eBay

thevintageparadise · ‎08-11-2022

I understand back in the old days people skirted around paying fees by making the item 99 cents but then charging $100 for shipping. It was a shady practice but those days are long gone. Now that we have calculated shipping why am i being charged 12-15% of what it actually costs to ship an item?

Calculated shipping doesn't make any sense if i'm losing money every single time i ship something. I also noticed that ebay is charging people ridiculous amounts for FIRST CLASS SHIPPING. I just had a buyer charged $10.80 for first class shipping on something that won't cost more than $5 to ship. Problem is i can't just refund them the difference because eBay is not only charging me the 13-15%, they are doing so on this ridiculously inflated number.

Yet on all other shipping options (parcel select, priority etc) the buyer is charged the actual amount it costs to ship so i have to eat the 13-15% on shipping on every order. eBay says oh but you're saving money printing the label on eBay....but that "savings" is passed on you the buyer - it's not like shipping costs $7 at the post office and $5 on eBay but the buyer pays the $7....they pay the $5 so we're just bleeding money on shipping every single time.

Am i missing something?

gkn29 · ‎08-11-2022

You pay a percentage of the TOTAL COST of the item which includes the item, shipping, and any taxes paid by the buyer.

That's how it is.

he/him/guy/dude...you get the picture

luckythewinner · ‎08-11-2022

I understand back in the old days people skirted around paying fees by making the item 99 cents but then charging $100 for shipping. It was a shady practice but those days are long gone. Now that we have calculated shipping why am i being charged 12-15% of what it actually costs to ship an item?

Fee avoidance was not the only reason eBay started charging fees on shipping.

Another important reason was to remove the financial penalty for sellers who offered Free Shipping, because Free Shipping is something that eBay actively promotes and encourages.

And the third reason is obvious: eBay makes more money this way, and sellers have demonstrated for a decade now that they are willing to pay it.

m60driver · ‎08-11-2022

@thevintageparadise wrote:
I understand back in the old days people skirted around paying fees by making the item 99 cents but then charging $100 for shipping. It was a shady practice but those days are long gone.

Am i missing something?

Yea, you are missing something. It was not a shady practice, back in the early days it was encouraged. Meg Whitman put on a pedestal the seller who use to list all his CDs starting at 1¢ with some profit baked into his shipping price.

joseh1445 · ‎08-11-2022

eBay is going broke, and it needs more money to pay the bills and employees...

nobody*s_perfect · ‎08-11-2022

Sellers could still "game the system" with calculated shipping by using an inflated weight, and purchasing postage elsewhere. eBay cannot put themselves in a position of penalizing sellers for whom flat rate shipping works better, or sellers who purchase their postage elsewhere. As noted in another post, one of the reasons that eBay went to this fee system was to avoid penalizing sellers who offer Free shipping.

If your buyer is being charged a high price for First Class, then apparently the shipping calculator in your listing is set to charge the retail price, so it jumps up to Priority Mail if you enter a weight above 13 ounces.

dealsn0 · ‎08-11-2022

I'm so With you!! Lose Lose 4 us Win Win Win for eBay F this After this Last Sale I think I'm throwing in the towel & Saying So Long to eBay. It's Very Sad since I've been with eBay since 2009 /2010. And every year since then they've been a pretty big part of my life between the buying and selling and shopping for buying and selling LoL in the ups and downs, and bringing in my family and siblings to sell right alongside me but sadly image just getting greedy and all for themselves overly way too much it's just not worth it anymore and so much has changed over the years that I'm just ready between the money I've lost between packages getting lost or people fibbing saying they didn't get it and now give cards I have people trying to scam me out of those and it just seems eBay is more and more out to help the scammers slash the buyers way more than they are the honest & quite frankly hard working sellers. I just sold an item on the 4th August 4th for around $1,500 bucks they charged my buyer $1,625. with taxes I guess and my payout which 8 or 9 days later I'm still waiting on even though I've been with them some 12 -13 years "if counting my old eBay" but now they're holding the money until it shows that it was delivered so here it's the 11th now and $ 1,294.53. THATS just insane. And it's funny too how they try and hide it sneakily and show me they only charge my buy or 15 something something but if you look deeper into it they charge $100 and some dollars in tax on top of it they're just pocketing it, & if any if we're lucky to have any little bit of shipping left over , which used to help cover eBay fees and other incurred expenses but now it's just got so out of hand that it's just a lose lose situation well for me anyway rant over I'm so sorry I got this far into it on your post but I totally couldn't agree more taxing us on the shipping how can they do that is exactly right about they'll do what they want won't they I guess so so sad but so long 😭😂😭🥺😂

kennys-kollectibles · ‎08-11-2022

These high prices for shipping and fees on shipping are the main reason why I

got out of selling internationally.

Generally the shipping is double the price to ship internationally, hence it's double the fees.

It's a double whammy. Also, since this happened, combined with no seller protection,

selling anything fairly heavy, (10+ pounds) is no longer worth it. Unless maybe if it fits

in a flat rate box.

It's better to use a flea market or craigs list for the heavy stuff.

coolections · ‎08-11-2022

Rather than driving yourself crazy about why a company charges for certain things just figure if you want to sell on Ebay it averages out to 15% cost. Unless you are consistently selling heavy objects then it is not wise to even sell on Ebay due to the cost.

thevintageparadise · ‎08-11-2022

How could you possibly say it averages out to 15%? Let's use an example...

I just sold a candle for $21.49, buyer paid $11.70 shipping and $2.73 in tax for a total of $35.68 plus the 30 cents ebay charges per sale for a grand total of $35.98.

So eBay takes $4.64 - it costs me $11.70 to ship the item so $21.49+$11.70 = $33.19 - $11.70 - $4.64 = $16.85

Which is roughly 22% Fees and that's on a basic item that's a "12.9% fee rate" - if you're selling clothes or jewelry or books it's 15% not to mention "Promoted item" fees which are now calculated as a percentage of the item, shipping and tax

thevintageparadise · ‎08-11-2022

Not sure what you mean here - first class mail is anything under 1 pound (15.9 ounces to be exact) If i list an item and as a shipping option i only select first class mail and list the weight at 15 ounces it doesn't "Jump up to priority" it's still first class mail - when you go to the print a label page it will say "Your buyer selected first class mail" not priority

thevintageparadise · ‎08-11-2022

Financial penalty for offering free shipping?

lepke1979 · ‎08-11-2022

@thevintageparadise wrote:
Financial penalty for offering free shipping?

If you do free shipping, the shipping cost is baked into the price. So $10 sale with free shipping @ 13%, you're looking at $1.30.

Whereas, the guy that charges $1 for the item and $9 shipping. It'd be $0.13.

lepke1979 · ‎08-11-2022

@thevintageparadise wrote:
Not sure what you mean here - first class mail is anything under 1 pound (15.9 ounces to be exact) If i list an item and as a shipping option i only select first class mail and list the weight at 15 ounces it doesn't "Jump up to priority" it's still first class mail - when you go to the print a label page it will say "Your buyer selected first class mail" not priority

Retail rate for First Class above 13 ounces becomes the Priority rate for 1 pound. Commercial rate (which you pay) is whatever it is at 13 ounces. For items between 12.1-15.99 ounces, set it to 13 ounces. Or one of the flat rate envelopes if it'll fit.

Go to Pirate Ship or wherever and play with the rates with some zip codes and you can see how it works out.

lepke1979 · ‎08-11-2022

@kennys-kollectibles wrote:
These high prices for shipping and fees on shipping are the main reason why I
got out of selling internationally.
Generally the shipping is double the price to ship internationally, hence it's double the fees.
It's a double whammy. Also, since this happened, combined with no seller protection,
selling anything fairly heavy, (10+ pounds) is no longer worth it. Unless maybe if it fits
in a flat rate box.
It's better to use a flea market or craigs list for the heavy stuff.

It doesn't work that way with fees on international. It uses whatever your cheapest domestic shipping is for calculating fees.

Same is true if you have First Class @ 4 ounces as the cheapest option and also some sort of Express shipping. If buyer chooses Express, it's supposed to use the cheapest method for fee calculation. First Class in this example.