CHARGING SELLING FEES ON CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS, TAXES AND SHIPPING

[intelligentlight]

Greed knows no bounds.

I recently sold an item and donated a portion to charity. The amount eBay sent was calculated by including what the item sold for, taxes collected by eBay and what was spent by me to ship the item. The calculation should have been made after deducting these items from the total. taxes and shipping are not income from a sale nor a contribution to a charity, funds I never saw.

Adding insult to injury, eBay charged me selling fees leaving all of those items claiming they were income on the sale even though I never saw or deposited any of that money.

As soon as I conclude my outstanding business here, I will never sell another thing on eBay and I will discourage others from doing so. Like so many other corporations, eBay is nothing but a den of theives.

[nobody*s_perfect]

---

@intelligentlight wrote: ...

As soon as I conclude my outstanding business here, I will never sell another thing on eBay ...

---

After looking at your listing, and at your history of feedback received as a seller, I believe that you have made the right decision.

[kalyoth]

Unless you have received overwhelmingly no feedback as a seller, your feedback indicates <10 sales. So perhaps you have not fully read over the regulations in regards to this type of transaction:

Charity Transactions 

[bonjourami]

Your op is puzzling, Ebay is not donating to your charity, you are, so why wouldnt they charge the fees on your sales?

[powell-memorabilia]

---

@bonjourami wrote:

Your op is puzzling, Ebay is not donating to your charity, you are, so why wouldnt they charge the fees on your sales?

---

I assume that the poster is misreading things, but when a seller sets up a listing to donate all or a portion of the sale to charity, the fees should be reduced commensurate with the percentage that is being given to a charity.  Donate 100% and there should be no fees, donate 20% and fees should be reduced by 20%. 

I don’t recall how it works on the transaction - it has been a long time since I had charitable listings.  I think that the seller is expecting the regular fees on 80% of the item (and taxes and shipping), rather than a 20% discount on fees on the full transaction.  The math works out the same, but not all understand how to figure out what is happening with eBay calculations.

[powell-memorabilia]

The math works out the same – Look at the transaction history, and You should see that your selling fee is at a lower percentage than your non-charity item selling fees.

[dbfolks166mt]

@intelligentlight wrote: ...

As soon as I conclude my outstanding business here, I will never sell another thing on eBay ...

After looking at your listing, and at your history of feedback received as a seller, I believe that you have made the right decision.

     OP does not have a lot of feedback as a seller but what they do have I see nothing wrong with. I don't see any current listings but the ones for the sold item also looked fine other than the personal information and the misunderstanding about eBay and USPS priority mail. 

[dbfolks166mt]

Your op is puzzling, Ebay is not donating to your charity, you are, so why wouldn't they charge the fees on your sales?

     Agree, also the donation is a tax deduction for the OP. Not defending eBay but they still have to collect the sales tax and remit it to the state and I am quite sure, depending on how the buyer paid for the item, that they are paying the third party financial processor the merchant fees on the total transaction as well. 

[isaiah53-57]

---

@intelligentlight wrote:

Greed knows no bounds.

I recently sold an item and donated a portion to charity. The amount eBay sent was calculated by including what the item sold for, taxes collected by eBay and what was spent by me to ship the item. The calculation should have been made after deducting these items from the total. taxes and shipping are not income from a sale nor a contribution to a charity, funds I never saw.

Adding insult to injury, eBay charged me selling fees leaving all of those items claiming they were income on the sale even though I never saw or deposited any of that money.

As soon as I conclude my outstanding business here, I will never sell another thing on eBay and I will discourage others from doing so. Like so many other corporations, eBay is nothing but a den of theives.

---

Yes... Looks like you had an awakening - It takes some sellers many years to realize(for the life of me I can't understand why) that the now 13.25% to 15% fees based on the entire transaction(including shipping & sales tax) can easily equate to 20% to 30% of the item itself, which of course is the only source of profit in the transaction...

But wait - Many of these sellers who are not paying attention are also opting in to the "recommended" promotion rates of an additional 12% to 15% of the entire transaction and in turn coughing up 40% to 50% of their item's selling price in fees before they realize what hit them.

Its a travesty the ambiguity the site works to maintain, but its just as much a travesty sellers not heeding the old adage "buyer beware" - corporations gonna be corporations - customer lack of concern or attention enables them to continue in unfair, improper, or questionable business practices...

[dbfolks166mt]

@bonjourami wrote:

Your op is puzzling, Ebay is not donating to your charity, you are, so why wouldnt they charge the fees on your sales?

I assume that the poster is misreading things, but when a seller sets up a listing to donate all or a portion of the sale to charity, the fees should be reduced commensurate with the percentage that is being given to a charity.  Donate 100% and there should be no fees, donate 20% and fees should be reduced by 20%. 

I don’t recall how it works on the transaction - it has been a long time since I had charitable listings.  I think that the seller is expecting the regular fees on 80% of the item (and taxes and shipping), rather than a 20% discount on fees on the full transaction.  The math works out the same, but not all understand how to figure out what is happening with eBay calculations.

     Like a lot of eBay's policies the one on the fees and charitable organizations is a bit vague. While they do give you the percentage for percentage reduction on the fees I believe that only applies to the sale price of the item not to the shipping and sales tax. So if you had an item with 100% donation that sold for $100 and the shipping was calculated there would be no FVF's on the $100 sale price but you would still pay the FVF's and the $.40 on the sales tax and shipping. If you used free shipping then the FVF's would only be applied to the sales tax. Of course I could be interpreting this incorrectly. 

https://www.ebay.com/help/account/donating-ebay-charity/buying-selling-ebay-benefit-nonprofit-organi...