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!

[mtgraves7984 · Accepted solution]

You're not wrong. The fee is based on the total price (item + s&h + taxes, if applicable) of the transaction. For what it's worth, I still make a bit of profit on shipping. Roll with it... it's been happening  for forever now. Good luck.

[tdumonde2014]

Prior to Managed Payments, ebay and PayPal had been collecting 12.9% on shipping charged to the buyer for about 10 years. The charge is based on what you charged the buyer, not on any profit that you might have made. 

[kensgiftshop]

@romo.designerbags 

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

[mr_lincoln]

@romo.designerbags   Yes, in order to make sure you don't lose money on the fees for Shipping you have to increase the weight on a listing or add a Handling Fee, all of which does nothing but drive up the price for the Customer who is the real loser in the end.

eBay definitely needs to do something about this but sadly, if they reduce the fees on shipping some Sellers will list their items for dirt and have a high shipping cost just to cheat the system.

So at the end of the day, the entire shipping end of selling on eBay or any other online venue does NOT "Enhance the Buying Experience" ...

Probably what makes the most sense is for eBay to have a sliding Fee scale based on the actual shipping cost, this would encourage Sellers to keep their shipping costs lower and accurate to minimize the fees they are paying on shipping ... I use mainly First Class and Priority Mail services so if their discounts matched the fees and it was a break even proposition I would be fine with that.

[nickelsanddimes2015]

Ebay has charged 10% for charging shipping for years so this doesn't surprise me.

[jonathankirkland]

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@mr_lincoln wrote:

eBay definitely needs to do something about this but sadly, if they reduce the fees on shipping some Sellers will list their items for dirt and have a high shipping cost just to cheat the system.

So at the end of the day, the entire shipping end of selling on eBay or any other online venue does NOT "Enhance the Buying Experience" ...

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Honestly I feel like that's an old cop-out excuse. Surely this day in age there would be some way ebay could mitigate that and automatically charge the FVF if the shipping is disproportionate to the item being sold.

[2013grotz]

This has been fairly well known for a very long time.  Perhaps even before I started eight years ago.  The main issue is you'd have fee avoiders.  They could either do something like $90+$10 shipping (or whatever the shipping was) or $1 + $99 shipping.

Agreed that it's not very upright behavior for ebay to take FVF on shipping, but the problem is how you fairly counter a scenario like above?

More formative question in my mind: Does the discount for using ebay's postage counter or cover the FVF for that?  I'd be a little more okay with the practice if it kinda did, but not really sure at all on the non-discounted stuff.  Is there a way to begin recovering the shipping FVF?

[2013grotz]

I'd think that too.  Problem there is you'd never know if the package stats listed are entirely honest, especially if the seller goes outside of ebay for the postage.  If all of that was always reasonably honest, they could process against their shipping records and kick out items with shipping costs higher than a certain threshold.

Obviously I'm sure whoever was running ebay 10 years ago thought through a lot of scenarios and came up with charging shipping on the FVF as a way to fix sellers trying to dodge FVF.

[rebell45]

They take their fees based on the total amount that the buyer paid, including shipping and sales tax, which you didn't mention.  So, yes, if the buyer paid $16 and you only paid $10, you pay the fee on the $16.  But, the $6.00 - 12.55% is profit for you. Don't know why you'd be unhappy with that.

Personally, I'd refund the buyer part of that excess shipping.

[mr_lincoln]

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@jonathankirkland wrote:

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@mr_lincoln wrote:

eBay definitely needs to do something about this but sadly, if they reduce the fees on shipping some Sellers will list their items for dirt and have a high shipping cost just to cheat the system.

So at the end of the day, the entire shipping end of selling on eBay or any other online venue does NOT "Enhance the Buying Experience" ...

---

Honestly I feel like that's an old cop-out excuse. Surely this day in age there would be some way ebay could mitigate that and automatically charge the FVF if the shipping is disproportionate to the item being sold.

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@jonathankirkland   Years ago that's what Seller did, they listed their $ 100 item for $ 1 and $ 99 for shipping when eBay did NOT charge Fees on shipping.  So I hate to say it but it was those dishonest Seller of 'yore that caused eBay to charge Fees on shipping.  It is fact, not a cop out excuse.

I actually just came up with that sliding scale idea for fees on the rest of the post you referenced, it would encourage Sellers to be more accurate and honest to reduce their fees on shipping ... the more I think about it the more I like the idea. 

[romo.designerbags]

I understand completely and that was my conclusion.  Up the shipping cost to off set the fees.

I have just started selling Jan. of this year.  I was starting to get it and then BAM... all these

changes so I am learning all the time.  

[magic-one]

I remember when ebay didn't charge a FVF on the shipping....... which is the way it should be..... 

People who tried to game the system would sell an item for $1 and charge $99 for shipping.....  so the FVF was low....   they should have went after those people.

ebay isn't a good place to sell any longer.

[justafemster]

Complaining about the fees on a peer to peer board does nothing other than get it off your chest.  

Having one defined fee structure is good for sellers.  We know exactly what to expect, within pennies (depending on the customers local sales tax), and can plan our pricing based on what kind of return we're most likely to get.  

There's no way for ebay to know what's reasonable shipping.  If you really expect ebay to police listings, we're going to be paying a hell of a lot more, just in man-hours.  

Come up with a better site, same traffic, same sales percentages and we might follow.  Until then, this is what there is, deal with it or go away.

[johnrj1226]

1.  eBay has no clue if a seller is making or loosing $ on their shipping/handling charge.  eBay states sellers can recover their label cost at a reasonable amount, packing costs, insurance coverage costs, signature confirmations, etc. in their   shipping and handling charge. 

Sellers label costs can be based on the retail or Counter rate or discounted commercial rate when bought on line thru eBay or other sources like Stamps.  When a seller offers "free shipping"  in their selling price - no one knows what shipping/handling charge is embedded in the listed price.

2.  As a  "for profit" seller it is your responsibility to recover ALL your selling costs and your expected profit margin in your selling price before you list any thing.

3.  eBay has been collecting a FVF on shipping/handling since 2011 and PayPal did too.