Ebay Fees

I know just about everybody uses Ebay to buy and sell on occasions but have you noticed how much the fees are going up or have gone up.Its got to the point that you have to take the fees into consideration before ever thinking about selling your stuff.

You list a item, and for what ever it sells for you are hit with high fees then if the person pays with paypal then you are hit with another fee. For the buyer he has to pay inflated prices because a smart seller has already figured in his fees.

What it boils down too is this the average joe that sells an item here and there, really takes a hard hit in his pocket book just to make really what becomes drink money.

It would be nice if everyone could band together through out the world and go one week and not buy or sell on ebay and have no Paypal transactions you would see a difference in fees.

Remember Ebay and Paypal are making the biggest return for your items.

I haven't used ebay since then, but if you're a user, you should have gotten an e-mail a while back about rising percentages. Seems like I can't sell a rubber band without paying $7-10 to list it. Buncha junk, if you ask me. As for having to lose nearly 10% of what I get for the item between listing fees, final value fees, and paypal fees, well, I'm not down with that. Especially the final value fee. That's complete crap. listing fee, ok. Cost for the service. Paypal fee, ok. Again, providing a service. But a final value fee? Forget them. They're making commission on something they never owned. You paid them their fee, now move on. I had to pay several hundred dollars on a guitar that I sold on there last year, as I sold it for several thousand dollars. I was extremely upset. Now, I'll admit, I should have thought about it and realized, but I had a place for that money, and with the hit I took, it was some time before I could afford what I wanted, and it almost made me wish I hadn't sold it.

i just started selling items on ebay and now prefere just to use forums like this for selling.

I noticed that i found a buyer on ebay and he lived 15miles away! wasting my nearly £8 ebay feees! not good!

Ebay seems to be becoming more of a scam every day from what I see and hear. My wife tries to sell stuff on ebay. I reckon she's wasting time and money.

I got ripped off by a bloke on ebay who bought my laptop and for the pleasure i got my paypal account suspended and ebay also. I stated that i would only ship within uk as i had been stung before and he lived in germany and he payed me £5 for postage.. he payed by paypal and after 2 weeks he told them that i had not sent the laptop when i clearly had and had a postal recept but as it was not sent "recorded" i was liable and they refunded him his money from my account without me even having a say in the matter.... I disputed this and got my account suspended but they still hit me with a £14 seller fee for a £200 sale of which i never got a penny and lost my laptop!!!
Wont be using ebay or paypal again!!

sorry you had such a bad time. but if you accept Paypal, you have to abide by their rules, which means you MUST ship by trackable means with signed-for delivery - as you have found out, it is for your own protection. shipping is to be paid by the buyer. that you let this guy pay £5 was a mistake, also agreeing to accept the transaction when the winning bidder lived in a country that you did not ship to was a mistake - you should have put in a dispute with ebay on these grounds and re listed. Water under the bridge unfortunately, but there are some pretty helpful ebayers on the discussion boards who can advise people in similar situations., Best time to ask is before shipping the item though....
Regarding ebay costs, they certainly are expensive, and you can reckon on losing about 10% of the total in fees between ebay and paypal

I wouldn't sell anything expensive via ebay.

I do well on ebay, I'm not a big seller or buyer, but all the fees are posted so you know what you are going to pay at the start...
When sellilng, I ship US only w / Paypal only, and send priority mail only.
If you follow their procedures and guidelines it is very hard to get burned...

Selling Laptops, Ipods, Cellphones though... not for me... it's scammer heaven...

I just sold about 6 items on feebay. They invoiced me about 45. The things I sold I hardly used etc. The money I raised was about a third of the money for a 35L, purchased off feebay on FM today.

When I buy on feebay I generally lurk and snipe.
When I sell I avoid getting sniped. I list my items as "Buy It Now" at a price near the usual prices reflected in the recent sales. It may just sit there for 10 days, I don't care. I use good photos.

i sometimes dont know how people make money at all with the fee's. on small items anyway.

I see people buying bargains in yard sales and in stores. They try to sell them on ebay. I reckon at least 50% end up not selling. People hear about all these ebay millionairres and so on but I reckon it's a load of codswallop. There are too many no-hopers trying to sell stuff on ebay. As far as "new" items go, who on earth in their right mind would buy something described as "new" in a secondhand shop, dodgy-looking market stall or from some fleabag street vendor? I don't think anybody would fall for that. Why they fall for these cheap ebay cons, I don't know. Do you really believe something sold on an online fleabag market as "new" is actually honestly new? It's more likely either stolen or repackaged to look new.

As far as selling goes, in the US it's better just to take the stuff down to a charity shop and get a receipt to write it off against tax. In the UK there're always adverts in local papers and so on. If it costs too much to advertise it in the paper then it's more than likely better thrown in the dustbin - as I ended up doing with an old laptop.

throwing working stuff away is scarily decadent - i grew up in a country where everything was short, you had to make do, and anything at all was worth repairing, and what is more there were people around who could fix anything!
A few years ago I had to replace my TV - everytime it was unplugged from the power socket, something inside went wrong and it wouldn't turn on again.the repair shop would fix the presenting problem so it would turn on again, but could never find the underlying fault with the power supply that caused the problem - so in the end I threw it out. Really hurt, it goes against my upbringing, so i constantly find myself making uneconomic repairs to stuff.

You're so right. I grew up repairing everything. The problem is that because we're in a throwaway society people won't pay decent prices for secondhand goods. Many secondhand goods also lose value instantly when something else comes along. My Nikon 35mm manual focus system - it's darned good but nobody would pay even a fraction of what I paid for it. I spent a ton of money on some lenses but wouldn't get more than five quid for them now despite the fact they're in mint condition. My wife laughed at me, here in the US because I broke the handle on a hammer and then spent 20 minutes making and fitting a new handle. Her comment was "you can buy a new one for two bucks". My response was that by the time we'd gone to the shop to get one and got back it'd have taken longer than fixing the broken one.

I found that it's easy to get into uneconomic repairs. I had a couple of things that I kept repairing until I decided there was no further point. I remember scrapping my old car when I found the cost of a set of tyres would come to more than I'd pay for a replacement secondhand car that was a little younger and came with fresher tyres.

I use EBay a lot for selling stuff and personally I don't have a problem with the fees. Then again, I also frequent 'real world' auction rooms from time to time and they can charge the seller 10-20% commission on the hammer price, PLUS 17.5% VAT and to compound matters they ALSO charge the buyer a 10-20% buyers premium, plus VAT.

So an item that bids to £100 can cost the buyer £120 plus £3.50 tax, the seller then gets paid out £76.50 (after the tax). This means that:

The buyer pays £123.50

of which,

The taxman gets £7.00
The auction house gets £40.00
The seller gets £76.50

Even at the lowest rates, those figures would be £111.75 split £3.50 / £20.00 / £88.25

Typical fees would be somewhere in the middle of those two scenarios.


And EBay fees are HIGH ?

But selling via a newspaper costs the price of the advert (the freeadds costs nothing).

the buyer meets the seller and hands over the lolly. No fees!

Yes, I quite agree with this. A lot depends on what you are selling however.

Common items which will be popular locally and fetch a good price are best sold through local free ads. More specialised items though, which are hard to find, will often fetch more money when offered on EBay as you may have several bidders, who have been after such an item for some time, pushing the price up. This can result in an item fetching much more on ebay, than you would be able to get locally, which would more than justify paying the fees.

It all depends on the items you are selling, some genres can fetch silly (high) money on ebay, whilst others don't. You need to check out what you are selling and sell in the most appropriate location. That may be local free ads, Ebay, auction rooms, collector fairs whatever. For what I sell, I get a far better price on EBay than anywhere else. Equally, I BUY a lot of other types of stuff on EBay for lower prices than locally.

If you are concerned with maximising your money when selling an item, which presumably those who worry about the percentage fees ARE concerned about, then you should sell through the medium which brings the greatest return. This isn't automatically the one which is cheapest to sell through.