REASON FOR SHIPPING FEES

[jakie222]

 I was told by eBay a while back that Ebay charges  fees for shipping because many people   overcharge on their shipping fees when selling their items.

[ebooksdiva]

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@jakie222 wrote:

 I was told by eBay a while back that Ebay charges  fees for shipping because many people   overcharge on their shipping fees when selling their items.

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You answered your own question. 
There was quite a bit of fee circumventing sellers selling items for $0.99 and charging $300.00 for shipping. 
Charging fvf across for the entire transaction nipped that in the bud. 

[soh.maryl]

Yes, at the very beginning, when the FVF was charged on only the item price, some sellers were listing a $100 item for $1 with $99 shipping.

Did you have a question?  

[lamber9347]

Yes, that would be correct....

[nobody*s_perfect]

Another major reason for eBay to charge FVF on the entire payment is to remove an obstacle to sellers offering Free shipping.

[mtgraves7984]

The rumor you heard is true.

[jakie222]

 Well, if people have a problem with that then they don't have to buy it.    The United States is a capitalist, market economy!

[pargran3]

That is part of it from YEARS ago.

The other part is that every seller is now in managed payments and the fee is for the use of a payment service.

Discussed. Cussed.  Over and over and over again.

eBay collects the sales tax now (and if you think you would rather remit sales tax to every state you sell to, think again) 

Every ... and I do mean EVERY... retailer with a payment service (which would be any retailer that takes credit cards) pays a fee on the entire amount of the sale. Look into it. 

[stainlessenginecovers]

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@jakie222 wrote:

 Well, if people have a problem with that then they don't have to buy it.    The United States is a capitalist, market economy!

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People NEVER had a problem with it.

The site, eBay was being ripped off.

They cared.

It's their site.

They are allowed to have a problem with it.

[the_fancy_fox]

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@pargran3 wrote:

That is part of it from YEARS ago.

The other part is that every seller is now in managed payments and the fee is for the use of a payment service.

Discussed. Cussed.  Over and over and over again.

eBay collects the sales tax now (and if you think you would rather remit sales tax to every state you sell to, think again) 

Every ... and I do mean EVERY... retailer with a payment service (which would be any retailer that takes credit cards) pays a fee on the entire amount of the sale. Look into it. 

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And this ^ is the actual reason. It’s industry standard. They are processing the entire payment. I do believe a flat percentage would make more sense instead of a range of percentages depending on what category you sell on, I mean it doesn’t cost them more to process a payment for a book vs a widget but it’s ebay, they do what makes them more money. 

[kensgiftshop]

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@soh.maryl wrote:

Yes, at the very beginning, when the FVF was charged on only the item price, some sellers were listing a $100 item for $1 with $99 shipping.

Did you have a question?  

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I remember hearing about Ebay when it first started, people told me that you can buy almost anything for $1, but the shipping charges were crazy high.

[pjcdn2005]

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@jakie222 wrote:

 Well, if people have a problem with that then they don't have to buy it.    The United States is a capitalist, market economy!

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As @stainlessenginecovers mentioned, it wasn't buyers that had a problem, it was ebay.  Sellers were charged a fee on the item but not on shipping so ebay was losing money. Not to mention that it gave potential buyers a really bad impression of the site if they saw sellers charging sky high shipping prices.

It was also a problem for sellers that offered 'free' shipping.  They would include the shipping cost in with their item price so they would end up paying fees on both the item and shipping and other sellers would not.  eBay wanted to encourage that sellers use free shipping so that was also part of the reason for the change.

[deltilogical]

"The United States is a capitalist, market economy!"

Yeah, like when the stock market goes south and the gubmint sends in the Plunge Protection Team to buy up lots of stocks to make things good, or when the gubmint rewrites contracts such as the gold clauses in 1933 or rent contracts in 2020.  Capitalism is based on production, the last thing the rentier class wants.  They want to run everything off their handheld device from their villas in Tuscany.   This is an economy that is now built on debt and its servicing, financialization and technocratization; not on production, which is a legacy part of the economy.  And creates that illusion of free shipping.