eBay

jarrot · ‎09-23-2022

This is why eBay is dead. They got so extremely greedy and raised their fees so much that sellers can no longer make any money

gosimus · ‎09-23-2022

@dirk12955

< as mentioned, 12.9% or 10% + 2.9% are the same thing >

If you intended to Reply to me, then maybe I should have been more explicit.

Yes ... 12.9 is the same thing as 10 + 2.9

No ... 12.9 x (item price) is not the same thing as 12.9 x (item price + sales tax)

itsjustasprain · ‎09-23-2022

@jarrot wrote:
This is why eBay is dead.

Whaaat??? Why doesnt anybody TELL me these things? Now I have to go over to my selling account and cancel all those sales. I will also need to try and intercept all those packages I shipped this week. I trust you will be cancelling all your listings as well - yes?

stuff4divas · ‎09-23-2022

@jarrot wrote:
This is why eBay is dead. They got so extremely greedy and raised their fees so much that sellers can no longer make any money

It can't be THAT bad since you posted complaints over 6 years ago and have still continued to sell and currently have over 600 listings up for sale and left over 200 feedbacks for others in the past month

Good Luck on your new selling platform!

zamo-zuan · ‎09-23-2022

@gosimus wrote:
@fab_finds4u @jarrot

< That is the same fee isn't it? >

Maybe the sellers' perception of the fee seems larger because eBay charges a fee on the sales tax now, unlike before when there was no sales tax.

The OP lists some quite expensive parts, so the sales tax on those would not be insignificant.

Not going to say I agree with OP (while I'm not happy with the direction eBay is going, it's certainly not dead).

But what you mention is a good argument that fees have increased. At first people were wondering why they were changing sellers hub to charge fees in the same transaction. They claimed it was just to simplify things.

Now that time has passed, we see the truth. They bill it as one transaction because that way they can charge their fees on the ENTIRE transaction, meaning FVF's take fees on sales tax, shipping, etc.

Once you look further, one of the most anger inducing parts of this is how they try to paint it as if they're giving us great shipping discounts. Even recently. But many people don't even realize when you use eBay labels, you get FVF charged on those fees and end up paying MUCH MORE getting your labels on eBay than you would have elsewhere!

This is exactly WHY they don't have to do a price increase for the holiday peak season in October-Jan. Because they're already charging higher than USPS with the peak season fees!

That's not even considering that it's fairly common knowledge at this point that many sellers (who are not selling used/collectibles/etc) are required to invest in to PLS/PLA in order to make up for the huge loss of traffic due to eBay's recent changes. This is well documented in the community here, and is an inadvertent fee increase because you items literally won't get exposure without doing so.

As I've shown elsewhere, some of us even have our ORGANIC traffic drop if we reduce our PL investment. So it's not "optional" for everyone - nobody would be paying for PL if they didn't have to.

Which means anyone who is still claiming eBays fees haven't increased is being willfully ignorant at this point. Look at all the new slots on each search page that are now being used for PL compared to the past. We could use simple math to back up the fact that this was an inadvertent fee increase - because organic is getting less and less exposure and that search page is becoming more of a paid advertisement.

There's no legitimate argument that could claim eBay is not pressuring sellers to pay more by reducing their organic traffic more and more as time goes on (assuming they're even lucky enough that they get organic traffic without paying).

lepke1979 · ‎09-23-2022

@gosimus wrote:
@fab_finds4u @jarrot

< That is the same fee isn't it? >

Maybe the sellers' perception of the fee seems larger because eBay charges a fee on the sales tax now, unlike before when there was no sales tax.

The OP lists some quite expensive parts, so the sales tax on those would not be insignificant.

But even that is minimal. Not saying paying 12.9% is great. But at $100 at 10% sales tax, you're looking at $1.29.

And if you sell enough it sort of balances out with some states having no sales tax and few states having it as high as 10%. Or some states not including shipping in the sales tax figure.

joliztoyco · ‎09-23-2022

Wait! What?
So you're telling us that we used to pay 12.9% and had our funds instantly in our PP accounts?
But now we pay 12.9% and wait 2-4 days to receive our funds?
That's the "new & improved " service Ebay is providing us ??
Lord help us if they keep "improving" it.....

tkrliquidations · ‎09-23-2022

eBay selling fees are 12.9% for most categories, plus $0.30 (also a 10% discount on this final fee if you're top rated).

Mercari selling fees are 10%, plus 2.9% for "processing", plus $0.30 (no discounts possible and much more expensive default shipping).

Amazon selling fees are $40 per month, plus 12%-15% for most categories.

Facebook Marketplace selling fee is only 5% but it's definitely the worst experience out of all of these platforms.

Not sure what other online marketplace you think competes with eBay, but their fees look pretty reasonable in comparison to the other large marketplaces.

bearswatching · ‎09-23-2022

Can you tell us where you are moving your 613 listings to? That is going to be a major undertaking. The only site I know of that makes that easy for you is Bonanza but you will be very disappointed in the amount of traffic compared to eBay. Please come back and let us know how that works out. Maybe Bonanza has changed.

a_c_green · ‎09-23-2022

@zamo-zuan wrote:
At first people were wondering why they were changing sellers hub to charge fees in the same transaction. They claimed it was just to simplify things.

Now that time has passed, we see the truth. They bill it as one transaction because that way they can charge their fees on the ENTIRE transaction, meaning FVF's take fees on sales tax, shipping, etc.

I have to admit that the part about deducting fees before passing the net proceeds on to the seller does make things easier. Specifically, it means that I don't have to generate some big-ticket sales near the end of the billing period in order to cover the FVFs for everything sold earlier in the month. In the case of a very successful month, the payment needed at the end of the month could be a real bite. I suspect that eBay got stuck with a lot of uncollectible FVFs from sellers at the end of each month who simply could not pay the charges, at least not immediately.

As for what they're charging their fees on, that is a whole separate issue, and one that I am no happier about than others here, but the change that eliminated a big fat bill at the end of the month was a very positive step, IMHO.

maxine*j · ‎09-23-2022

@terrycece62 wrote:
So can I assume you will be removing your current 613 active listings shortly and moving your business to another site?

Good luck

And do those other sites have forums for ~~just advertising~~ for thoughtful discussion?

.

wrong66 · ‎09-23-2022

Yes, you won't get much sympathy here. 200 sales in Sept and you're moaning that its "dead"? Whatever.

dbfolks166mt · ‎09-23-2022

They have had a few bumps over the years but far from dead. Ecommerce is slowing across the board for a number of reasons a lot of which are outside of eBay's, and other venues, spheres of influence.

iliketurtles112 · ‎09-23-2022

eBay charges 12.9% PLUS approximately 3% to process payment. So that is an increase, albeit not huge.

zamo-zuan · ‎09-23-2022

@tkrliquidations wrote:
eBay selling fees are 12.9% for most categories, plus $0.30 (also a 10% discount on this final fee if you're top rated).

Mercari selling fees are 10%, plus 2.9% for "processing", plus $0.30 (no discounts possible and much more expensive default shipping).

Amazon selling fees are $40 per month, plus 12%-15% for most categories.

Facebook Marketplace selling fee is only 5% but it's definitely the worst experience out of all of these platforms.

Not sure what other online marketplace you think competes with eBay, but their fees look pretty reasonable in comparison to the other large marketplaces.

This leaves out all the additional fees eBay has that they tack the FVF on top of. As I mentioned in my post, shipping/tax/etc are all added together in a single transaction for the single purpose of subtly retrieving extra FVF.

We can't forget that things used to be separated in to the FVF being for the transaction itself, and everything else being added to a BILL separately - and items on the bill were not subject to a FVF, rather than combined in to a single transaction. And that we also pay eBay a premium subscription fee on top of the fees (in our case $300 a month).

And again, you can't just ignore how they changed search to where visibility is a small fraction of what it used to be without paying ad fees. And no, it's not like Amazon, because with Amazon there's clear and transparent ways to win the organic buy box.

Amazon doesn't charge fees on the taxes either, only the sales price. And Amazon gives steep discounts on shipping when purchased through them so you have significantly reduced prices *even with the fees* beyond the normal prices (unlike eBay), or you could use Prime where you ship them bulk for pennies and they literally pay the shipping for you to the customers.

So no, eBay is not really "reasonable in comparison" when the FVF on tax alone is enough to surpass the costs of the competitors.

zamo-zuan · ‎09-23-2022

@a_c_green wrote:
@zamo-zuan wrote:
At first people were wondering why they were changing sellers hub to charge fees in the same transaction. They claimed it was just to simplify things.

Now that time has passed, we see the truth. They bill it as one transaction because that way they can charge their fees on the ENTIRE transaction, meaning FVF's take fees on sales tax, shipping, etc.
I have to admit that the part about deducting fees before passing the net proceeds on to the seller does make things easier. Specifically, it means that I don't have to generate some big-ticket sales near the end of the billing period in order to cover the FVFs for everything sold earlier in the month. In the case of a very successful month, the payment needed at the end of the month could be a real bite. I suspect that eBay got stuck with a lot of uncollectible FVFs from sellers at the end of each month who simply could not pay the charges, at least not immediately.

As for what they're charging their fees on, that is a whole separate issue, and one that I am no happier about than others here, but the change that eliminated a big fat bill at the end of the month was a very positive step, IMHO.

While that could be some convenience, that was obviously not eBay's primary motivation when moving over to their new payment system as their billing was restructured specifically to support this.

And imo, it's the same as people tracking their own spending on a credit card. Sure, you could mess up and not have the money to pay back at the end of the month. But properly tracking your spending (which we should all do as sellers) shouldn't run in to that problem in the first place.

EBay's motivation is money. That was the actual reasoning behind the change (and everything else they do). The potential convenience you mention is nice a happy side effect.