Time to quit eBay? Biz fees too much!

[mbyrne3383]

Hello all,

Ive been a long time user of eBay but I’ve just had enough of the fees, not to mention to mention my regular and consistent flow of sales dropping off a cliff since raising prices to cover fees. 

Is eBay not the right marketplace to sell my products? I just sold 2 items for approx £800 and the fees are £99 of that. On top of all other costs, it’s just not worth my time to sell on eBay. 

am I missing out on a business seller offer that can reduce these fees? 

If not, I’ll just up my costs again and use it as a shop window to raise awareness and hope people find my website. 

thanks

[mbyrne3383]

Just realised I’ve posted from a personal account,  not my business account so for the snoopers, I’m not talking about what I have for sale here. 

[cobwebcottage]

If you ask a question on a public forum where it says 'view listings' under you username then expect people to 'snoop' to gain an understanding of your issue. 

My Ebay fees average between 18 -20 % so your fees are very good for a business account. 

Unless you want to deal with the public turning up, or not, selling on a certain free marketplace, where else would you sell ( legally)  without incurring similar fees? 

[pegr-834437]

Without knowing what you sell nobody can give a specific answer but for me its not time to quit but to be selective. 

eBay has taken business accounts for granted imho, what do any of us get for the 8-20% that we pay that private sellers don't get? This is not a business v private seller argument btw but if I'm paying hundreds or thousands a year toward a site I'd be wanting a lot more than they currently offer. Yes it has a great reach but its always had that, it now expects you to pay more for less whilst giving other accounts it for free. 

If they were strict on certain things I'd not mind paying but the excuses they come up with and the times they pass the buck really do make you question why you're doing it. I know its probably the best but its not down to eBay that its the best its down to the sellers/buyers be that private or business who are doing all the leg work. 

Have any business accounts got any offers/promos from eBay that have actually helped or didn't cost an arm and a leg. The current ones floating about seem to be money off promoted shops of dynamic pricing promo, I've yet to hear good profitable stories from either of those.

To answer your question, use eBay like eBay uses you, to make money, if it starts costing you anything cut it free.

Edit due to the fact i cant spell very well.

[maarsy]

my actual income that i make trough ebay has been destroyed this year . while i took in a total of around 2000 - 2500 a month last year i did the seemingly right thing ( forced to ) going on a business account . right away i had an increase for a higher shop fee and selling fee's of about 20 % . sales were ruined after the whole private seller fee's fiasco , down month after month . 1 item sold yesterday and none today my total intake has dropped below 1000 pounds in a 31 day period for the first time in 2 years . every week i try to think how to improve sales but i also keep bumping into private sellers that clearly operate on a business level with items like me that wont have the same fee's as me ... 

in short now that they have cut back on the protection fee for private sellers , business sellers accounts have been set back again when it comes to making a decent income . many were forced into taking a business account because of private seller fee's to put buyers off that have been reversed but you cant change the account anymore and are stuck .

[auctiongabble · Accepted solution]

Same here, im looking at other platforms and options as ebay has totally declined for me this year.  I too was switched to business account and sales are now non existing since February.   To the point that my seller level has been dropped because of lack of sales which now means any sales incur higher selling fees.

Nothing is being done for business sellers and the only offers we get are promoting which is another sour subject!

I have a 1:1 call with ebay expert on Monday, can't wait to hear what they have to say...

[mbyrne3383]

Wow, I'm not alone then..  The business fee's are just way to high, it's cheaper to sell a car for £100,000 than my £400-900 items. Why can't ebay simple do a fixed listing fee or a promo like it does for private sellers? They are not supporting businesses in the right way at all and I'm not surprised to see businesses remain or open new private accounts, something I am considering tbh. eBay is good, it gets a lot of people through the door but when you are making minimal profit, it's almost not worth it. 

As mentioned above, I see the promoted listing offers but they dont actually seem like they are actually of real benefit. 

And don't get me started on the buyer protection fee for buyers, whoever came up with that idea needs sacking. Why on earth do people need to pay ebay a protection fee when items are most likely covered by insurance. 

[pegr-834437]

My best guess is the bpf was due to the amount of businesses on private accounts, probably hoping if they made buyers pay (its the seller who pays lets be honest) more might move over to the correct accounts. The big issue eBay have had is they always try and use the carrot approach, they basically rewarded people for breaking the law and policies when they asked people to upgrade, they need to use the stick, if theres a good chance your a business you either upgrade or we close your account, open another and we will track your IP/bank name/address and just keep closing them down. It'll never happen though they'll just say sorry we cant prove this account with 5000 brand new items isnt a private seller so please give us more to promote your item that you pay 12% on when it sells.

[wyntersemporium]

They’re rising as well. They want more and more off me. 

[wyntersemporium]

It’s been like this for years I’ve been on here since the early days 1998. Under another name which has since long gone. 
Hardly have any orders now all private sellers who act as a business should be made as a business. 
already on other places to sell. Which my items do sell there.

[pegr-834437]

Fully agree with you, its just eBay trot out the copy and paste replies which really should be acted on by trading standards or government as they are helping thousands break the law and millions not get consumer rights.

I honestly dont see why eBay dont do it either, they are losing money from it hand over fist, its common sense to stop giving things away for free when you could be making money from it surely.

[gatefittingsdirect]

We run at about 17% fees but we can get the VAT back so approximately 14% net, still extremely high compared to our website where its around 3% for card payments. 

Ebay is still a big platform, but we mainly use it now as our ebay products appear all over Google etc, and our feedback backs up our website.  Ebay in many cases makes more profit than we do on sales which feels pretty ridiculous at times, but I suppose those ebay sales wouldn't of happened if the platform wasn't in place. 

Personally, I think ebay will disappear in the coming years due to incredibly high selling fees, other much cheaper platforms to sell through and constant fiddling with policies etc which again I have found this week with delivery options. 

[carinya.designs]

Gone from selling 3-40 items a day to being lucky to sell 2-3

[vintagechinashop]

My sales are improving this month but after my £92 shop fee I’m currently giving away 59% in fees  this willl reduce during the month with more sales  but it’s pretty bad how much it costs me to sell on here  especially as so many people continue to sell as private sellers whilst having 100s of listings 

playing by the rules means you get kicked in the teeth by eBay 

[keelinge]

My selling costs are currently coming in at 49% too without promoting any listings. Sales seem to decrease monthly on month. Listing takes longer with all item specifics despite templates. I'm not sure how long eBay will remain feasible.

[auctiongabble]

Just had my 1:1 call with the marketing team and as expected not much advice given...

The agent was completely unaware of any problems on the platform, did not know of other sellers experiencing decline in sales etc.

They slipped up and said consider paying to promote to get sales and then quickly corrected themselves by saying pay to promote to get visibility.

Ebay need to go back to basics and just provide members with a working platofrm and promote it themselves, let sellers list and just deal with the sales.

Fees need a complete overhaul and it needs to be simplified and reduced!

[pegr-834437]

The staff are going to have a nice time at the open event if they don't understand how badly its performing. 

Fully agree on what they need to do, go back to basics. Fix the multiple issues with the site, scrap the constant changes for changing sake and the squeezing of every business account for the last drop of juice from the pip. 

I'm just using a random figure but if my selling fee's were 10% basic I'd be more than happy to pay 13% if I knew there wouldn't be any pay for view promo but items were shown near the top if you had 10+ pictures, item specifics filled in, great feedback score, and an overall healthy account.

I'd love it even more if they reduced the fee's but that will be the last thing they want to do, but making the site safe, secure, running correctly and not some sort of pay to play gamble would be a start.

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

The minimum wage for a full time job in the UK is now 25k. I imagine the number of business sellers making a net profit of 25k per annum is extremely low. I think inflation / wage rises elsewhere in the economy over the last five years has just killed the appeal of reselling online full time. Reselling is OK if you like doing it as a hobby / bit of extra cash however as a full time income it generally isn't viable these days.

[auctiongabble]

I will be heading to a jewellery show end of this month in london, Amongst the businesses there on the stands is 'eBay'.  I'm going to visit them and have a good chat with them!

[pegr-834437]

I'm sure we can predict the conversation. We are doing many things in the year to benefit business sellers but we just cant tell you those yet but we promise they are coming, increased investment in AI and live sales, but have you tried promoting more, we find this does increase traffic to your items. It seems they fail to do the really simple things and instead try the super complex things that may work but take years to actually come to fruition but before that point your business is screwed because theres 1000 businesses on private accounts able to undercut you and many other issues.