Just got notification of new buying and selling rules for Ebay, from 4th Feb 2025.
All buyers will pay a 4% +75p sales tax on items they bid on/buy, the price will be hidden in that the listing will show the seller price plus the fee. Sellers will be able to see the fee amount for what it's worth. They call it a Buyer Protection Fee but in all but name it's VAT. (Which the EU have been trying to impose on Ebay and other seller platforms for ages.)
Thus if I list an item at £20, it will appear to the buyers as £21.55. The seller still gets £20 eventually as fas as can be ascertained, Ebay pocket the difference.....
Also, private sellers will no longer get their money until the item is delivered! Which for untracked items is 14 days. Okay, we get 300 free listings a month, but that includes manual relistings.
Thoughts.... :( :o
I did wonder how they would make there money if not charging selling fees.
I think it will mean that all sellers will now charge for tracked delivery to esure payment.
I use eBay so little now, I'm not sure it matters to me. It is going to push up minimum prices a fair bit - i.e. the old 99p listing will now be £1.74 as a starting price. Not sure how important this is as little sold at 99p.
I'm not sure how this is VAT - the key thing with a tax is it goes to the government, this just seems to be a way for eBay to make money.
I do wonder if sellers will see more claims for non-delivery now customers know they have buyer protection, or there were already plenty due to unreliable postage services and dishonest buyers??
Edit (Or what Orcs said about tracked - which again pushes up the minimum price for an item)
Not VAT.
As has been said - simply Ebay screwing money out of the seller via another route and making a 'virtue' out of it to buyers (while not pointing out to buyers they will end up paying extra in the long run. Getting to be like Amazon.
I lost my ability to sell on Ebay when they finished their deal with PayPal
Quote from: sultanbev on 03 January 2025, 11:54:06 AMAlso, private sellers will no longer get their money until the item is delivered!
This bit is absolutely crazy to me, it makes no sense at all. eBay have always been heavily weighted in favour of the Buyer but this is taking it to a whole new level. They're expecting private individuals to package and send potentially high-value items to complete strangers without receiving any payment first? It's ridiculously easy to claim something hasn't been delivered, especially when Royal Mail's 'evidence' is often a blurry close-up shot of a letterbox or similar. So the Seller is then stuck trying to make a claim through RM's deliberately obtuse claims system.
I think this is all a rather cynical way for eBay to force frequent sellers into paying for a business account instead, as well as pushing more people to pay them directly for their postage, which they claim has more 'protections' attached to it.
It also means that they're going to be sitting on every single transaction payment for days on end, until items arrive at their destination and they have to pay the Sellers. That's going to be 100's of millions sitting in their coffers instead of sellers accounts.
I don't think this means that the Sellers do not pay until after delivery, rather that Ebay will sit on the money until after confirmation of delivery.
As for charging for tracked delivery, I have been doing that for years now as I'd had so many problems with Royal Mail's "normal" service.
I read it that the Seller wont get paid until the Buyer have, in some way (TBC), indicated officially that the item has been received (but I might be wrong). So again, as stated, this favors the Buyer and will lead to more aggro and cost for sellers. And even if items are sent signed for, in my experience, this is no safe-guard. I had a parcel delivered, signed-for by Royal Mail, that was delivered to a completely erroneous address where it was quite happily signed-for by somebody at the property and I got no compensation and lost my money.
However, as has been pointed out already the additional cost will just be added to the selling price and sellers will now move to tracked delivery, so it will make items even more expensive and put more Buyers off.
I used to sell a fair bit on eBay - it was a good way to get rid of the few extra figures you might acquire when building an army, due to the pack sizes. Which I saw as better than having to lug all my spare bits and pieces a Bring & Buy stall at a show. But this, plus the eye-watering increases in postage prices, and the big issues of deliveries going missing, is the end of eBay selling for me and ultimately without sellers eBay will die.
Like so many things - some 'bright spark' comes up with what looks like a wheeze to make additional revenue and the law of unintended consequences just rubs its hands and grins :D
Yes, private sellers will not now get their money for at least 4-5 days after the sale, as payment is "2 days after delivery is confirmed". Not only that, if using untracked service, or their is a failure of notification by the electronic system of a tracked item for whatever reason, then payment will be released 14 days after the sale.
A postie commented on a YT video about the tracked delivery system, saying about a quarter don't get registered as delivered due to the machine breaking down, rain getting into it, or simply pressing the wrong button. My own experience of receiving parcels recently has been similar. As for private couriers, I won't even go there!
So while it won't get more expensive per say for private sellers clearing out their tat, payment will become more erratic. And sales will go down as the buyer fee will put buyers off a bit, 99p listings will now appear as ~ £1.77. Coupled with the ongoing collapse of the economy generally, it doesn't bode well. Am still undecided whether to put more effort into ebay.
Shame a consortium of wargames/modelling companies can't set up an "ebay-for-wargamers" type operation....
Meanwhile, should I apply Ebay logic and go buy some groceries and offer to pay them in a fortnight, after I've eaten them? Hohum
What alternatives are there?
I have some stuff I'd like to sell. Haven't done it via ebay as I'm scared of getting ripped off.
30 years ago I'd have listed them in Trade-It - a local free ads paper that was tremendously popular for a while. Been killed off by the internet.
Basically I want an online version of that, so I can advertise stuff and people can come and hand over cash and take the item away.
Does such a thing exist?
Quote from: Raider4 on 08 January 2025, 05:48:46 PMWhat alternatives are there?
I have some stuff I'd like to sell. Haven't done it via ebay as I'm scared of getting ripped off.
30 years ago I'd have listed them in Trade-It - a local free ads paper that was tremendously popular for a while. Been killed off by the internet.
Basically I want an online version of that, so I can advertise stuff and people can come and hand over cash and take the item away.
Does such a thing exist?
Only using things like Lead adventure Forum or their are some specialist Facebook pages like 15mm wargames figure sales UK