Fees

[charmsong789]

And to top it off, they charge a final value fee on taxes!  REALLY!  That seems a bit illegal.  They are definitely continuing to take the fun out of selling on eBay.  No wonder most sellers and customers are so frustrated.  They are picking the meat from our starving bones.  I've been a member for almost 20 years.  Instead of going uphill, eBay has chosen to go downhill.

[wvpeddler]

When you go to the store and buy something the whole amount including sales tax is charged to your credit card and the store pays the processing fee on the whole thing including sales tax. No different.

[fredoniacoinandtreasure]

When you were on paypal payments it was the same, in fact my main account has not transitioned yet and I pay the PP fee on the taxes. Now I think what ebay is doing is charging the processing fee and the final value fee on the tax, so that triples the cost, giving the lie to their statement about how it will save money. But seriously, I already know there are things I can sell on ebay and be happy, and things I can't sell here and must sell in other venues. That's why I have a brick and mortar store, sell at shows, sell on other websites and here too. All this does is move more of the marginal stuff off of ebay to be sold another way.

[hotrod168]

Technically yes, but it's worth noting that regular card processing fees can be as low as 3-5% of the total transaction amount (plus the flat per transaction fee, which is usually less than $0.50). For example, our terminal here in the office is 2.3% for VISA/Master/Discover, with AMEX slightly higher at 3%. I don't recall exactly what PayPal's current rates are (think it was around 2.9%), but they were at least comparable to those numbers.

In contrast, eBay is actually applying the *entire* Final Value Fee for the relative listing category, similar to how they calculate the fees for any shipping charges invoiced on an order. Under MP, that's 10.5% for eBay Motors with a store subscription (and soon to be 10.7%), or almost five times more than the 2.3% I'd normally pay on any sales tax processed through my inhouse terminal. It may not seem like much, but that can easily add up to thousands of dollars per year for some sellers, especially for those where freight costs compound those fees even further (some states charge sales tax on s&h as well). That's more than enough to negate whatever savings MP would have otherwise wrought, which feels a bit dirty for a program that promoted cost saving benefits as a major selling point.

Now, if eBay calculated their processing fees on the sales tax portion using a rate similar to those standard card processors, it would be hard to argue against. That is within the norm. But unless eBay is providing these processing services at a loss (which I highly doubt), they are already theoretically improving their bottom-line anyway by cutting out the middleman. So, outside of simply being greedy, how do you justify charging the entire FVF on the sales tax?