back to article eBay fees rejig will still hit casual auctioneers

eBay announced today it's removing listing fees for users who only occasionally auction their wares on the online flea market - but seller beware. The website is simplifying how it charges folks who only auction just a few items per month, but it's not necessarily becoming cheaper as advertised. eBay charges sellers twice per …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. N

    What?

    Like theyre not screwing sellers enough as it is?

    Perhaps they ought to take a look & see whats going on around them

  2. Maisie Donaldson

    evidence based - just not the evidence the reporter likes

    Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

  3. Tommy Pock

    Bizarre

    People still use eBay..?

  4. James Bell
    Go

    And for Buy-It-Now?

    Did the reporter not notice the part about the new scheme excluding Buy-It-Now auctions? Seems hard to miss.

    eBay deserves what it will get. What shot to stardom as the "online garage sale" will fade to obscurity as the "poor man's Amazon". The small seller will continue to use Craigslist and move away from these greedy morons.

  5. Rob Thorley

    Never Again

    I sold an iPod for £80 and was charged £11 in two discrete invoices - the listing fee and the FVF. Never again. Friday-Ad or Gumtree here we come

  6. The Fuzzy Wotnot
    Thumb Down

    Online Tat-Market(tm) IS an absolute rip off!

    They are the only game in town and they know it, hence why they can rip you off! I sold some old laptop the other day for about £150, first thing I have sold in about 3 months. Them and Paypal between them, took £15 of that sale!

    The sellers know they have to put prices up on the item or hide the costs in the postage fees, to ensure that the fees are covered. Most of the time it's cheaper to simply rake through the new and used over at Amazon. If eBay have to drop the fees, sounds like more people are shopping elsewhere!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    eBay fees rejig will still hit casual auctioneers

    eBay's strategy is exactly the same as the mobile telephone companies, make the pricing structure so complicated that you need a computer program to work the final price out! Also don't forget that eBay's very cosy relationship with PayPal (It's owned by eBay) which effectually means that PayPal is the default payment method further creams of more of your money into eBay's coffers. The real cost of selling is around 10% of the final price.

    An Ex Ebay Seller

  8. Reg Varney
    Happy

    eBay are doing their damnedest to kill themselves

    After my last experience with their totally dysfunctional dispute system, which is absurdly biased in favour of dishonest sellers, I am determined never to use the useless gits again. So it is with some amusement, I watch as they thrash around, repeately shooting themselves in the foot, and alienating everyone that they haven't screwed over (yet).

  9. Dennis
    Happy

    Has anyone else noticed that eBay

    Is one of the most expensive ways of buying crapola.

    Amazon is much cheaper now for tat.

    Just a observation

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    I'm confused

    ..what are these dollars and cents you speak of?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maths

    Isn't 8.75% of $25 plus 3.5% of the rest always going to be LESS than 8.75% of the total?

    Shomething wrong here shurely?

  12. Dave

    Five bits of tat

    So if you're an infrequent seller and you have a one-off bit of kit costing $100, you put five bogus free listings for five rocks from your garden at $0.10 to use up the five, then list the $100 item at original fee cost. Adjust the number of rocks if you have other real low-price items to list.

    Or (b), don't use eBay.

  13. David

    i dont want a title

    Does this apply only to ebay.com or to .co.uk too?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You only need to look...

    at fleaBay in the week following one of their "free listing days" to see what's going to happen. Shedloads of "spoof" crapverts, misleading placeholder ads directing you to buy other stuff offline, and a general waste of oxygen.

    fleaBay's longest commercial suicide note in history continues.

  15. Michael
    Coat

    Well I was going to put something on there for sale... but...

    This is another reason why I aint going to bother with ebay anymore... ebid.net I aint too sure about but popped my item on there for a try and hope it sells (happy with free listing and 3% rake on the sale)

    The end is nigh for fleabay, wheres my hammer and nails??? Oh yes in my coat!

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    MIssing the real story

    Ebay revised their pricing, private sellers now pay a flat 10% FVF on all sales up to a maximum FVF of £40.

    The 8.75% that dropped as the FV rises are now for Business customers only.

    So yeah, they *REALLY* screwed casual / private customers but tbh, this story is looking at the stable door after the horse (the private fees being hiked to 10%) has already bolted.

  17. Dave Webb
    Coat

    Ebid anyone?

    I hoped that extra revenue from the ads they slap in my face all the time would lead to lower fees. With PayPal etc it does work out at around 10% total. If the profit margin is low anyway it makes it not worth while. I just really wish more people would start to use ebid for the things I buy and sell online.

    Mine is the one with an overdue ebay invoice in the pocket

  18. Jon

    @Maths

    Ture as you wrote it but you forgot the plus C.

    Old

    8.75% of $25 plus 3.5% of the rest + LISTING FEE

    New

    8.75% Flat

    So you have to find the cross over point on the graph. (somewhere around $40-45 for a $1 fee)

    Only using $ as that is the datapoints I have.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Screw 'em ...

    ... it's crap like this that caused me to close down my fleaBay account. That and being double-dipped by PayPal.

    I'll stick with the cheaper, and more hassle-free, method of sticking a postcard in the post office window. Not that this tactic has helped me to shift my unwanted PS3 thus far, mind ...

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    @Simon

    "... it's crap like this that caused me to close down my fleaBay account. That and being double-dipped by PayPal."

    Absolutely. While the article says that Ebay charges twice in auctions, they actually charge three times most of the time. As of several years ago, PayPal (whom we all know is owned by Ebay) decided that Ebay sellers could no longer refuse to accept credit card PayPal payments and take only e-check. Thereby forcing sellers to upgrade to premium PayPal accounts, which not only charge fees for credit cards, but ALSO charge fees for every cash payment accepted too.

    I wouldn't gripe about fees for credit cards; credit card processors charge transaction fees. But the fees for cash transactions are downright ludicrous. The only other option is to say "I'll only take prepaid check/money order". Which leads to people buying after not reading your auction terms, or not bidding (lowering your auction value), etc.

    Sorry Ebay. I still buy from there when I need the odd bit of kit I cannot find (or cannot find cheaper) but I no longer sell there. Craigslist does just fine for me, and it doesn't cost me a dime. Since it's local, I also don't have to ship an item, so I'm willing to charge less for it, so someone else benefits by getting what I have to sell for less, while I make the same amount of money by not paying Ebay fees. I hope Ebid slowly takes over your market; under their far more fair terms, I'll gladly list with them too.

    Mines the one with extra cash in the pockets from not having to pay Ebay fees.

  21. Steve Wedge
    Dead Vulture

    Sigh

    I'd bought and sold a goodly amount of stuff there over the years - the first item I bought had a 6-digit ID number. At the time, it was the greatest thing since sliced bread but -- like everything, it seems -- they got too big for their britches and got greedy. Then all the crapola vendors started listing their pecker pills and whatnot to the point where it's become a real quagmire. Yeah, I still buy the occasional thing I need there, but only after checking Craigslist and other vendors first. Fleabay should be worried, as I and others used to check them FIRST and people like us were the ones who made them as big as they are.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Hardly ever even look there any more

    (1) I don't (and won't) have a paypal account

    (2) If i even find something interesting i write to the seller to ask if they still take money order

    (I've always used those...one variety or another) and never had a problem with them.

    (3) If the item closes out before I get back to it...too bad. Just seeing paypal only is enough to drive me away.

    The regular sellers i looked at all the time in the past are now losing business becuase of ebay. have read too many stories about all their "changes" and grand plans for turning it into a "tot-mart" for large business and shutting out the little guy and it looks like they're still heading down that track to the cornfield meet.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Re: Has anyone else noticed that eBay

    "Amazon is much cheaper now for tat."

    Very true, but it's not without its problems.

    The first is that the 'postal credit' system is seriously fucked up - a lot of people have complained about it but Amazon don't seem particularly inclined to do anything about it eg. £2.75 postage for a book irrespective of whether or not the book is bog-standard novel or some hardback uber-tome on Java.

    The second is that, to the best of my current knowledge, you can only sell something if Amazon also sell it - this has its good points, since you can easily list something in a couple of clicks without having to play the digital pimp and make your item sound attractive (one of the things I truly hated about fleaBay). The downside is that if you want to sell something that's *slightly* different you could well be sunk as you can't rely on punters bothering to read additional item descriptions.

    They're not above gouging on fees either, but as it stands they're still the best of a bad lot and my first choice if I'm flogging books or games.

  24. No

    eBay still exists?

    Seriously, who still uses eBay? Who even searches for stuff on eBay anymore?

    For me it's craigslist for "junk" type stuff, and places like amazon for more "store" type stuff.

    eBay is finished, they just don't realize it yet.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @ac

    "...The only other option is to say "I'll only take prepaid check/money order"..."

    Nope, that's not allowed anymore either. It's gotta be PayPal.

  26. Ramazan
    Thumb Up

    Amazon? ebid?

    On ebay I can buy e.g. The Orange Box with shipping to Ukraine.

    The same is not possible on Amazon, craigslist or ebid.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like