rant EBay seller fees!

[Scott]

Seriously, how does this organisation get away with this? I know they have terms and conditions, etc, etc, etc.... but how on earth can they charge a fee on top of a service that Royal Mail is providing?

 

I sold a set of alloys recently, the postage costs are insane to begin with yet eBay feel the need to charge me 10% of my postage costs as a "final value fee". How the hell does that one work? I'm passing the costs onto the buyer, I'm making no profit on the postage (in fact I made a loss) only for them to hit me with a 10% fee and then Paypal to hit me with a further 4% fee. I've ended up paying over £55 for postage that I charged £40.

 

I'll be avoiding eBay at all costs now, I always knew their fees were ridiculous but the fact they have a postage limit in auctions and then take their cut off the top of that limit is just a joke.

[j_jza80]

I rarely sell stuff on eBay, and for stuff like wheels I say collection only. I know it limits the target audience, but it just isn't worth the hassle IMO.

[Scott]

I rarely sell stuff on eBay, and for stuff like wheels I say collection only. I know it limits the target audience, but it just isn't worth the hassle IMO.

 

To be fair, I did well with the auction and I wouldn't have done nearly as well selling locally. The money I have ended up with I am happy with, I'm not being greedy.... I'm just irked at how much eBay line their own pockets from my auction. The seller fee's I can live with, it's a tough pill to swallow but I knew about that. The postage fee is really just extracting the urine though. I contacted them and had a chat, the person said they understood how I felt. For a company making billions in profit it's ridiculous that they feel the need, and are allowed, to go to such lengths of extortion.

 

Where are you watchdog

[j_jza80]

What they need is some competition.

[Big Mark]

They're a law unto themselves that get away with ripping people off. You should of seen if you could of done a deal with the buyer where her pretends not to want to go through with the sale and does a bank transfer to you. Thereby ebay won't charge you any final seller fees.

 

Who did you use to ship your wheels? I use Paisley Freight and have never paid that much.

[Shane]

I have a little side line selling stuff on ebay and their rules and regulations for sellers are just terrible. Everything is geared up for the "buying experience" their words not mine.

 

If you list an item now as a no reserve auction and also put a buy it now price on, they remove the buy it now price as soon as the first bid is placed, bear in mind that may be seconds after the listing goes live. However despite the fact they have removed the buy it now feature that you were charged for when making the listing, you don't get that fee back. The nice lady at the other end who ended up hanging up on me said it was so any potential bidder wouldn't be dissapointed should the item get sold on buy it now after they had made a bid on it. WTF

 

On the whole I do ok out of it, or otherwise i wouldn't bother obviously, it provides me with a little extra cash flow to fund my interests but I do think they need to look at some of their silly rules and also make the charges more reasonable. Don't forget they are also taking a slice out of the cash flow put through Paypal.

[Al Massey]

Don't forget they are also taking a slice out of the cash flow put through Paypal.

 

That's because eBay and PayPal are owned by the same people.

One was bought out by the other a few years back, hence why all the changes came in, so they could make more money and dodge tax

[Supra N_A]

yep I put my brand new ad08 on and ebay wanted 56 quid and paypal wanted 18 quid... also postage on top was 30.. I lost like 130 quid for brand new tyres was stupid so just kept them in the end...

[cered]

I avoid selling on eBay now for this reason - Last time I used it was to sell a phone for just over £10, received £15 in various fees as a reward. Big objects you can just advertise as cash on collection so you only pay the initial listing fee.

[Supra N_A]

They're a law unto themselves that get away with ripping people off. You should of seen if you could of done a deal with the buyer where her pretends not to want to go through with the sale and does a bank transfer to you. Thereby ebay won't charge you any final seller fees.

 

Who did you use to ship your wheels? I use Paisley Freight and have never paid that much.

 

problem is no one wants to do that as they want ebay protection rites..altho you are covered with your bank anyways..

[Ric]

agree with the seller / buyer to cancel the auction after goods have been sent received and you get all the fee's back*

 

 

*Used to work, not listed anything big on there for years.

[Scott]

 

Who did you use to ship your wheels? I use Paisley Freight and have never paid that much.

 

I used Paisley Freight. Postage was over £45 including insurance (sold the wheels for over 400). By the time the fees were added I was over £55

[cered]

What they need is some competition.

 

I really want to create a rival website like Ebay's, something that has a modern and user friendly interface, more accessible customer service and more control over listings... AND SET FEES! But I don't have £50,000 to even start such a big site lols

[Abz]

Because they are the big boys in this market, they can charge as they wish and one of the reasons I stop using it to sell stuff. Ended up paying half of it on fee's.

 

They should have a flat fee not a percentage.

[Al Massey]

I really want to create a rival website like Ebay's, something that has a modern and user friendly interface, more accessible customer service and more control over listings... AND SET FEES! But I don't have £50,000 to even start such a big site lols

 

I doubt it would cost that much to start up :/

 

 

Weren't Amazon in the process of having their own version of eBay and PayPal

[Supra2jze]

I still use ebay. Fees are ridiculous, almost like daylight robbery. My advice, avoid the huge tax just agree with the seller/buyer to conclude business outside of ebay. If I want that extra assurance of protection then I usually ask for a PayPal email (You can't send messages with emails on eBay) but just drop the buyer/seller your digits & make sure an invoice is sent under 'Goods & Service' 4% is a lot better than 10%.

[Abz]

I doubt it would cost that much to start up :/

 

 

Weren't Amazon in the process of having their own version of eBay and PayPal

 

Just a few servers can gobble up £50k! You'll need storage, networking, rack space with redundant power, cooling, tonnes of other things too. Then you have the website designing, the software licenses, other software you'll need. Online payment system, insurance, staff to run everything & a whole lot more.

 

This is most likely what the eBay server room looks like and they'll have multiples of them for redundancy.

 

[ATTACH]199007[/ATTACH]

[Al Massey]

Just a few servers can gobble up £50k! You'll need storage, networking, rack space with redundant power, cooling, tonnes of other things too. Then you have the website designing, the software licenses, other software you'll need. Online payment system, insurance, staff to run everything & a whole lot more.

 

This is most likely what the eBay server room looks like and they'll have multiples of them for redundancy.

 

[ATTACH]199007[/ATTACH]

 

Oh

 

I honestly never thought of all that :/

 

That's a lot of computer stuff

[Chris Wilson]

With Ebay and Paypal being Luxembourg located even the UK treasury doesn't benefit fully from their simply vast cash flow. I suppose one answer to postage percentage fees on fixed price goods is to offer free P&P and hide it in the goods price. Not done the maths as I only buy on Ebay...

[Virus]

I rarely sell stuff on eBay, and for stuff like wheels I say collection only. I know it limits the target audience, but it just isn't worth the hassle IMO.

 

+1 never sold anything on ebay before due to this ridicilous system

[stevie_b]

I have a little side line selling stuff on ebay and their rules and regulations for sellers are just terrible. Everything is geared up for the "buying experience" their words not mine.

There seems to have been a knee-jerk reaction in response to buyers getting tucked up on ebay by shady sellers. That may have been a problem 5-10 years ago, but they've lurched the other way: e.g. can't leave negative feedback for buyers. All the rights and benefits seem to be on the buyer's side.

 

If you list an item now as a no reserve auction and also put a buy it now price on, they remove the buy it now price as soon as the first bid is placed, bear in mind that may be seconds after the listing goes live. However despite the fact they have removed the buy it now feature that you were charged for when making the listing, you don't get that fee back. The nice lady at the other end who ended up hanging up on me said it was so any potential bidder wouldn't be dissapointed should the item get sold on buy it now after they had made a bid on it. WTF

I hear you. That rule's never made any sense to me. Unless you start an auction at a price that's similar to the buy-it-now, the buy-it-now fee is usually wasted money.

 

That's because eBay and PayPal are owned by the same people.

One was bought out by the other a few years back, hence why all the changes came in, so they could make more money and dodge tax

Ebay span off paypal late last year: they're completely separate companies now AFAIK.

 

I avoid selling on eBay now for this reason - Last time I used it was to sell a phone for just over £10, received £15 in various fees as a reward. Big objects you can just advertise as cash on collection so you only pay the initial listing fee.

I didn't think that worked: no matter what the payment method (cash, cheque, paypal, luncheon vouchers), ebay's fees will still be taken from your paypal account (which as a seller, I think you're obliged to have).

 

What they need is some competition.

I really want to create a rival website like Ebay's, something that has a modern and user friendly interface, more accessible customer service and more control over listings... AND SET FEES! But I don't have £50,000 to even start such a big site lols

Because they are the big boys in this market, they can charge as they wish and one of the reasons I stop using it to sell stuff. Ended up paying half of it on fee's.

I doubt it would cost that much to start up :/

 

Weren't Amazon in the process of having their own version of eBay and PayPal

A rival to ebay is something I've thought about many many times. The problem is not the cost of developing the website or even the considerable infrastructure (the infrastructure could start relatively modest, and be upgraded as the site grows in popularity and traffic). The problem is the dominant position of the incumbent. Auction sites need to be popular to tempt people to list their goods on there. Buyers only look at websites that have plenty of goods for sale, thereby making these sites popular. It's a vicious circle. Warren Buffet calls it a "moat" around the business, a barrier against competitors setting up and being successful. Ebay's got a seriously big moat.

 

There are already other auction sites: how many of you have listed something on eBid recently? Their fees are way lower than ebay's. I've just done a quick search for internal hard drives on both sites: eBid has 34 listed, ebay has 367,993 (I limited the ebay listings to UK only to make it fair). Therein lies the problem. Someone shopping for a hard disk is unlikely to go to eBid. Therefore sellers are unlikely to list their drives on eBid, and the cycle repeats.

 

If anyone has the pull to make it happen, it'd be someone like Amazon. Their site already has huge visitor numbers, and people are familiar with the brand. Adding a consumer-to-consumer auction offering *could* work for them.

[Wez]

I use to use eBay a lot but have backed right off recently since getting done over by a chinese seller who kept fobbing me off, then after a set amount of time there is no way you can chase up undelivered items, eBay are not exactly helpful so basically been left out of pocket and the seller just gets away with it.

 

Dont think the mods would approve if typed my feelings over this matter on here

[Abz]

Oh

 

I honestly never thought of all that :/

 

That's a lot of computer stuff

 

Yep, pretty big operation fella. Although computing power is cheaper than ever it is very expensive on big data. They'll have millions in just compute hardware alone before you even unbox it.

 

A rival to ebay is something I've thought about many many times. The problem is not the cost of developing the website or even the considerable infrastructure (the infrastructure could start relatively modest, and be upgraded as the site grows in popularity and traffic). The problem is the dominant position of the incumbent. Auction sites need to be popular to tempt people to list their goods on there. Buyers only look at websites that have plenty of goods for sale, thereby making these sites popular. It's a vicious circle. Warren Buffet calls it a "moat" around the business, a barrier against competitors setting up and being successful. Ebay's got a seriously big moat.

 

There are already other auction sites: how many of you have listed something on eBid recently? Their fees are way lower than ebay's. I've just done a quick search for internal hard drives on both sites: eBid has 34 listed, ebay has 367,993 (I limited the ebay listings to UK only to make it fair). Therein lies the problem. Someone shopping for a hard disk is unlikely to go to eBid. Therefore sellers are unlikely to list their drives on eBid, and the cycle repeats.

 

If anyone has the pull to make it happen, it'd be someone like Amazon. Their site already has huge visitor numbers, and people are familiar with the brand. Adding a consumer-to-consumer auction offering *could* work for them.

 

Pretty much head on nail, I have thought about it many times too! Especially having insight in large scale operations from a technology perspective. An the logic makes sense but the theory is a different case.

 

Even if you spent millions on advertising, offering cheaper fee's, all it would take is eBay to price match you & you'd be bust. Purely because of the huge customer base they have. A lot of people buy off eBay, an a lot of sellers make a living out of it. The last thing they would want to do is change sites to a smaller customer reach.

[Al Massey]

Yep, pretty big operation fella. Although computing power is cheaper than ever it is very expensive on big data. They'll have millions in just compute hardware alone before you even unbox it.

 

Wow, shows how little I knew about computers :/

[neilp9876]

Heres an idea...

 

The problem:

. Ebay is offensive and expensive

. A startup will struggle because Ebay have the "moat" and the adverts.

. Loot and gumtree are still going but are unpopular because a. Theyre crap websites and b. The stuff on them is generally crap

. Any free service will attract the poor items and the cheap sellers, Ebay avoids this because it charges a fee to advertise in the first place

 

The solution:

. Use the forum API to tap into all the for sale threads in all the forums - see Tapatalk as an example

. The for sale threads provide thousands of adverts from the off, no marketing advertising needed, a head start

. Ebay gave us the feedback functionality, that will help keep the dross from the site

. Forums are self regulating and poor sellers get banned, so support already exists

. Forums will benefit because users will now come across the forums and join up, whereas they may never have known they existed

. Most forums are based on the same software, so the integration is minimised

 

Someone mentioned the cost of hardware, to start with 4 or 5 web servers and 2 or 3 DB servers will suffice to start, shouldnt be more than a few thousand a year to rent.

 

If someone wants to be an "Angel Investor" then i have a company that could build the web and mobile sites to get this off the ground (free plug for myself )

 

What do people think?