DEFERRED PAYMENTS? eBay took my money after promising I wouldn't owe

[thriftscorechic]

eBay let everyone know they would defer payments, I applied, was approved and even double checked through email that I didn't owe anything this month. 

Like many others I have NO INCOME because of the shutdown of our economy. 

eBay took the money anyway! I needed that money to feed my family. eBay is SCUM, I have sold on eBay for more than 10 years and I used to love eBay, now I hate eBay, more than ever! How dare you do this to your sellers at this time! 

What, did your confusing language mean that NEXT months payments would be deferred? Next month when no one is even going to owe anything because sales are in the dumps and they can't list anything because thrifts stores are closed? We needed the help this month to pay for sales that came in last month when the economy was normal....and I know that you KNOW this, eBay.

[eunster1313]

Well so much for the great "eBay Fee Deferral Program

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Well-so-much-for-the-great-quot-eBay-Fee-Deferral-Program-quot... 

[thriftscorechic]

Thank you, I was too mad and stressed to look for a thread already started. 

[slippinjimmy]

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@thriftscorechic wrote:

eBay let everyone know they would defer payments, I applied, was approved and even double checked through email that I didn't owe anything this month. 

Like many others I have NO INCOME because of the shutdown of our economy. 

eBay took the money anyway! I needed that money to feed my family. eBay is SCUM, I have sold on eBay for more than 10 years and I used to love eBay, now I hate eBay, more than ever! How dare you do this to your sellers at this time! 

What, did your confusing language mean that NEXT months payments would be deferred? Next month when no one is even going to owe anything because sales are in the dumps and they can't list anything because thrifts stores are closed? We needed the help this month to pay for sales that came in last month when the economy was normal....and I know that you KNOW this, eBay.

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Perhaps you should have read the details of the offer!

https://www.ebay.com/sh/sdb

[brian@ebay]

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@thriftscorechic wrote:

eBay let everyone know they would defer payments, I applied, was approved and even double checked through email that I didn't owe anything this month. 

Like many others I have NO INCOME because of the shutdown of our economy. 

eBay took the money anyway! I needed that money to feed my family. eBay is SCUM, I have sold on eBay for more than 10 years and I used to love eBay, now I hate eBay, more than ever! How dare you do this to your sellers at this time! 

What, did your confusing language mean that NEXT months payments would be deferred? Next month when no one is even going to owe anything because sales are in the dumps and they can't list anything because thrifts stores are closed? We needed the help this month to pay for sales that came in last month when the economy was normal....and I know that you KNOW this, eBay.

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Hi @thriftscorechic, if you signed up and were approved for payments deferral and have just received a charge, then this charge was for the March 15th invoice and was not included in the deferral plan. I definitely apologize if this was unexpected. For more info about which payments will be included, visit https://www.ebay.com/sh/sdb. My post here also provides more clarity. 

[thriftscorechic]

Exactly as I thought, eBay is going to defer payments when no one is making sales, HOW HELPFUL...NOT

[corvettestainless]

Why would you expect a deferral for fees incurred shown on an invoice before this pandemic started? Of course it's for the fees incurred SINCE this started. 

You didn't simply save the 10% fees that you were being charged and collected with the successful sales you had up to 3/15? 

[slippinjimmy]

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@thriftscorechic wrote:

Exactly as I thought, eBay is going to defer payments when no one is making sales, HOW HELPFUL...NOT

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If you had some active listings perhaps you would have some sales!

[thriftscorechic]

Because the fees were due after the economy was shut down--but they were accrued when the economy was normal. Those are the fees most sellers will really need help with....duh

[thriftscorechic]

Liquidated my store down during a move and planned to start back up again at my new place--but now there are no thrift stores open to source.

Not that it's any of your business?

[ikonicstudios]

To my understudying this program was supposed to help with the fees but how can this help when most of the fees are from March 1 and to my understanding this program is only helping for fees that start on March 31. So my question to eBay, how can you actually help when no one is making money due to this virus? But of course, eBay was quick to collect on the early March fees when that is the time period people really needed help the most.

For me, this whole "helping" thing that eBay and many other companies are doing are only to show a positive face to the public when in fact, they really aren't doing anything to help the sellers that keep eBay alive. They want to give the impression that eBay cares... THEY DON'T!! Why do you think they gave everyone 50,000 free listings? It's not because they want to help your business, it's because if you don't sell, they can't collect fees. And without fee's, their eBay market will crash just like every other big corporation. And to be honest, most of them deserve it! Just a shame that it took a virus to have this happen...just my thoughts. Anyhow......

Like most people, my sales have struggled as well but I will say that because of eBay's poor seller support in months (years) before this virus, I was already selling much of my products on various other channels and you all should too. Maybe this is a wake up call that will somehow motivate people to seek other platforms or sell directly and maybe one day, we won't need a platform like eBay that gouges us for every singe fee possible. I mean, really, they charge a subscription to sell on their platform which I've never had an issue with but then they charge a final value fee that should have a lower percentage and then if you promote the item, they charge even more, then PayPal charges their fee and taxes. By the time all fees are said and done, you are literally only making 20% profit (if your lucky) on most products sales when you could make 90% selling directly or possible 85% on other platforms. Anyhow, just something to think about.

[glgenterprise]

And this is why I leave enough money in my account designated for payment to cover any eBay fees that will be due. It should only be a max of 15% of your sales that you owe.

[thriftscorechic]

Well said. And yes, I have also switched to other platforms long time ago. You are so right that they just want to show a face of caring but they don't really care. If they cared they would have staffed the phones to answer our calls---or at least have chat support. They can find a way to keep those workers, other companies have. They probably just used this as an excuse to lay off their customer service team, it's a win-win for eBay, they don't have to pay them and sellers don't get their questions answered. 

[thriftscorechic]

It's always ideal of course to be prepared or to pay fees off early. My issue is that, during these extremely tough economic times, eBay gave us the impression that we could defer payments and so I counted the money because I needed it this month. eBay's wording was so confusing--and it didn't need to be confusing! It's like they did it on purpose. I actually have thought before with other things eBay has done to sellers that the people who control eBay might be sadistic. This is just more proof.

[corvettestainless]

When you transfer money out of paypal to go in your bank account, you leave 2 pieces of that money in there, which the information is easily attainable by looking at your books, which books could be as simple as drawing  columns in a note book (description, + sold, - cost, - shipping, -pp fee, -ebay fee = gross profit) (gross profit is the number you then use to figure fed, state income taxes etc.) 

You leave ebay fees and shipping in Paypal as that money is not yours, same as paypal takes their share immediately.

The item sells for $50, ships for $5. You leave $5 for shipping and $5 for final value fees, transferring $40. Simple.

Somewhere early on you decided all that money is yours the first month, transferred it all and spent it all- then figured you would just pay fees with next months sales. That's NOT how you do business. Duh.