February Sales Dead 2025 - Ebay Sales Completely Dead

[theglo-68]

Any thoughts as why would suddenly ebay sales would do ZERO since start of February.

We have been closely monitoring our sales and since start of January 2025 sales are down. But they have now completely died as soon as February started.

[threadgame]

The only other two worth considering would be Depop and Etsy, but both require a fair amount of traction / a following, particularly Depop. The people that got in early on Depop have thousands of followers, and often sell things higher (and with less fees) than eBay. 

[techfit-couture]

This is exactly what has happened to me, I recently changed my private account to a business account and my sales have impacted again. It seems switching to sellers account negatively impacts sales. It is no coincidence this has happened to two of my accounts. Has anyone figured why this is happening? 

[reskufashion]

I switched from private to business at the start of the year and suspected the same. Used to be an even split between eBay and Vinted, but eBay has completely fallen off since switching to a business account, Vinted sales have remained the same. 

I have not changed my prices so would have expected the opposite, surely buyers would prefer to buy from a business and eBay would prioritise business listings as they earn more fees?

Im going to keep monitoring until the summer to get a better comparison but will consider dropping eBay (and the store fees) all together and focus solely on Vinted if things don’t improve. 

[art2own]

Everyone thinks it is FREE to sell on eBay now, so why would anyone buy from a business seller who is obviously over charging 20% on all their stock? eBay have informed, shouted at every Tom, *Bleep*, and Harry, that it is now FREE! FREE! FREE! to sell on eBay, with no mention to the general public at all that business sellers still pay fees. Are they being fair to all sellers with their marketing strategy by not advertising to every Tom, *Bleep* and Harry the tons of business seller fees?

I had a potential customer today, when I messaged them the eBay fees would be about £130, tell me they thought it was free to sell on eBay now? When I said no business sellers still pay fees, they wished me luck and said they can't afford to buy at that price. At the price I offered I would only have made a third the amount that eBay would have taken from the sale in fees.

I've looked at business sellers selling on private accounts in my category, and there are many, seen their sales history, and they are basically killing it, realistically making several times more in sales than I am. I think eBay is prioritising the private accounts, at least in my category.

[art2own]

Error in this post, just deleted it.

[the_book_seekers]

ebay doesn't explain things at all well. In addition to not explaining that businesses still have fees to pay, it hasn't been made clear to buyers that they won't pay the BPF with a business seller. When something fundamental to the site changes it would be more than helpful if ebay sent an email to all members. 

[andha-21]

Can't see them doing that. How would they explain "offers" without looking like the biggest set of imbeciles on the planet?

[blue-mist]

Something is really odd here this week I pay to promote my items. Last friday (14/2) the fees went through the roof for not manys views looking at it serval items i had been charge a £1.00+ for. So i dropped the keyword price to 10p each.Saturday (15th )no views on promoted items as out of budget. Sunday & monday views. Since tuesday the 18th no views at all. Anybody know what going on. Or how i can contact ebay as it items are active.

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Ebay have totally decimated the art category for business sellers. The platform is a shadow of what it was 3 - 5 years ago.

[rbssandm]

One of the reasons I believe ebay is dying slowly for small sellers it's because they have introduced buyer protection fees to buyers, So an item you sell for 10£ shows to the buyer for 11.50£  more or less.

+ postage if you have the items set for the buyer to pay for postage expect a price showing 14.44£. I'd imagine buyers heading twoards retailers online shops or Amazon..which offer a better service but more headaches. 

[art2own]

The art category has been in decline since eBay removed the date sub-categories and introduced the mandatory "Good 'til Cancelled" listing policy.

Nevertheless, the decline in sales seems to be seller-specific. For instance, I find it difficult to understand, and can not figure out how another business seller, operating through a private account (which I've monitored for the past five months), consistently maintains between 200 and 300 active "Buy It Now" artwork listings and manages to turn over around a third of their stock each month. For example, this month alone, they have already sold 60 BIN paintings and prints, yet they currently have only 226 active BIN listings. Although I don't know how many offers they've accepted, the total asking price for all their artworks shown as sold this month amounts to £7,429.28. Remarkably, they provide no description beyond the eBay title; their descriptions simply contain a standard blurb that everything they sell is old, may show signs of wear and ageing, mention taking photos etc, followed by the frame size, such as "51 cm x 41 cm total frame".

By comparison, I currently have 226 listings on my account, create detailed and high-quality listings, but have only managed 36 sales over the past three months.

[art2own]

Edit to my last post below, they have currently *227 listings, while I have 226, so just one less active listing, but such a large difference in sales.

[6kitkat]

From my own experience and perspective.

As a private seller I’ve walked away from eBay on 04 Feb 2025 - Previously I sold a few items from my collection, and bought a few items, buying more than I sold.

But now I have to

1. wait 48 hours after a receipt of item by the buyer to cash out - so I don’t sell

2. pay 75p plus 4% from price buyers - so I don’t buy

I’ve been with eBay for 20 or so years, that’s it. Less people, using the site so eBay is now circling the plug hole really, a death spiral.

[whf-southampton]

We also have been monitoring sales. As a business, we have always done this  (for the past 20 years on ebay) with graphs showing monthly and yearly changes to buying and selling patterns.

Although February is always our quietest month of the year, it has NEVER been this quiet, with sales down 50% on this period last year, notable since the seller protection fee came in for private buyers. This simply  cannot be coincidence. 

Buyers simply do not understand how it works, and to be fair, it certainly is a complicated process to apply to auction style listings. When you do not understand how something works, you leave it alone and walk away. They also do not understand the difference in fee structure between buying from a business or a private seller (who would if you only used ebay occasionally???)

Buyers do know however, that they are already, and always have been protected to the hilt with the ebay money back guarantee so must be asking themselves just what is this convoluted buyer protection fee actually all about??

Vinted keep things so much simpler, with just a straightforward buy it now policy with the protection fee displayed up front . Buyers know exactly where they stand with every seller they buy from ( I always go to Vinted first as, if you can find what you want, it is just so much easier.)

I would hate to see ebay fail, as it used to be such a good platform for both small business and private sellers but they seem to have successfully managed to alienate business sellers, private sellers, and buyers and appear to be going into freefall.

[future-worlds-uk]

Couldn't agree more.

A perfect assessment from a fellow long term ebayer too.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I must admit, I really don't get it with the new buyer protection fee.

Yes, I can see how it will effect some low value listings, but in the main (unless I misunderstood something), it's just included within the selling price.  So the buyers don't really see anything different.

So how is that confusing to them?  I would imagine that covers the vast majority of listings on Ebay, as most are BIN's.    And whether buying from business or private, there will literally be no difference.

As to auctions, then I can see some confusion over them, but how have they actually implemented it.

Are they adding it to the winning bid once completed?

I can see how a private seller might not get it, when the fee is being added to whatever price they set, but this shouldn't effect buyers.

I use both Ebay and Vinted.  Both however have their advantages.  Though it is definitely far easier to list on Vinted.  That is one that Ebay should pay attention to.  But even so, Ebay has vastly more categories than vinted, so though it probably can be streamlined, it's not going to get that much better.  And as Vinted expands, it will have issues itself with this.

I don't quite get the issues with search on Ebay, I can honestly say that I've never had an issue with it.  I can usually find what I want pretty quickly. 

[typo_lee]

It’s weird as we are actually up on sales on last February. Last year was dire on eBay all round tbf. However this February we are up 50% on Amazon compared to Amazon sales last year 

[555njp]

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@therenewalworkshopltd wrote:

I don't quite get the issues with search on Ebay, I can honestly say that I've never had an issue with it.  I can usually find what I want pretty quickly. 

---

I can usually find what I want, but what I’m not seeing is loads more listings that eBay initially hide, often at a better price! A google search is usually better.

As sellers are finding out, you can jump through all eBay’s hoops but search is so manipulated to drive a buyer towards a heavily sponsored listing and maximise eBay’s revenue, that even if you are one of those willing to promote, sometimes your listings just are not being placed in front of the customer at all.

[goodibags]

"the buyers don't really see anything different. So how is that confusing to them?"

If you've been following these discussions for a week or more you'd be acquainted with just how confusing Ebay is for all buyers right now.

Here's a short list of 'funnies' that spring to mind:

1. The search by price is completely messed up, with buyer fees included in the price shown but NOT in the sequencing order. The cheapest item may no longer be at the top of the list but may be 7 or 8 items further down the page.

2. The prices are plain weird too, unless made less weird by private sellers actively changing them.

3. Buyer fees are included in the price on the item page but then partially lost (VAT?) when you view the same item in your basket, unless you are logged in. (Bear in mind, many users won't have been logged in if they couldn't use Ebay's app post-upgrade.)

4. Buyer fees may also be also missing from prices displayed as suggestions in Ebay's various banners. If you click on any of those items the price will suddenly jump to include fees.

5. In auctions the bids are inclusive of buyer fees but the bid history page is showing only the price due to the seller, which is totally confusing. The next bid amount itself (I understand) doesn't bear much relation to anything else.

6. And on checking out the price will suddenly split out to show what the seller receives net of Ebay's buyer fees. This will be a shock as up until 2 weeks ago buyers were not being charged for 'protection'. Sadly, it's just the kind of thing that will make anyone think twice before going through with payment.

7. I could add the chaotic negotiations palaver called 'making an offer'. That has also been well documented here.

These are just a few of the hurdles for starters, there are probably other ways in which buyers have been completely befuddled by the new changes. Suffice to say, buying on Ebay is no longer an easy experience.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Well, to be honest, I have yet to see any of those.

However, virtually all of that is going to be things that are not predicted and should have been caught when testing.  So that being said, they will all disappear as the bugs get fixed.

It doesn't make it right, but that's how it is.

Surely you can see why Ebay have taken this route though?

But I do think that it's half hearted.  They are trying to take part of the whole and not succeeding very well with it.  The whole thing needs tweaking properly.

ie.  if they going to act like Vinted, then they need to do it properly.

Business sellers are pretty much the same as private on there, except for one or two things, such as having money held for a couple of weeks.  But otherwise, it's pretty similar.

The problem is, that you can't copy something that doesn't do all that you do.  Ebay has so much more to offer in the range of things being sold.  There really isn't anywhere else that you can go to buy odd things, in the same way that Ebay does.  In other words, I think Ebay should just concentrate on being Ebay.  Not some mishmash of other sites.