Shipping Cost Included in 12.5%

[romo.designerbags]

Hi,

I just got off the phone with a eBay and the Rep. did confirm you are now paying 12.5% on your shipping total.

Therefore if you charge $16 for shipping they take 12.5%.  eBay is taking money for a service that you don't make money off of.  Now, if you do make money on the overage of the shipping label price than I could see that being a part of the 12.5% .  So you charge the above $16 under shipping but the label you purchase is actually $10.  Then the difference of $6 should be under the 12.5% not the hole price.  You would loose $1.25.

$16 x 12.5% = $2.00

$6 x 12.5% = $0.75

Two eBay Reps have confirmed this.  If you know anything different please let me know.  I would love to be wrong!

[**selling**stuff**]

Very simple resolution to this is to just offer free shipping, and just charge the shipping into the price you want.  I have never listed an item, and charged for shipping.  Every listing I make is free shipping.

This has worked fine for me.

[allthingssurplus]

Yes that is a simple fix for item weighing a pound or less and having a small DIMM size.   When it comes to packages 3 pounds and above with larger DIMMs its a bad idea to use free shipping.   The cost of those items is way different when shipping to Miami, upstate NY or Seattle.  You can't do free shipping or you will be a real loser with the shipping eating at your profit.  If you just pick a location far away from you and use that as your free shipping delivery point (as we did years ago with the blessing of eBay) you will gouge those that buy from you close by and worst case price yourself out of the local market due to the high cost you plugged into your listing for free shipping.  Shipping is a case by case thing.   One blanket approach just will not work.

[collectors_shop2002]

I 100 % agree. For years now you've had sellers listing one 3 oz. item for $1.99 and charging $47.00 shipping. It is blatantly scamming and it has been happening for as long as I can remember, (I joined in 2001). I feel the solution would be for E-Bay to set up where everyone has to use E-Bay shipping, or set the system that once tracking number is entered accounting can tell exactly how much was spent on shipping and charge a fee based on the difference. I know, people say supplies cost money but that is part of doing business just like the electric bill and internet connection. 

   12.5% on taxes, I don't get that at all. But E-Bay is still the greatest marketplace in the world. Amazon and others can try but there is nowhere else you can reach this many potential customers at one time.

[varebelrose]

".. For years now you've had sellers listing one 3 oz. item for $1.99 and charging $47.00 shipping. It is blatantly scamming ..."

Seriously, how is that scamming and who is being scammed, exactly? You might not like it, but its not scamming anyone. The buyer still sees the total price, item + S&H. eBay gets their FVF, so they are happy. If eBay disapproved of this listing method, they would not allow it.

Just to point out, that eBay has actually recently created incentives for sellers to start the $1 item with $99 shipping again. Under Managed Payments, sellers pay full FVF 12%+ on the total including sales tax. As not all states charge sales tax on S&H, a purchase made in one of those states would result in notably lower fees for that seller.

[marnotom!]

I'm just trying my best to figure out what you're saying in your posts.  It sounds like your business is worth quite a bit of money but you're not giving any sort of credit to those who helped you build your business.

This is quoted from one of your earlier posts, including the sentence you're asking me about:

Now you are talking about the chicken and egg theory.  Here is truth and not eBay Kool Aid in the office.  10% of the Sellers produce 40% of eBays income.  Now they make this money on the backs of people like myself that rent warehouses, hire employees, purchase all the equipment, trucks and supplies to run an online business.  In addition, like our company, purchase and shelve $4mil in inventory.  None of that is done by your walk on water Buyer.  Now you will say without the eBay Buyers all of what I said above is needless.  If that were true I would not be currently selling $2mil or our $2.4 annual sales on other venues. 

This is all wonderful, but the point I'm making is: All your money used to belong to somebody else.  It doesn't matter if your warehouse, equipment, employees, and so forth are actually the results of sales from other venues, that money was once your buyers'.

[glasser]

Never liked that they charge a fee on this.

I assume they are also getting payments from shippers (USPS, FEDEX, UPS) for the labels they sell. Not 100% sure of that but assume that's how it works.

If you sell stuff at auction like I do, it's hard to know shipping costs in advance. I sometimes do flat rate but heavier items I use the calculator. The difference between something go east coast to west or international can be significant. I of course have no idea where my buyer will be. So I could end up pay the fee on $15 or $65 depending.

If you sell items and they are all the same weight you can manage much easier. 

Given how important eBay believes shipping costs are to stay competitive, you'd think they would do everything they can to make it as reasonable as possible. If sellers raise prices to include free shipping that doesn't help anyone not even the buyer.

Shipping should be a zero sum game. No one (other then the shippers) should profit. Everything else is at cost. Don't even get me started on the FVF on sales tax. It's like taxing a tax. Again, depending on what sate you sell to, your FVF will be fluctuating and why should eBay profit off of tax collected ( I guess they do incur costs in operating the system probably pennies per transaction).

Ultimately, I think they do this so people thing the 12.5% sounds reasonable rather then say charge 13.5% on the sale price, which in some ways I'd prefer because of the price differences I can experience in shipping and taxes based on where a buyer and the fee I pay has zero to with my revenue.

[allthingssurplus]

All I'm looking for is a fair playing field.  Here is a prime example to the issues I know about fees:

There was a problem with a server we sold, issue with memory slot.  No problem return.  eBay offered that label at $$97.16.  Actual cost of label in my ShipWorks system is $71.31.  If I can buy a label from FedEx for $71.31 so can eBay and with their label buying power could get a better rate and I'm sure they do.  eBay is going to extract indirectly fees of $25.85 over the real cost of a label.  How can they think this can be correct when the Seller is already in a negative profit position on a return.  They are doing one of two things, either knowingly make those returns a profit center or just don't have a clue about shipping.  If you recall the Global Shipping Program, which I was a BETA tester for and discontinued after two weeks on the program, was sold as being the best Buyer  experience for shipping.  The facts of that program and still are is the Buyer has at least a 4 day delay in receiving their item and pay a higher cost in shipping to use the system.

As stated before if you are selling small items under or at a pound eBay has no room in those sales to make anything, so its safe to buy labels.  The issue comes to life when weight increase and DIMM increase and that is the profit center.

You know the eBay platform was not what got my company to where it is.  The abilities of those I hire and myself is what got us here.  We have always been on other selling venues.  We call distributors all the time selling product.  Please don't think if it weren't for the eBay platform I would not be in business and some how I should feel very appreciative eBay in on planet earth.  I make eBay a lot of money all I expect is a fair playing field and we don't have that.  

In the future don't make assumptions about a company until you know the facts.  Saying we must be operating on borrowed monies or won the lottery is just child's play.  Grossly unfair and inaccurate, baseless speech.

[tools*]

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@kensgiftshop wrote:

@romo.designerbags 

You also pay the same % on any sales tax the buyer pays.

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You The customer also pays the same % on any sales tax they pay.

[marnotom!]

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@allthingssurplus wrote:

All I'm looking for is a fair playing field.  Here is a prime example to the issues I know about fees:

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I'm not going to take up space quoting your "prime example" which then segues into something else unrelated, but neither return shipping labels (Are we back to that again?) or the Global Shipping Program those have anything to do with seller fees or a level playing field, at least the way I understand seller fees and level playing fields.

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@allthingssurplus wrote:

You know the eBay platform was not what got my company to where it is.  The abilities of those I hire and myself is what got us here.  We have always been on other selling venues.  We call distributors all the time selling product.  Please don't think if it weren't for the eBay platform I would not be in business and some how I should feel very appreciative eBay in on planet earth. 

I've been saying very little about the eBay platform at this point in the conversation.  What I've been saying you should be appreciative of your buyers (Customers, clientele, whatever you want to call them) for getting you where you are today, otherwise you'd be unable to hire who you did and deal with the suppliers that you're dealing with.  Were you thinking that I meant just your eBay buyers?  I certainly wasn't intending to give that impression.  I was merely referencing Business 101.

[allthingssurplus]

So now you want to school me on how grateful I should be.  You know nothing of me or how I conduct myself in business.  I ask you to respond to direct question and you come back with nonsense like this.  Its clear you have no intent having an interchanging on how the platform conducts its self with regard to Sellers.  I suggest you look in the mirror and pat yourself on the back and convince yourself what a fantastic Seller/Buyer you are.  I always wonder why people like yourself who choose to not be transparent and hide behind a false ID just too answer questions and say crazy stuff like you have here about my finances, my not being a grateful with those I do business.  I know you will take a last shot and that is what it will be.  Like the platform you as well do not deal in fair play.  

[marnotom!]

Just because you didn't really like the answer to your direct question doesn't mean I didn't answer it to the best of my ability as a Canadian-registered eBay user.  Perhaps you'd have better luck getting your question discussed if you posed it in a more appropriate thread.  Return shipping labels really have nothing to do with eBay's FVF structure.

Oh, wait, I see you did post a new thread about this about five months ago and the result was crickets.  Sorry.  Maybe you need to ask a slightly different question.  Since you claim in that post that you've posted about this a few times, people may be getting a bit weary of seeing these posts.

[wardnewark]

I was just wondering this also- I had example - 50.00 sale + 7.99 shipping - they took 13.75% of the total

I don't get how they can take from shipping costs - at 7.99 i'm actually not even covering shipping total which is 9.99

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@wardnewark wrote: ... I don't get how they can take from shipping costs - at 7.99 i'm actually not even covering shipping total which is 9.99

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eBy has been charging final value fee as a percentage of the buyer's total payment, including shipping, since 2011 which is before you even registered your ID with eBay.  

If you find that you have undercharged for postage, you should figure out why and then revise the shipping cost in your other listings.  The shipping calculator in eBay listings defaults to show the retail price; many sellers who purchase eBay labels leave the calculator set to retail which then provides a handy margin to cover expenses like packaging materials and eBay fees.

[soh.maryl]

Anyone notice or care that this post is about 2 1/2 years old and some of the info, like the FVF percentage, is out of date.

Hopefully, the mods will be removing it soon.  

Incidentally, the OP is currently an active seller, so maybe reconciled himself to the fees? 

[kh-stanley1]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.