mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
@jetsons123 wrote:I agree.
Almost not worth the headache.
sold a group of 11 books for a $103Charged $25 for shipping media mail (actual shipping was $25.35)
Buyer seems to be in a state with 10.25% sales tax.So they valued the total sale as a $141 and the total fees ended up being $20.83
So that is 20.22% of the sale going to ebay fees
I can take my items to an auctioneer that will sell on Hibid for 25% fees.
So for an extra 4.78% they will handle all of the photos, listings, selling, packing and shipping.
May be thinking twice about using Ebay again and just taking all of my stuff to them.
To your shipping cost vs what you charge for shipping, you simply need to raise the amount you charge your buyer as clearly you have underestimated it.
Somewhere along the line your math is off. There isn't a category on Ebay that has that high of fees.
"So they valued the total sale as a $141 and the total fees ended up being $20.83
So that is 20.22% of the sale going to ebay fees "
That is 14.77% [20.83 divided by 141.00]
@jetsons123 wrote:I come up with 20.22% because I dont collect the sales tax and I dont collect the shipping, all I collect is what the books sold for. Shipping goes to the post off and the sales tax goes to the state. I collected a $103 for the sale of the books. Divide the final value fee of $20.83 by the sale price of the books which is $103 and the total final value fee is 20.22%
When they charge 14.55% on the tax and the shipping as well, that additional fee comes out of the amount i received for the sale of the books. Now i could charge twice as much for the shipping to try and recoup some of that but instead I charged the actual shipping cost (although i missed it by a few cents) and i have no control over the taxes.
Ebay has never worked that way. You charge a separate charge for shipping, you DO receive that money. Because you spend it all with your Vendor [USPS] doesn't change the fact that you receive the money. I can only see 3 sales. On one you charged 3.99 for shipping and it would qualify for Media Mail which will likely cost $2.89. Nothing wrong with that, but the difference is enough to cover your fees on shipping and that is certainly helpful.
You are trying to calculate the fees in a way that they aren't intended. So I can't be of any help to you. You have an unusual way of looking at this, but hey as long as it works for you, that is terrific.
So for you and your rather unique way of wanting to look at fees, you need to go back and calculate it the same way before you entered MP. There can't be that much of a difference.
Then there is the fact that PP is raising their fees as of August 2nd.
You can buy media mail postage on Ebay [or any other online provider] for 2.89. Ebay can't or shouldn't be held responsible because YOU have chosen to pay FULL retail. That one is all on you. Ebay is correct, 3.99 would more than cover MM rate if purchased online. You've decided to go a more expensive way for whatever reason you have.
No need to try and educate me about how shipping works. I've been at this for a long time on multiple sites.
A little correction, you DO get to keep the money you charge for shipping. You then pay a vendor for the carrier charges, but all sellers are given the money buyers pay for shipping. Sales tax, you are absolutely correct. Ebay takes on the job of collecting and remitting sales tax due to some specific laws in about 46 states. It saves us from having to do it ourselves.
I don't pay 20% fees to Ebay. I don't know how you are calculating your fees, but something isn't quite right.
For example.
A $20 sale with 4.00 for shipping and lets say 2.00 in sales tax is a total of $26.00
$26.00 X 14.55% [Media FVF I think] = 3.78 FVF + .30 Per transaction fee is $4.08 total.
The 30 cent fee is the same in MP as it was in PP [except it move to 49 cents in PP as of August 2nd] and is charged on every transaction whether that transaction was for $1.00 or $10,000.
@plpunlimited wrote:I just sold an item for $2000 which had a sales tax of $160, so I had to pay about $20 in commission on just the sales tax. It does seem unethical to be profiting on commission on the sales taxes.
Most of my items sell in the less than $10 sale price range, and fees from tax plus shipping generally result in about 45% cost of what I sold the item for. Makes it really tough to actually make any money. Charging higher shipping fees usually results in not being able to even sell a lot of items.
It is a seller's job to set pricing on what they sell, not Ebay. Also you cost to ship doesn't belong anywhere near the numbers when you are trying to calculate your Ebay fees. Shipping is NOT an Ebay fee, it is a cost you pay to your carrier. The two are simply not the same. And if you are calculating this 45% fee without any consideration to the money you collect for shipping, then that again is throwing your calculations way off.
If you aren't charging enough in shipping to cover your costs, then you need to raise your shipping price to your buyers. If you have decided not to do that because it decreases your sales, then that is just something you have to decide for yourself, however that doesn't in turn make it Ebay's fault nor a part of anything Ebay charges you.
99 cent listings are going to be incredibly difficult to even break even on much less make a profit. I know, I did it too years ago. You are better off figuring out a better way to sell those low cost items. Putting them together in lots or something that you feel might work. It may take some testing to find out what works best for you.
Good Luck.
@lovett-1000 wrote:Greed and truly one day e bay will fall because of it. They fee postage and now fee tax on all sales + the item value. It should be against the law to fee a USPS government service and is really wrong to fee a tax. I make most of my sales to Florida. I know why it is one of the few or only state that dose not tax their on line buyers. E bay has fell like mad in the last 3 years all the rift raft and hassle of being paid. E bay feeing everything under the sun. The old saying as 1 will go another will come is not happing anymore. To many wrong things happening to new sellers so they only last a little while. And all the greed wrong changes to internet trade has run off many old time and good sellers. If e bay dose not make some changes. Like stop feeing taxes and feeing postage that is getting outrages before the fee. In lots of items 3 years ago they had 1000s of listings. Now same items or categories has fell to 100s not 1000s. And prices has gone up to amounts that with the fee and the cost of postage is more than the item is worth. E bay is still full of the China .99 cent deals on smaller things. Because they get the postage e pack break. That U.S. sellers can not compete with. As it cost around $4 in postage and fees on it just to mail the smallest item. China can mail it for penny's. And the American tax payer foots the bill every year by giving Billions to U.S.P.S to subsidize the real cost. eBay could take some lesions from Etsy. I sell many things on week ends that am paid for on Monday from Etsy. Things sold on eBay you wait longer to be paid. You reach a point where you do not care anymore. Just laugh at the greed raise the price up to accommodate the wrong to high fees added. Hope buyer can afford the item without felling ripped off. Hope your item will not be out sourced by high postage and fees making it not worth what you have to charge. I hope all that reads my post the very best. Keep trying.
Florida does now have a MFL [marketplace facilitator law] in place. Ebay started collecting sales tax for Florida and Kansas as of July 1st.
Fees on shipping is a normal thing for sites such as Ebay to do. All the other similar sites with their own money processors do the same thing and have for years before Ebay even started it. IDK about the smaller sites and their fee structures.
@gbodytoys wrote:Shipping cost aside, the fact that the profit margin on an item is based on the what state that the buyer has the item shipped to is absolutely absurd.
How can a seller calculate pricing if their net profit always depends on that sales tax rate of a state? Yikes.
Well that is an easy one. By using an average. On some sales you will be high a little and on others you will be a little low. Overall you should be just fine. This isn't some huge fee that you can't make room for. You are likely talking about $1 per $100 worth of sales. So simply add a few cents to each product price you have and you'll be just fine. It isn't the national debt.
Also keep in mind there still are a few states where we do not have sales tax. So you will clear more money on these sales. I did a six month comparison between fees paid in MP and fees paid before MP. In EVERY month I paid slightly less in MP than I did before. So it is much closer to a neutral change.
And now with the current fee increases that PayPal has made, we all save even more money than if we were still in PayPal.
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