No Fees Plan coming to Australia for Some eBay Sellers
Some Australian ebay sellers have received a notice similar to this (there seem to be a few variations being sent, depending on the seller's current status, I guess). And also note that, although the email doesn't mention it, the free sellers' buyers apparently will be charged a transaction fee instead:
Coming at the end of April, we're introducing updates to improve our online marketplace and make selling easier. Learn more about the changes and what they mean for you below.
What this means for you
We’re updating our subscriptions for sellers who want more flexibility and control or who sell higher volumes.
This includes a new Pro Starter plan subscription for sellers who use advanced selling features, like multi-quantity and multi-variation listings.
Based on your usage of these selling features, we believe you’ll have the best selling experience with a Pro Starter plan.
- The Pro Starter plan reflects your current selling experience and includes access to advanced selling features, as well as expanded shipping and payout options and additional customer support.
- This plan has no monthly cost and you will continue to pay final value fees, as you do today.
"We’re introducing free selling in late April for Australia-based sellers with up to $25,000 in sales annually. Eligible sellers will no longer pay transaction fees when they sell on eBay.com.au, across all categories.
Learn more about selling fees and how your sales are evaluated.
Free selling is intended for sellers with simpler selling needs and does not include access to advanced selling features or scheduled payouts. These sellers will have to buy labels on eBay for eligible items. A Buyer Protection fee will also be added to their listings and paid by the buyer to eBay.
Based on your current selling activity, you'll qualify for free selling.
You don’t need to do anything right now; we’ll confirm your eligibility in late April and explain how you can cancel the Pro Starter plan if you would rather take advantage of free selling. If you choose to cancel, you will lose access to the selling features available in the Pro Starter plan.
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This is obviously part of ebay's push to increase C to C sellers. Whether something like this will come to the US remains to be seen. I suspect @valueaddedresource will cover this in some detail in her blog in the near future.
dhbookds
·5 months agoWonder if you can have 2 kinds of accounts?
bennotbill
·5 months agoIn the UK I can have both business and private accounts. As Australia is money based I guess it depends on how it's measured. Whether id's are treated individually or all a user accounts id's are included.
bennotbill
·5 months agoLike the UK Australia is getting one of the big minuses of this scheme. Online payments only, no more cash on collection.
Kills a lot of pickups. For example you sell your fridge settee whatever. It gets picked up and later the buyer opens a INAD return. Then you find yourself having to pay return shipping costs if you want it back.
kibble-net
·5 months agoIf implemented in the US, this will likely push buyers toward buying from full time sellers, or toward other platforms. Americans are sick of being nickel and dimed from additional checkout fees. We're tired of being asked to tip 30% with the touch of an ipad. I don't think this will fly, but I could be wrong. I'm not a prognosticator. Just my 5 cents 🙂
valueaddedresource
·5 months ago@kibble-net FWIW, in the UK the price shown on the listing for private sellers is inclusive of the Buyer Protection fee, so it's not a shock extra fee that you only see it checkout.
Here are some screenshots I took when they first rolled it out in the UK last year and as far as I know, this is still how it works there.
It will be the same in Australia and I expect also the same if/when it comes to the US.
Funny side note, a couple weeks before the big acquisition announcement, Depop was hit with a class action over this exact thing - their US site only shows their "marketplace fee" charged to the buyer at checkout and the plaintiff alleges that violates California laws against junk fees and "drip pricing."
That lawsuit is ongoing, so it will be interesting to see how that works with the acquisition and all but either way, I expect eBay will be cleaning that up on Depop once it's officially theirs and that any implementation of a buyer fee for the main US eBay site would also use fee inclusive pricing to avoid additional lawsuits.
That being said, some buyers may still be turned off by the idea of a buyer fee, even if it is included in the price displayed on the listing, so the change would definitely not be without risk to eBay which is why they have been rolling it out in smaller markets first.
mcdougle4248
·5 months ago@valueaddedresource
Sorry if this is a dumb question. Are the advanced marketing and discount tools shown in the chart the same tools I see under the Marketing tab (I have a Starter Store subscription)?
valueaddedresource
·5 months ago@mcdougle4248 not a dumb question at all.
Yes, it looks like in Australia, they have pretty much the same options under the Marketing tab that we have in the US, with the exception of there not being an option for Shipping discount from what I can see.
https://www.ebay.com.au/help/selling/selling-tools/discounts-manager?id=4094#section1
That being said, that part of the chart is a little confusing to me. The wording there seems to indicate all advanced marketing and discount tools will be restricted to the paid Pro plans, but then in other sections it only specifically calls out volume pricing, leaving it unclear whether the other discount types will still be available or not for the Pro Starter plan.
Also important to note that previously, Australia did not have a cheaper/smaller Starter Store like we do in the US - they only had Basic, Featured, and Anchor.
So the free Starter Pro plan seems like just an easy way for them to designate accounts that do enough in sales to not qualify for fee-free selling, but that don't want to pay for the benefits that would have previously been included with a "store"/now included with the paid Pro plans.
I know US sellers have been saying for years that they'd like to see eBay redo how the Store tiers are set up so that there isn't such a big jump between some of them, so if/when this comes to the US, maybe they'll address that too?
Either way, I would expect in general that paid tiers would keep access to all discount tools, so if you're worried that they might eventually take it away for Starter for the US, I think that's probably unlikely - unless they make Starter free and make those who want Store benefits move to Basic.
mcdougle4248
·5 months ago@valueaddedresource Thank you!
"-unless they make Starter free and make those who want Store benefits move to Basic." This is exactly what I was wondering about. I will just wait and see if/when this comes to the US.
meme6253
·5 months agoVery interesting, I hope we are kept informed & updated about any possible timeline that this may be implemented here.
valueaddedresource
·5 months ago@meme6253 based on the reactions I'm seeing over on the Australian boards, it would appear the email sellers just received is the first notice they've had, with the changes slated to take effect in ~30 Days (some parts say May 1st, others just say "late April").
I would expect if/when it comes to the US it will be similar, the announcement will likely be a surprise but there will be some amount of lead time before it goes into effect.
meme6253
·5 months agoSo we just wait & see if we get a surprise announcement.
valueaddedresource
·5 months agoHere are some links with more info for anyone interested in how this is going to play out in Australia:
https://pages.ebay.com.au/free-selling-is-coming/
The Buyer Fee will only be on items purchased from non-Pro sellers and will be calculated as:
There are also some changes to payouts for non-Pro sellers, including having to manually withdraw funds On Demand with no option for regularly scheduled automatic payouts.
eBay is also making access to certain features like multi-quantity listings, listings with variations, volume pricing, third-party integrations, bulk listing tools, and product research Pro only.
This chart lays out most of the differences between non-pro and the various pro levels.
valueaddedresource
·5 months ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques done. 😉
My short take on it is that it makes sense for Australia to be the next place for eBay to make these changes, especially with competition from Vinted there and everything else we've been seeing lately with the broader global consumer to consumer (C2C) pivot eBay is currently undertaking.
One of the most interesting things to me is that it appears they are not going full on managed shipping like Simple Delivery in the UK - instead, it looks like existing shipping offerings will pretty much stay the same, but non-Pro sellers will just be locked into buying their labels through eBay for most items, with a few exceptions.
If it works the way it appears to from what I've read so far, that would be less complicated than Simple Delivery in the UK and may provide an easier framework for how eBay might bring something similar to the US in the future.
That being said, I'm still digging more into the details about how postage will work there, so my opinion on this may change.
I know one of the big questions for a possible US version has always been that business vs personal/casual seller has traditionally been a less important distinction here than in the UK and I think what they're doing in Australia also provides a framework for how that could work here too with it being based on a dollar amount threshold over a rolling 12 month period.
As I've said before, I think it will likely eventually come to the US in some form, the question is what criteria will be used - will it be limited to only certain categories, where they will draw the line on business vs casual seller etc. - and I would not be surprised if we hear more about that by the end of the year.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
OP5 months ago@valueaddedresource I agree. The UK (and I think the EU) make this easier because they already have a LEGAL distinction in place between business and private sellers. Internally, in the US, ebay has always had a definition of "Consumer" seller vs business seller, and it appears that is what they are using (perhaps with some tweaking) to create the distinction in Australia and something similar is what they are likely to use if this comes here.
ebay "US" (dotcom) is the big kahuna, and I suspect ebay wants to tread carefully before doing something similar here. So Australia is the latest testing ground.