listing. Same size letters- but in grey rather than black.
Private Sale. No returns, no replacements
Shipping as g i f t
While you can have a No Returns policy you cannot have a No Refunds policy.
And the buyer is entitled to demand a refund using the Money Back Guarantee rather than a replacement, especially since it is faster and more likely to be satisfactory.
If you cannot do repairs, say "I cannot do repairs".
It's actually better to say nothing, since a normal sale would not be of an item that requires repairs.
Imports that are gifts normally have a higher duty free allowance than commercial imports.
For example, here in Canada my duty free allowance for Portugal (and the EU) is $20, but if my auntie in Napoli sent me a gift, the duty free allowance would be $60.
Marking sales as gifts is cheating on import fees.
It is illegal.
It's in grey and small letters because it's not very important
It's very important.
There is no honest reason to try to hide it.
Edited to add: thank you for correcting this. (Message24)
ulfesharpe
OP2 years ago@reallynicestamps
(30 minutes later...) Ohhh I see now! It's there all right in 1 listing. ahahah that was a crazy ideia when I was a little desperate for cash... I was pretty convinced I had removed it after that moment of folly, that's why I wasn't following your remarks. You know, to make a new listing I always click on "sell a similar item" and I edit a previous description so sometimes I miss a few details. It wasn't even for this pen..
Okay, you are absolutely right, my bad — I will remove it asap. Thank you for bringing it up ðŸ™
ulfesharpe
OP2 years agoThey are insertion fees...
 
Thanks, like @tobaccocardyahoo pointed out something must have changed recently — and caught me off guard.
They probably cut it because this way your listings really sink down even more in the feed and searches and they want you to rescue them with their greedy advertising scheme. Ebay isn't what it was any more.
Thanks, all!
nobody*s_perfect
·2 years agoYou're on the discussion board for the US site. The policies (such as fees and number of free insertions) might be completely different for sellers who are based in Portugal.
ulfesharpe
OP2 years agoI am registered on the US site. There is no ebay.pt. It's the same basic rules and fees. Only difference is in FVF, which includes an international fee if buyer if is outside the US + country VAT + "smart" exchange rate (it is higher when you're paying them and lower when they're paying you)
lacemaker3
·2 years ago@ulfesharpe,
Your screenshot shows that you are paying US$ 0.43 per listing in insertion fees. However, since you are in Portugal, unless you are registered as a business seller (you don't appear to be) and have provided your VAT registration number, eBay is required to charge VAT at the rate for Portugal (23%) on your selling fees.
So, $ 0.43 would be 1.23 times the insertion fee (as it would be charged for a seller in the USA).
$ 0.43 / 1.23 = $ 0.35
That ($ 0.35) is the insertion fee (listing upgrade fee) for Gallery Plus ... can you please check your listings, and see if you have Gallery Plus checked off to be applied to your listings?
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/selling-fees?id=4822#section5
$ 0.35 is also the basic insertion fee for an item listed in a second category, which would be charged if you had listed those items in two categories. I can't see that you did that, but eBay has changed how it shows categories, so I'm not sure if multiple categories can still be seen except by the seller.
I checked Item: 335267306361, Dyson Biro Ballpoint Pen, which is one of the ones shown in your screenshot. As far as I can tell, it is only listed in one category (Collectibles > Pens & Writing Instruments > Pens > Ballpoint Pens > Other Collectible Ballpoint (#7279)) so I think it is more likely to be the Gallery Plus listing upgrade as I mentioned above.
ulfesharpe
OP2 years agoI dont use gallery plus, it's not checked. Nor 2nd categories. Thank you for checking
pjcdn2005
·2 years ago@lacemaker3
I thought at first that it was gallery plus too but it looks like the .35 is for auctions and $1 for gtc listings.
The gallery plus upgrade should be free in collectibles.
lacemaker3
·2 years ago@ulfesharpe, were those the only listings you were charged this fee for?
I noticed that those 4 listings were ended and relisted yesterday. Those are the new item numbers.
Another thought/question: do you also list on any other eBay sites, other than ebay.com?
ulfesharpe
OP2 years agoIndeed, I regularly relist items with no views or no followers in bulk , to pump them up in the feed (my followers will see them on top), so 0.35 is the extra after the 250 listings were over. But i was doing that in previous months too and this was the first time it was charged. Which means i won't be doing this again that often...
And I also list in Bonanza -- it's automated, the listings there are in sync with Ebay's. Does that count as listings here?!
@lacemaker3
lacemaker3
·2 years ago@ulfesharpe
Bonanza is not an eBay website, so copying listings there doesn't count.
Did you confirm that you did go over the 250 listings, then? It sounds like you did. I suppose this must have been the first time you went over the 250 limit.
I'm not really sure that ending and relisting them gives you a boost, though, because eBay is still sorting them by their original listing dates in the newly-listed sort. I highlighted the latest relisting dates for some of your listings (the 4 listings that you just relisted yesterday are in red, 2 earlier ones are in blue), and you can see how they are being sorted:
ulfesharpe
OP2 years ago@lacemaker3 — that was a lot of work! I had noticed that not everything that is relisted appears in the feeds, so your investigation was quite elucidative. Thanks!
I will have to rethink my strategy, I usually have 50 listings and was doing bulk actions to get more views from repeat buyers — a good percentage of my sales are to collectors with specific search tags so I get some more views/watches from their feeds. I'm still forced to promote listings to get decent exposure so I'm not really interested in paying extra for it.
nobody*s_perfect
·2 years agoThe number of free insertions for sellers who don't have a Store has been 250 since 2021, and before that it was 200.
https://www.ebay.com/sellercenter/resources/seller-updates/2021-spring/financials
With the small number of active and Sold listings showing for your account, there should be no insertion fees. But there might be fees for listing upgrades such as subtitles. Listing upgrade fees and insertion fees (if any) are charged when the listing goes live and are generally not refundable (there are a few special circumstances).
For details about the fees on a listing, you can check at the bottom of each listing form before you launch it, or check your itemized invoice from eBay for fees details. Here's an overview of fees for sellers who don't have a Store subscription:
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/selling-fees?id=4822
tobaccocardyahoo
·2 years agoThere were promotions in the past for what seemed like enormous numbers of free listings in selected categories. Now there are 250 unless you pay to have a store.
Listing fees were always charged when you list unless they were free.
The free listing promotions always has an end date each month, and eventually Ebay stopped offering them.
Second categories were always billed.
kensgiftshop
·2 years agoAre you sure its insertion fee's and not a listing upgrade fee?
I see 9 listed and 1 sold this month, so there shouldn't be any insertion fee's.
solidguitar1961
·2 years ago2020 is when I remember