No Fees for selling Clothing?

[vintagewatchpart]

So Ebay has abolished all fees for selling clothing on a private account.

Now more than ever surely the clamping down of businesses operating from private accounts has to increase?

I feel so sorry for those in this niche who trade legitimately as businesses who are competing with "private" sellers who just got handed a massive chunk of money.

[ile136yz]

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@therenewalworkshopltd wrote:

Oh, but I do blame people for trading illegally.

Why should they get away with it?  I'm happy to report those doing so, to trading standards if ebay won't action them.

eBay knows when a Private Account is being used as Business by the amount of sales and the takings per month. 

eBay should take the action themselves and not expect other eBay Members to report Private Accounts. eBay make their Policies & should implement them.

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[therenewalworkshopltd]

I don't disagree that Ebay should take more action on this kind of thing, so really don't see the point of highlighting my post at all.

The point however, is that if Ebay don't, then it's up to us, to do something about it, if change is to take place.

For those posting about Vinted, yes, listing is easier, but by the same token, you need to add more to the description.  As it doesn't allow for those oddities in sizing and so on in the defaults.

But as with anything, some things are easier to on one site, but different things are better on another.  It's all swings and roudabouts.

The biggest single difference that I see on Vinted, is the vastly reduced prices that people get for their clothing.  Yes, postage is paid separate by the buyer.  But if your a business and you have a RM business account etc, then you now have to go to half a dozen drop off points, when selling several items in a day.  

Assuming of course that you could do this with Vinted as a business.

[iluvneighbours]

Reminds me of a guy who contacted me about a fabulous men's dinner suit I was selling and begged me to end the auction and sell it to him as he desperately wanted to wear it at the weekend. i agreed a price and sent it off.  Out of curiosity I checked his listings to find that he was selling menswear and my gorgeous suit had already gone up for sale and at a much higher price.

I wasn't bothered about him making a profit as that's business but I was so annoyed that he'd lied to me.😡

[iluvneighbours]

I've never bought off vinted but my understanding is that it's the buyer that pays Vinted via it's Buyer Protection Service.  If so, then it makes what eBay is doing even less sense because the buyer does not pay anything to eBay when they buy.

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Instead of totally free fees for private sellers Ebay could have offered private sellers an equivalent coupon / discount that could only be spent on Ebay, that could have helped Ebay business sellers in some way.

[ebeegeebees2006]

I've been thinking about this a lot and actually it is all really sad. Most of us on here rely on this platform to make a living. eBay used to be thought of with affection in the early days, and now us business sellers seem to go from one disappointment to the next. Problems with estimated delivery dates that seem unable to be solved, item specifics as long as your arm, some that are completely irrelevant. Layers and layers of extra fees, which are hard now to keep track of and understand. Something seems to have gone badly wrong. Maybe this will have the desired effect and bring the masses back to the platform, but personally I think that eBay would do better to concentrate on us small businesses rather than offer a free service to private individuals.

[tribalgiftsuk]

I was really shocked about this move by Ebay yesterday and i felt the pain for business sellers of pre owned clothing. But having read the comments on the Daily Mail's article last night about Ebay doing this the majority of comments were from sellers who have stopped using Ebay in favour of vinted etc saying that they would not return to Ebay  regardless and that it was too difficult to sell on here.

So business sellers of pre owned/used clothing just carry on for now., it is unfair but keep calm and carry on.  Give it a few months and see if it has any real impact or not. It is probably too little to late for most people. A lot of people were also saying how bad Ebay has become in general. with the cheap import clothing etc. It was disheartening in many ways to see many peoples negativity towards Ebay in general. 

But there is a good market for branded used clothing and because it is rare to find the right size when something is listed it will sell to the right person at the right time.

Ebay do definately need to find a better way of treating its business sellers. It is becoming obvious they dont value us and i really do hope some better alternatives come up soon for us all to benefit from and for us to be treated fairly by.

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

The one thing we can take from this announcement is that Ebay has woken up to the fact that the UK site isn't performing very well.

The immediate roll out is quite telling.

Whether we agree with it is another thing !

[technthread]

That Daily Mail article is a real hoot. eBay are lauding the AI generated descriptions as though they make listing clothing much faster. They will make the speed of INAD disputes much faster and that's about it.

Why don't they realise that people don't mind typing a sentence or two in a description but they do mind 30 lines of item specifics to complete.

[ebeegeebees2006]

I totally agree about the AI descriptions. I scroll through loads of waffle to see the dimensions of an item and it's general condition, and these things aren't mentioned. 

[2007dcase]

It is not 'just' business sellers of used clothing affected, it is the entire clothing category - new, new with defects and used are all fee free now for private sellers. I don't object to the real private sellers getting this offer but it is going to be difficult to compete with unregistered businesses that buy stock from the same sources and don't have to worry about factoring in the cost of returns, shop fees, selling fees etc

[tribalgiftsuk]

Yes i see your point. I don't know why they are allowing new with tags or New other in that offer. It would help if they would actually clamp down on those masquerading as private sellers. 

One thing i can say though is many buyers, me included have had bad experiences with 'private sellers' and i am often now reluctant to buy from them unless it really is something i cant get elsewhere. I have recieved items smelling of cigs, or not measured correctly or arrived broken. I have friends and family who i asked today who also prefer to buy from business sellers. 

[theshoecupboard]

I hadn't realised that the situation at ebay was quite as bad as it appears to be, as this strikes me as being a little bit of a panic response to deal with other sites like Vinted.

It just appears to be an attempt to try to get people back onto ebay, but if you are already selling on the other sites why return to a platform which is far more complicated to list on, and where the search facilities are useless, and with the increase in buyers leaving negative feedback is becoming quite a hostile place to sell on. 

If anyone does come onto ebay it will generate no fee income for ebay, so does ebay hope to pick up more fee income from the business sellers - hardly an equality service where one group of people fund another!

I for one am not happy that my fees are going into supporting another group of people - when will my turn come round when I get zero fees and get supported by someone else.

I would give up being a business seller in this category as an increase in private sellers would make selling far more difficult and because of the fees being taken from your sales would put your prices up above anything a private seller would charge (you could always promote your listings an have more fees taken out!)

The PR that came with this talked about what ebay was like when it started - is this a cunning plan to drive business sellers completely off the site and go back to just individuals selling their unwanted items to other individuals?

I just hope that ebay lasts long enough that I can sell my stuff and then retire, this is just a sideline having retired from accountancy some years ago.

[karenanne46]

It applies to all clothing - used and new.

[re-sellguy]

the only way to stop businesses listing fee free on private accounts is to drastically cut the monthly allowance of free listings for private sellers, example say say 20 or so a month per catagory.

[the_book_seekers]

I'd cut it to 100 and stop the rolling up that allows listings to reach into the thousands. 

[pg_kicks]

Sadly missed the weekly chat but just read it, what a shock to see the benefit for businesses was that it brings more people to the site, great, the site will be full of unwanted shein/temu orders at prices that will never sell but great news it just means you can pay more to get your item higher.

Excited for the great news for business sellers and the improvements being announced at the roadshow, 7 sleepless nights, its like the countdown to Christmas. As I know many wont be able to get there with 10 days notice as the community team for some unknown reason said the dates were not announced in a weekly chat a couple of weeks ago when they had been any ground breaking news I will happily update. 

[bravergrace]

Limiting the number of listings is no good at all while private sellers are allowed to use MVLs and multi-quantity listings.

These can have literally HUNDREDS of combinations, and there is no policing of the rules at all.

For example, sellers list 25 random books or board games on one listing.

Or suits with 10 sizes of jacket,  10 styles of trousers, 6 leg lengths, 12 colours...  

Or while there's no limit to the value of the listings.

Honestly, how many £2500 stairlifts can one private seller have available to sell?

[pg_kicks]

Private accounts should have 30 or 50 a months MAX and no multi listings or variations. Somebody might come along as mention they are selling a huge collection but thats 1 in 10000 and sadly its better catching hundreds and upsetting one. 99.9% of accounts selling more than 30 things a month multiple months is a business.

[whf-southampton]

I don't think ebay have looked at the Vinted site otherwise they would realise that people who sell clothing also sell other items like toys etc.

Why would anyone just move selling clothes across to ebay - or is ebay about to do the same for other catergories as well as clothing?

The one thing that all these forums show is that sellers including the business sellers are not supported by ebay and yet the people at the top of ebay seem to be unable to grasp that. Sellers treatment by ebay has been getting worse and the knock on effect of falling sellers and therefore buyers is as a consequence of the unequal way sellers and buyers are viewed within ebay.

Until they see that as the main problem and deal with it then the situation will only continue to spiral downwards.

Gimmicks like this will not bring back sellers but will just alienate the existing sellers even more. The most probably affect of this is to actually make sellers on ebay see that the Vinted sellers are doing better and move across to Vinted to try it out!