mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
I took the time tonight to go through all (?) of the Help pages concerning Managed Payments. If I understand correctly, eBay's FVF are going to jump from 10% to 11.5% based on the sale price, S&H and state tax. Is this correct?
Not exactly, you forgot an important part of the Simplified fee, the money processing fee. So your fee is NOT "jumping", the overall fee percentages are REDUCING.
2.9% Money processing Fee currently pd to PP
9.15 Ebay FVF
12.05% Total
11.50% Simplified fee in MP
0.55% Reduction over the fees currently in Ebay.
Now the Simplified fee in MP is charged on the total amount of money received. So if there is sales tax in that payment, you will be paying 11.5% on that too. But for the most part the reduction in the FVF will offset the extra you pay for FVF on sales tax. Keep in mind that even in the expensive areas for sales tax, sales tax only represents about 10% of the money received. So it is only that 10% portion that is not something we are use to paying FVFs on. The balance of 90% of the money is being charged at a lower rate my 0.55%.
So for many it will be not much of an overall difference in fees at all. For others it may be a little bit of an increase. The only way to know how it will affect you is to do some math on about a months worth of sales to get an accurate overview. Because in any given month you will likely have at least a few sales that aren't taxable, so that transaction will be at a 0.55% FVF savings on the whole transaction.
For myself in May I ended up with about a 0.71% reduction in overall fees. That was with 78% taxable sales and 22% non taxable.
Your numbers will vary but you can't know what the impact is until you do some comparisons for sales over a good period of time.
Finally, it seems to me that eBay is insisting on having unfettered access to a checking account so that they can deposit and withdraw funds as they see fit. Is this correct? And can a current PayPal account act as a "checking account"? If not, why not?
No more than PP has. So what is the difference. Saying it is an "unfettered access" is a bit of an overstatement. They can't do whatever they want with your account. They can deposit to it or remove money for a refund that has been told to you it was processed in you MP account. They aren't going to one day go SURPRISE Ebay is going to steal all your money and then withdraw everything in your account. If a refund happens to a buyer they will fund that from whatever you currently have in your MP account before going into your checking account.
And the seller, if they are paying attention to their MP accounts and their returns will know the refund is happening.
PP does not have any checking accounts to offer you. PP is NOT a bank. They are a money transmitter.
@bbravo65 wrote:
...overdraft fee at my local CU is $29 for each transaction...
...if you have a saving acct. to back up for your checking acct. that would save you from overdraft fee...I don't tie my saving account with any of my checking accounts, specially now when I have to have a separate ck. acct. for MP, this acct. will stand alone, no strings attach to anything...
The only reason a seller should get an overdraft fee in the account they attach to MP is if they are not paying attention to what is happening with their selling account.
Sellers process their own Requests for Returns for the most part. It is the seller that issues the refund to the buyer unless they have allowed Ebay to force them to refund. So the seller should know that a refund to a buyer is happening. The seller should know if there is enough sitting in their MP account to cover the refund or enough coming in shortly to cover it. If not, then the seller should make sure there is money in their checking account to cover the refund.
If a seller isn't paying attention, then yes they could end up with an overdrawn account and additional fees. But if a seller isn't paying attention to their account and their return requests, then that seller has even bigger issues.
@popblox wrote:
@mam98031 wrote:
@bbravo65 wrote:
...overdraft fee at my local CU is $29 for each transaction...
...if you have a saving acct. to back up for your checking acct. that would save you from overdraft fee...I don't tie my saving account with any of my checking accounts, specially now when I have to have a separate ck. acct. for MP, this acct. will stand alone, no strings attach to anything...
The only reason a seller should get an overdraft fee in the account they attach to MP is if they are not paying attention to what is happening with their selling account.
If a seller isn't paying attention, then yes they could end up with an overdrawn account and additional fees. But if a seller isn't paying attention to their account and their return requests, then that seller has even bigger issues.
I completely disagree, that isn't the ONLY way a seller could find themselves in an overdraft situation. I obsessively pay attention to my eBay account, I never go more than a few hours without checking every aspect of what's going on. However, I recently sent 2 items totaling $256 using eBay International Standard Shipping that got stuck in transit in the buyer's country and the buyer filed an INR on both. I IMMEDIATELY uploaded the tracking numbers and in my response I added the eBay policy stating "Each purchase of the eBay international standard delivery service includes our shipping protection plan. You can be assured that your international shipments will arrive at their destinations, or we will protect you if there is an issue that is beyond your control." Despite this, 3 days later, I get an email saying the cases had been closed in the buyer's favor and the funds had been taken from my PayPal account. After the regular amount of kicking and screaming over the phone and through emails to eBay CS for the next 4 days, I did end up getting the cases reversed in my favor, but that isn’t the point. I just happened to have the funds available at the time of the case closing, but I certainly hadn’t intended on those funds being allocated to that refund and, other than betting on a show of complete incompetence on eBay’s behalf, there isn’t a single reason I should have.
Just playing devil's advocate here, but this wasn’t an isolated incident and no attention to detail could’ve deemed the initial outcome as foreseeable. What I do know is if I’d had a bank account attached to the transactions and had just paid bills that hadn’t yet “posted” to my bank account, there would’ve been a downward spiral of overdraft fees and agony. Now let’s just assume eBay covers all that - it isn’t even necessarily all about the money. It’s about the amount of time I now have to waste with TWO different customer service entities trying to straighten out a financial nightmare.
I understand and your concerns are serious ones. I've seen a couple other sellers post similar stories over the past week or more. I have no clue why this issue came up for you or for the other sellers but very glad to hear that Ebay FINALLY did the right thing.
Now if you had been in MP, they don't rush to deduct the money from your checking account at moment they issue the refunds. They do look to what is in your MP account [cleared or not] first.
MP won't resolve the issue you had with that transaction, but hopefully Ebay will stop doing that when they should not be.
I personally don't recommend attaching MP or even PP to your main checking account. I've always recommended that you attach an account specifically for use in attaching to MP [or PP]. For myself I will treat it just like I have PP all these years. I always keep enough money in my PP account to cover an average refund or two and therefore in all my years here I have never had PP go into a negative balance nor did they have a need to dip into my checking account to cover it. I will handle this new checking account in the same way.
I hope this problem never happens again for you as I know it is unnerving and just plain wrong on Ebay's part.
Prior to MP, there was no need to have a checking account attached to your Ebay account.
PP isn't a bank. They are not FDIC insured. And they can't be attached to your MP account for those reasons. At least not at this time. I understand that PP is working on a vehicle that could be attached to MP, but for now that is still a work in progress and I don't have any specifics.
I'm surprised you don't have a bank account attached to your PP account. So you never deposit directly to a bank account from PP?
