Real sellers actual fee's.
Summary: The discussion centers around the fees charged by an online marketplace to sellers, which some participants feel are higher than communicated. happyrcflyer shares strategies for minimizing these fees and expresses frustration over being charged on taxes and shipping fees. Other users, such as bashort, mention that paying fees on the shipping costs prevents sellers from inflating these costs to bypass fees. Several contributors argue the fees are standard in the industry, with theteamsetguy and others defending the current structure as typical practice. The conversation touches on eBay's promotion fees, historical practices, and alternative methods for sellers to incorporate these fees into pricing.
E-bay tells the buyers that us sellers are only being charged a small, marginal, tiny fee, but the reality is hardly that way at all. Going with a typical listing it comes out to 18% or more.
They are getting away with it because they are not only charging a percent from the sale price of the item, they are charging that same percent for taxes and shipping fee's, neither of which you are seeing a dime out of yourself but you are still paying fee's to them for it.
mam98031
·1 week ago@happyrcflyer Exactly where are you seeing that Ebay tells buyers this information?
The average selling fee on Ebay is around 13.6%. Now some sellers CHOOSE to pay more fees to use Promoted listings, but that is completely up to each seller to set the additional selling fees they are willing to pay for a sale. It is not required. And there are other upgrades to a listing that a seller can CHOOSE to pay more on the listing.
As for charging fees on the total amount the buyer has paid, this is pretty typical for ANY money processor and site like this one. It is NOT unusual nor is it "getting away" with anything. It is simply typical for the industry.
Yes we pay fees to Ebay for using their site. They provide us with a service and they should be paid. They built, maintain and improve the site for over 30 years. That all costs real money. In turn we get to have the items we post here seen by millions and millions and millions of people. Do you feel you can do that on your own? Without paying any other site or company fees? Perhaps your own website? That costs money too. Then you need to pay to drive traffic to it.
zakstreasuretrove
·1 week agoDo like the restaurants and many others when they charge a fee for using a card. Add a percentage to the item price. Everyone you buy from nickels and dimes you to death. It the price of a no trust/max greed business world.
If it makes you feel better, they are likely not seeing any of the money from taxes and shipping either, but they sure see the processing fee which they happily pass on to you. Return the favor and pass it to your customers. I hate it too, but remember that your neighbor or that dumb kid you know has Amazon deliveries EVERY day so they do not care or even think about about the extra charge. The ones that do care (i.e. you and me) get mad and still pay it because what are we going to do about it other than pass the cost along to the end buyer. I guess the secret to success is not to be the end buyer.
skitchtorch
·1 week agoskitchtorch
·1 week agoI make the buyer pay my fees. I do this two ways: I set a minimum price I will sell an item for to make an acceptable profit then I add 10%. I also don't pass along the shipping discount I get when I buy shipping on eBay.
I recently sold an item for $5. Buyer paid $8.30 in shipping, I paid $5.83 for shipping. My order net earnings were $5.28. So, I paid no fee, the buyer paid the fee. I even netted above the selling price! The buyer even left positive feedback.
Many of my transactions work out this way.
monroe67
·2 weeks ago"E-bay tells the buyers that us sellers are only being charged a small, marginal, tiny fee, but the reality is hardly that way at all."
I have never seen any thing, any notice, any announcement, in which eBay tells buyers what sellers are charged.
Indeed, as a buyer, I don't care what the seller is paying to eBay. For all I know, the things I have bought recently on eBay have been from sellers who voluntarily chose to pay eBay an additional 15% in return for higher placement of their listings among others in their category. That 15% would be in addition to eBay's Final Value Fee which is 13.6% for most items on eBay.
Likewise, I do not know -- or want to know -- what my local Nordstrom or Barnes & Noble or Victoria's Secret or any other retail store -- is paying in rent to the shopping malls where the stores are located.
Experienced eBay sellers know and accept eBay's fee structure and work within it.
theteamsetguy
·2 weeks ago@happyrcflyer ,
Same as a restaurant owner the gets charged 3.9% of the sales taxes and tips. The owner does see any of the sales tax or tips that go to the servers.
If eBay didn’t charge their fees on shipping then you will have a bunch of sellers charging a $1.00 for the item and charge $100.00 for shipping. The sellers that offer free shipping which is really just shipping fees wrapped into the price of the item would be at a big disadvantage to the sellers that didn’t.
reallynicestamps
·2 weeks agoI've been selling here since 1998 and since Billpoint arrived circa 2004, I've calculated fees at about 20%.
At that time fees for listing and pictures were higher.
Around 2010 eBay started charging fees on both sale price and shipping.
Later yet, eBay charged fee for sale price+ shipping+ sales taxes which they were now required to collect .
However while the amount rose, the actual percentage of that entire payment went down.
A few categories are as low as 5% some like books are 15%. But again on the ENTIRE payment.
And eBay shipping labels are discounted from counter prices now.
So my 20% guesstimate has always been too high.
happyrcflyer
OP2 weeks agoThat makes absolutely no sense. They were charging a fee in 98, which was about 3 years before I started selling on Ebay with a different account. Charging for just the price of the item fee and policies against exaggerating the shipping fee to avoid being charged the seller fee for the item itself. They then now charge flat rate on the whole package, shipping, tax and the item, this is not decreased, this is increased rates being charged. Back then the categories I was selling in did not require paying to list at first, it came in later for that matter and going back to those and other things, it's pay to list and then hope within 30 days it sells. That's of course still with the sales fee's afterwards on top of it. I am running my numbers, adding up everything, it's close to 20%.
happyrcflyer
OP2 weeks agoHow can they justify a fee for something the seller makes nothing off of though, taxes and shipping labels are nothing we can mark up and gain a commission from, but apparently they can when it's taken from us. I can't believe it's legal. Also, they are doing us no favors on the rates for the labels, Pirateship does that for us just the same without them.
gurlcat
·2 weeks agoThey don't have to justify it @happyrcflyer . It's SO simple: If you feel it's too expensive, you don't have to use it. Why not ask how Rolex and Rolls-Royce justify their prices?
albertabrightalberta
·1 week ago · Edited@happyrcflyer
I don't think your memory is as good as you think it is.
Back 25-30 years ago, final value fees were lower than they are now. But other parts of listing and selling were considerably higher.
There were fees for insertions and depending on the starting price of auctions, fees fluctuated.
There were fees for additional pictures after the first (free) one. IIRC, it was 15 cents per picture after the first.
There was an additional fee to add a BIN price to a listing.
If you added certain upgrades to the listing, there was an additional charge for each.
Listings similar to what I have now for free would cost me between $3 and $5 to list.
I'm saving several hundred dollars per month compared to what I paid to list in 2001. (I do not have a store so what I spend per month is based on fees and free listings.)
reallynicestamps
·1 week agoIN 1998 the payment system was different.
Buyers paid with cash, cheques, or money orders. (And fraud was rife.)
When they introduced Billpoint and later Paypal, which allowed traceable payment and ended the "Western Union Fraud" they stayed with the fee on purchase only but then the "99c item/$99 shipping" fraud appeared.
So they moved to fees on both. This also benefited those of us who used Free Shipping, a promotion gimmick which raised the price of the item and thus our fees.
Fees on the entire payment has been the industry standard since the mid-50s.
The sales tax etc came late with changes to the laws governing internet commerce.
ten_o_nine
·2 weeks agoAt first glance, I thought this post was 10 years old.
luckythewinner
·2 weeks agoMy fees are EXACTLY what eBay tells me they are.
I have never had eBay tell me they charge a "small, marginal, tiny fee".
Where - SPECIFICALLY - does eBay tell us that?
shado-x
·2 weeks ago · EditedThe first complaint I saw for this was just after Meg Whitman was the CEO of eBay. Get over it. The culprit is the US Postal Service, not eBay at all. You could blame Jon Donahue who came after Whitman and destroyed Nike. He was the one who really raised the fees; yet again, it still is not eBay, it is the US Postal Service raising postage rates without accountability. If Postal rates were lowered to the levels in 2000, no one would be complaining about eBay fees in the least except those few.
theteamsetguy
·2 weeks ago@shado-x ,
The last time I checked most people that where sneakers have Nike’s or Converse which is owned by Nike.
Nike had over $46,000,000,000.00 is sales in fiscal year 2026 and netting over $3,200,000,000.00 after taxes being destroyed? Not very many companies can say they make over a billion dollars a year.
gurlcat
·2 weeks ago@shado-x The USPS should lower their rates to what they were in 2000? WHAT?? 🤣 Never mind the fact that no other products or services "should" have to do that, what do you think USPS vehicles run on, bacon grease and nostalgia? Have you heard fuel prices are sky high now? And why are you always bringing up USPS, why not FedEx or UPS? If they're more affordable, heck, USE THEM.
chapeau-noir
·2 weeks ago · Edited@hartungcards is not here, so I'll stand in. You lost me at "small, marginal, tiny fee".
pickapaper
·2 weeks agoI would rather pay eBay a percentage on the sales tax they are required to collect from buyers than have to deal with collecting the tax and having to remit those taxes to all those states myself.
eBay charges a fee on shipping because back in the day when eBay just charged a fee on the selling price, sellers were charging $1.00 for an item and $50.00 for shipping or other such inflated shipping prices to avoid fees.
On most transactions, we pay about 13.5% in fees. If you are paying 18%, you are paying for promotions which is your choice. A lot of us do not use promoted listings.
roccotacodad54
·2 weeks agoI don't sell but do buy often. It doesn't matter to me what eBay says about fees.
I assume that the seller is including a cusion (at least) in the price to cover those fees.
If the overall price including shipping etc. is agreeable, I buy. If not I don't.....................
stephenmorgan
·2 weeks agoAs a buyer I have never had eBay tell me what the seller is paying in Fees. How did you receive this information? Is this something new?
I think there is something in the Promotion agreement that you will pay the promotion fee for up to 30 days after a promotion is ended. Are you saying it does not work this way if you accept an offer?
happyrcflyer
OP2 weeks agoThere is a way to see all of the details on the transactions, you have to click over a few spots to find it. It's not exactly legal to be charging a fee for taxes and shipping labels but they get away with it for now because they have not been taken to court upon. The buyers are not aware of what kind of a mark up is needing to be added to cover the fee's so they assume what ever the rate is is not getting dinged more thus will find the same thing online elsewhere cheaper.
squinkercat59
·2 weeks agoIt's completely legal. They are charging a fee to process the entire transaction, no different than countless other companies.
reallynicestamps
·2 weeks agoIt's not only legal, it has been Standard Practice in the payment processing industry since Diner's Club introduced the credit card circa 1954.
theteamsetguy
·2 weeks ago@reallynicestamps ,
You are correct. Before selling on eBay I did mail order via catalog and magazine ads. I took all major credit cards, and they have always charged their processing fee on any sales taxes or shipping fees I collected.
Just because a seller like @happyrcflyer doesn’t agree or like something makes it illegal. Also, sellers agreed to the eBay fee structure when they agreed to the TOS when they opened their account.
inhawaii
·2 weeks ago"E-bay tells the buyers that us sellers are only being charged a small, marginal, tiny fee"
No, they don't.
"Going with a typical listing it comes out to 18% or more."
No, it doesn't.
"They are getting away with it because they are not only charging a percent from the sale price of the item, they are charging that same percent for taxes and shipping fee's, neither of which you are seeing a dime out of yourself but you are still paying fee's to them for it."
Yes, they do that. They tell you that they do that up front. No surprise. Besides, you agree to it when you sell here.
bashort
·2 weeks ago · Edited18% of the item sold price in fees and higher is really common,
Sell a $25 item with $6.5 in buyer paid shipping and 7.5% sales tax and the fees will be $4.58 which is 18.33% of $25
Sell the same item with $15 shipping and the fees are 22.8%
reallynicestamps
·2 weeks agoAnd don't forget the 40c service fee.
bashort
·2 weeks ago · EditedYou are correct, fees are on the total the buyer pays.
You will still be charged for the promotion even if you remove it for the next 30 days.
happyrcflyer
OP2 weeks agoI'm handling all offers now as just creating a separate custom listing without the promotions. I'm also going to duplicate each listing to have it's non promoted counter part linked to from the main one. I am the manufacturer so they can bite me along duplicate listing games since I can produce as many of the same item as I want.
stephenmorgan
·2 weeks agoOk, so it is not that you are able to remove the promotion from a listing if you get a offer. You create a new listing with the offered price and sell it without a promotion being attached to the new listing. That is a pretty ingenious way to avoid the promotion fee.
reallynicestamps
·2 weeks agoI wonder what the minimum wage is in their state?
Here the minimum wage is 30.4 cents a minute.
A five minute task costs $1.52 in labour.
happyrcflyer
OP2 weeks ago$17.13 per hour for Washington state. E-bay staff rates" They are all in India": Key Details on Minimum Wages in India
No Single National Rate: Each state and union territory decides its own mandatory pay scale. Unskilled monthly minimums range from roughly ₹7,410 ($78) in states like Rajasthan to over ₹24,400 ($257) in major urban centers like Bengaluru.
monroe67
·2 weeks ago"E-bay staff rates" They are all in India": Key Details on Minimum Wages in India"
No, eBay employees are NOT "all in India."
Why do you care what an average eBay employee earns per hour?
What is the point of this whole thread?
"eBay is bad" ?? "eBay is greedy" ??
"eBay doesn't hire people in California" ??
gurlcat
·1 week agoTo be fair it was not them but someone else^ who brought up the totally off-topic "wage" thing.
reallynicestamps
·1 week agoEBay uses a third party call centre with employees in Utah and in the Philippines.
Their main staff is in Seattle.
soh.maryl
·1 week agoAsked this previously, but my message was not posted, so will ask again, is the MINIMUM hourly rate in Washington actually $17.13 per hour? Another poster gave a minute rate which added up, I think, to $30/hour. That message disappeared also, don't know why.
reallynicestamps
·1 week agoThat may have been me. Here in BC the minimum wage is $18.25Cdn per hour which is $0.304 per minute.
I find it a useful comparison because most people don't really put a cost on their own labour.
If I do a task that saves me a dollar, but costs me ten minutes or $3 in labour, doing that task is too expensive.
If you need US dollars to understand this, the exchange rate is 70cUSD = $1.00 Cdn.
happyrcflyer
OP2 weeks agoThanks, I also do get custom requests for bundles as well which I create custom listings for. I have a website and it's set up for taking orders from, everybody get's a slip of paper pointing to it in their packages.
fern*wood
·1 week agoSo you are using ebay to advertise your website, but still think ebay charges you too much for their services. weird
gurlcat
·1 week ago · Edited@stephenmorgan That was one of a few strategies I considered when the new promotion model was rolling out. In theory it sounds good and I'm sure it can work, but the tricky part would be how much to set the BIN price for. You'd want it high enough to avoid someone just paying it without making an offer (cuz if they did that, you'd pay the fee) .... but if you price it too high above your desired fetch range, buyers might think you're just too crazy to even make offers to. This would be especially risky if there are numerous other sellers' listings of the same item, at more reasonable prices.
theteamsetguy
·2 weeks ago@happyrcflyer ,
Why don’t you just add 20% of the shipping and estimated sales tax to the price of your items like most successful businesses on eBay does?
happyrcflyer
OP2 weeks agoI don't set the going market rate, the buyers see only that and that alone.
theteamsetguy
·2 weeks ago@happyrcflyer ,
When you sell and item for $40.00 plus $14.00 for taxes and shipping. The ebay fees for the taxes and shipping are only $ 1.87. You tell me that by raising your price to $42.00 to cover the extra fees will make your buyer not buy the item?
gurlcat
·1 week agoNOW you're cooking with Crisco.
gurlcat
·2 weeks ago"You will still be charged for the promotion even if you remove it for the next 30 days."
@bashort That is how the old version of General Promotions worked, but it changed in January. Now you only get charged for promotion if you have it turned on a the time the sale occurs. You can add it, remove it, increase it, decrease it, all that matters is what it is at the time of the sale. -And if you had at least one view via promotion (and it doesnt' even matter if the person who buys saw it via promotion). That's the rub of the new version.