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Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 12.02.25 @2pm
Hi everybody!
The Community Chat will open at 2pm and will remain open until 3pm on Wednesday. After that it will be closed for further questions. Of course, we will continue to take care of answering any questions that may still be unanswered—We’ll get to everything as quickly as possible.
Please ask your questions in the thread below. In order to be able to answer your questions as quickly as possible, we ask you to have one question per post. Of course, you can make as many posts as you like in the Chat- the more the merrier!
Our eBay Community Team is made up of @kat@ebay , @dave@ebay and @marco@ebay . Between us, we have knowledge in Buying, Selling, Fulfilment, Payments, and the Community itself. Anything we aren’t sure on we’ll know the people who will be! Please ask us any questions you may have and we’ll do all we can to support. We understand that certain topics, such as concerns about businesses possibly using private accounts, can be frustrating and important to you. Please refrain from asking the same question repeatedly in our weekly live chats. We assure you that we carefully review all posts in the forum and ensure that your concerns are communicated to the relevant teams for appropriate action.
To maintain a constructive and community environment, posts that repeatedly breach this guideline may be removed. Continued violations could result in further action against your community account. We appreciate your cooperation and understanding in helping us keep our community focused and respectful.
To ask your question, click Reply in the lower-right corner of this post, type your question, and click Reply between 2pm and 3pm. The community team will answer each incoming question in chronological order and will quote the original question in each answer.
Please note that any reply without a question to the community team or discussion replies may be removed from the chat. We want to keep on track to get through as many questions as possible. We welcome all discussion to be moved to the discussion boards.
If you missed the weekly chat time, please ask your question in the community boards and tag us or we will be back next week with another chat!
Many thanks,
Your eBay Community Team
a45heaven
·1 year agoIs there an official response we should give to the buyers who encounter the 'Buyer Protection Fees' - As the first line in the transaction, one would expect the buyers will require a truthful answer -
As a buyer also - have had zero communication on this from ebay, and as a seller i an unsure as to what honest response to tell them.
dave@ebay
Hi @a45heaven
We sent comms on this to all buyers and sellers about the change but as with everything I'm sure not everybody saw them.
If you get any questions on it, you can send the buyers to the Buyer Protection page here. It should answer any of the more common questions they have.
Thanks,
Dave
johannadee
·1 year agoHello,
Please tell me if I have understood this correctly
"The offer price should include the buyer protection fee."
So, for example, if I have an item listed at £2.00 Buy it Now, and I decide to send a buyer an offer to accept £1.50, I would actually have to send an offer of £2.31, more than its listed for, in order to leave me with £1.50 after the BPF is taken.
If that is correct, I am going to have to do a lot of calculating!
marco@ebay
Hi @johannadee, thanks for your question.
Your set price will not change. So, if for example you offer your item at £1.50, you will receive £1.50 for the item. I'm adding a screenshot below for better visibility. As you can see there, you have your item price + the buyer protection fee + the flat fee, which results in the final amount of £21.55 in the example below.
Thank you,
Marco
rog_911
·1 year agoMarco it's a joke this fee- please pass it on
marco@ebay
Thanks for your input, @rog_911.
I will pass this on for you no problem.
Thank you,
Marco
guymafo
·1 year agoDear community team
The standard response from the team about incorrectly registered sellers is to report via the link you post, as above.
When are you going to implement a procedure to report the sellers for evading eBay fees?
Or actually do something about them?
GM
moldosgifts
·1 year agoIts not ideal but it is covered under the , The seller has violated one of eBay’s policies
dave@ebay
Hi @guymafo
We regularly action accounts based on reports we receive. Unfortunately, we can't speak about the action we take with anybody but the account holder.
Depending on the action the policy team have taken, it might not be visible to anyone but the account holder. We may for example have given the account some time to make a change to the account, removed their ability to list new items or even block payouts until the action is taken.
Thanks,
Dave
auctiongabble
·1 year agoI had an issue with my feedback changing randomly and the number of eligable offers i could send out changed overnight from 40 to 4 and i hadn't sent any out. I logged this with tech.
I would like to know if it is a known issue and will i be kept updated if/when its fixed?
kat@ebay
Hi @auctiongabble ,
As a tech ticket was logged for it they will update you when they have a further update from the tech team.
Thank you,
Kat
moldosgifts
·1 year agoThis one Re: Be Aware! Offer prices INCLUDE the Buyer Prote... - Page 2 - UK eBay Community
kat@ebay
Thanks for that @moldosgifts . I'll have a further look into it for review.
Thank you,
Kat
moldosgifts
·1 year agoThanks put it up twice as answered to the group header post first time so needed to be sure you got it.
sp6a
·1 year agoThe eBay App has stopped working on my phone. ( Please read on below... )
I am in no doubt as to why, and know where to find information on which versions of the eBay App are avaiable for each Platform ( iOS or Android ) and which version my phone is ( samsung Galaxy S8 Edge on Android 9 ). However, like many, many others, I suddenley cannot any longer use the eBay App on my phone and understand that there is NOT going to be any fix for this. The only solution is an expensive UPGRADE my to phone hardware as it is limited to Android 9.
The suggested workaround of using eBay in a browser is not practical for me ( or why did eBay create the eBay App at great expense ? ). So I won't be doing that. Whilst I spend £1000's ( please take a look ) on eBay for my business and hobbies, I will now have to rely upon limited laptop access, morning and evenings and won't be able to keep up with things during the day. ( Often when needs arise too ).
I am very disapppointed at this and would like to know how many other eBayers like me are affected by the sudden, unannounced move ?
Many thanks - Noel ( sp6a )
marco@ebay
Hi @sp6a, thanks for your question.
I understand where you're coming from, and I do understand that this is certainly not ideal for you and the rest of the users being impacted. However, this is something that happens at some stage with app, and software versions these days. This is not something we are doing just ourselves as all apps, platforms, and mobile software go through updates, and while some might last a little longer than others, they all stop working/being supported at some point due to compatibility.
I know this is not something you particularly want, but you can still use eBay from the browser of your mobile device or computer.
Thank you,
Marco
darth_baggins
·1 year agoRe buyer protection fee. I have an item on my watch list from a private seller that I've bought several times. It's gone from £1.25 to £2.02. Can you explain why this is good for anyone but eBay please?
All it's achieved is to give the general image of eBay suddenly becoming more expensive to buy on and will undoubtedly deter buyers.
Sites like Money Saving Expert are already carrying stories like 'eBay is more expensive to buy on from February 4th' - while I know this not factually correct, this is what a lot of people are taking away, that eBay is more expensive.
I'm no more protected with this fee than I was without it as a buyer.
marco@ebay
Hi @darth_baggins, thanks for your post.
Do you have an item number, so we can look into this for you?
Thank you,
Marco
rog_911
·1 year agoI'd like to make a formal complaint about the Buyer's Protection Fee. It makes items so much more expensive! It puts off Buyer's. I just bought something on Reverb that I was going to buy on Ebay.
If you sell something and perhaps even make a profit you should pay a fee. If you spend your hard earned cash there should be no fee.
Other platforms will be rubbing their hands at Ebays badly thought out policy.
marco@ebay
Hi @rog_911, thanks for your post.
Yes, that's no problem we can pass this on for you no problem, so your input can be taken into consideration. However, please note that we don't follow up on this kind of feedback/complaints, and this doesn't necessarily means that changes will be made around your comments and/suggestion.
Thank you,
Marco
moldosgifts
·1 year agoThere was a question the boards about offers and BPF. The offer of £54 was accepted but they didn't know that include the BPF so they on got paid £51 or thereabouts,
The email apparently did not make it clear.
So how should the communication of these accepted offers be improved it needs making very clear who is paying what, what it includes and what the seller will get.
kat@ebay
Hi @moldosgifts ,
Do you have the item number for this offer so we can look into it?
Thank you,
Kat
moldosgifts
·1 year agoNo it wasn't my thing was just relaying the details of the post
kat@ebay
Thanks @moldosgifts ,
The offer price should include the buyer protection fee. Can you share a link to that specific post and we can have a look into it.
Thank you,
Kat
moldosgifts
·1 year agoThis one Re: Be Aware! Offer prices INCLUDE the Buyer Prote... - Page 2 - UK eBay Community
petercarty11
·1 year agoWill offers made by both sellers and buyers on private listings be inclusive of the Buyer Protection Fee? This was raised one of the forums earlier and is causing a certain amount of confusion.
dave@ebay
Hi @petercarty11
The auction or offer price you see on the site will always include the Buyer Protection fee. When you enter a starting bid, we’ll add the Buyer Protection fee so you can see what the buyer’s minimum bid amount will be.
As the Buyer Protection fee is variable, the amount that you actually pay is calculated as part of the final auction selling price, so there won’t be any surprises when you go to pay at checkout.
Thanks,
Dave
a45heaven
·1 year ago@dave@ebay
As the Buyer Protection fee is variable, the amount that you actually pay is calculated as part of the final auction selling price, so there won’t be any surprises when you go to pay at checkout.
But that will affect the maximum bid, or is this fee exceeding the bidders max, or limiting their bid?
dave@ebay
Hi @a45heaven
Apologies for the delay in replying to this.
So if a buyer places a bid of £100, we won't charge them any more than that. The seller will see an offer of £91.93 because we show the seller what they should expect to receive.
It's also worth keeping in mind that the Buyer Protection fee will be gradually rolled out across items listed by private sellers, starting in Electronics and coming to all eligible categories in the following weeks. So, if we ramp in an item after an offer has been placed, the buyer may see a higher price when they go to pay for an item that has either SIO or Best offer on them.
Thanks,
Dave
If you enter your highest bit amount
wellingnorth
·1 year agoRegarding the implementation of the new buyer fee, I have some specific practical questions / concerns / suggestions, I don't know if you could pass them on somehow please?
#1
When I list an item I price it on what I think the buyer will pay. The current listing page lets me set the amount I will receive but does not give me easy visibility of the price the buyer will pay (it is possible but only if I click “UK buyers will pay a fee for Buyer Protection” after setting the price).
It would be preferable if on the listings page you had two price fields, the first for ‘price you will receive’ the second for ‘price buyer will pay’. The seller should be able to set the price for either and have the other update in real time - people who are used to Vinted could set the price they will receive, people used to ebay can set the price the buyer will pay.
Similarly it would be good to see the ‘buyer price’ showing as a separate column on the active listings page and in the bulk listing tool so sellers can see the price being displayed to buyers.
#2
Related to this it would be great if further tools were provided to translate between buyer and seller prices. I have a listing where a buyer has sent me a message asking if I will take offers. Previously I might have said yes I’ll take £50 and then if the buyer agreed I would set the best offer auto accept at £50 and tell the buyer to offer £50. Now first of all I have to establish whether any price offered includes or excludes the buyer fee. Then if it does include the buyer fee, there’s no obvious way to find out what offer price I should set to match the price I am telling the buyer.
I don’t know what the solution to this is, perhaps some kind of easy calculator added on the message page to convert between buyer / seller prices. The current implementation of the message page on desktop does not include a ‘send an offer’ feature, that at least would help and I imagine handle the conversion.
#3
In the search results private seller listings are currently showing with odd prices, £26.72, £11.11, etc. Historically an odd price like this has indicated a price converted from a foreign currency and so an international seller. In the search results is there some way you could more clearly distinguish private seller listings, business seller listings and international seller listings? For example for private seller listings you could perhaps show the all in price, but also the breakdown in smaller type - seller price 9.99, buyer fee £1.12, total price £11.11. This makes it a lot clearer to buyers why an item might be an odd price.
This is similar to how it works on Vinted, where there is always very clearly a seller price and a fee added on top - note on Vinted that this is consistent across all sellers as well so on ebay you have more of a job to make it clear what’s happening.
This same issue occurs with saved searches - I usually ignore items with odd prices as I assume they are international sellers
marco@ebay
Hi @wellingnorth, thanks for your post.
We understand where you're coming from, so I will be passing on your feedback on these changes and suggestions for improvement. Anything else, please feel free to let us know, and we will always be open to suggestions.
Thank you,
Marco
funkybunnie-direct
·1 year agoIs there any update on the way to report business sellers 'illegally' selling under a 'private' account?
kat@ebay
Hi @funkybunnie-direct ,
We have no recent update. There is this link to report sellers here.
Thank you,
Kat
funkybunnie-direct
·1 year agoThanks Kat. I am more than happy to continue doing this (at the end of the day I am working for ebay without pay), but I have yet to see any seller acted upon. Would ebay not consider it worthwhile to have a dedicated means of reporting? And a dedicated team to action these reports? At the end of the day if these sellers are correctly registered it will boost ebays revenue greater than the new 'rules' for private sellers that are being introduced.
funkybunnie-direct
·1 year agoThanks Kat. Is it possible to have a dedicated way to report these sellers?
kat@ebay
Hi @funkybunnie-direct ,
Not at the moment. The option for now is to report through that link.
Thank you,
Kat
funkybunnie-direct
·1 year agoShame. These sellers are costing ebay money through lost fees. Apart from being against ebay rules and UK law. I am happy to continue 'working' for ebay without pay by reporting these sellers ( I am sure others would too), if we could see any results of our 'work'.
Are there any further plans to encourage these sellers to convert to the correct account?
kat@ebay
Hi @funkybunnie-direct ,
With all the recent changes made with private sellers eBay are also continuing their internal reviews for these accounts. A number of accounts that have been asked to upgrade to businesses and when they have not done the ability to continue selling has been removed.
Thank you,
Kat
plum993
·1 year agoYou may be missing some posters as the chat notification hadn't updated to say todays chat was going ahead.
kat@ebay
Hi @plum993,
Thanks for letting us know. We experienced a tech delay with post.
Thank you,
Kat