Buyer Protection Fees who pays them?

[nilocp]

I know there are lots of discussions about the new Buyer Protection Fees and no selling fees for private sellers.

I am a private seller, so am happy to sell with no fees. But, BIG BUT! I am having the buyer protection Fee removed from my sale!.  So I am paying a selling fee!

The seller isn't paying it, I AM!

That isn't how I understood the way the new fees work.

I have been on Ebay for over 20 years, and happy to see positive developments.

This to me is negative, and I will be considering my future on the portal!

[tressygirl]

@nilocp  wrote:  The seller isn't paying it, I AM!

But I thought you said you were the seller?

Whatever the price you list your item for,   for example you list for £10,  you receive £10,  eBay add a 4% fee to that item price ( not postage) plus 75p.  The buyer pays this.

The buyer sees your item price with the BP fee combined,  as one price.  After buying,  at eBay checkout the buyer sees the amount they pay to you ( the price you listed the item for , that £10 ),  and the BP fee which they pay,  and eBay receive.

@nilocp 

[nilocp]

Yes I am the seller , that is my point.

I have just accepted 2 Best Offers. Their offer is reduced by the amount of the Buyer Protection Fee. So I am paying that not the Buyer.

Auction items go through at the full amount with no deduction.

[tressygirl]

Aaah sorry I didn't see you had accepted Best Offers in your opening post.

Yes I do understand there is some issue with BP fee being added to offers, amounts received do not seem to tally.

Hopefully,  someone will come along,  and explain this new process for those fees  and accepting offers.

@nilocp 

[m25jet]

@nilocp wrote:

Yes I am the seller , that is my point.

I have just accepted 2 Best Offers. Their offer is reduced by the amount of the Buyer Protection Fee.

So I am paying not the buyer.

Auction items go through at the full amount with no deduction.

In that case the best option would be to stop using Best Offer entirely and just list the items for a Buy It Now price.  Either that or set the Best Offer function up in such a way so as to automatically accept offers equal to, or greater than, a certain price, and to automatically reject any offers 1p below the amount you set as the minimum amount to automatically accept.  Should you choose to do this, however, make sure that you factor the Buyer Protection Fee into the lowest amount that you would be prepared to accept so that even if the item sells via Best Offer for the absolute lowest amount that you would consider to be acceptable, then once the Buyer Protection Fee ends up being deducted from the amount that the buyer paid you still end up with an amount for the item that you would be happy with.  As ever with this site, if you're going to keep on selling on here then you have to always try to be one step ahead and think of strategies to negate eBay's illogical "improvements" that only serve to make things even worse when it comes to selling.

In addition to the above there is also the "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" approach, which involves listing some of your items on other selling platforms so as to ensure that even if your sales on eBay nosedive sharply as a result of their badly thought out changes, as well as due to buyers purchasing from other online platforms in ever increasing numbers, you can at least still keep on selling elsewhere and keep some money coming in from sales.

[pursestretchermum]

Actually it gets a little more complicated even than this, and seems to be a real anomaly in the eBay thinking which definitely does need to be sorted out.

Recently I offered an eBay seller a best offer price of £400 but the offer he received was for £385.56 - £14.44 less than I had offered him. He made a counter offer of £400 but HIS offer was received by me as £414.72 an additional £14.72 having been added. 

Therefore - had the seller accepted my best offer HE would have paid the Buyer Protection not me the buyer... and when he made his counter offer the Buyer protection then fell to me the Buyer but at a different rate - on the same offer amount of £400.  Come on eBay sort yourselves out!  Either the cost falls to one side or the other  - it can't be interchangeable -and it should be at the same rate on the same offer. As it was because you didn't show what the offer was and what you were taking as two separate amounts a deal between two people who were basically offering and asking for the identical sum could have fallen apart.  If you don't mind my saying so if the new Buyers' Protection is being paid by the Buyer my first offer of £400 should have been sent to the seller without deduction and I should have been told that my offer of £400 would cost me £414.72 (or £414.44 depending on your maths!) with Buyers' Protection. Fortunately the seller and I communicated and worked out what was going on but it could have been a perfectly good agreement gone west but for that!

[m25jet]

@pursestretchermum wrote:

Come on eBay sort yourselves out!  Either the cost falls to one side or the other  - it can't be interchangeable -and it should be at the same rate on the same offer.

To be honest I think eBay need to have a serious rethink of these new rules as to whom they deem to be responsible for paying the Buyer Protection Fee, as they've made a complete and utter pig's ear of it so far.  If they wanted to implement a new change to mark a departure from the old way of doing things, perhaps it would have been fairer to set the new system up in such a way that both buyer and seller ended up paying 50% of the Buyer Protection Fee, with the amount payable for the Buyer Protection Fee being clearly stated to both parties before completion of the purchase, regardless of whether the transaction was completed via Auction, Buy It Now or Best Offer.  They already do it with postage and packing charges, so why not do it with the Buyer Protection Fee?

With regards to Auctions, because the price keeps on changing all the time as and when a fresh bid is submitted for the item, I think eBay need to clearly display on the bids how much of the price is actually the Buyer Protection Fee, as if I remember correctly they did state that it would be included in the final price.  However, if they're going to do that, then it's far better to be transparent about how much they're charging for this service, regardless of whether the listing was set up as an auction or not.  The problem with consistently trying to hide things where it's unlikely to be noticed by all but the most hawk-eyed of people is that once it finally does get exposed it makes eBay look as though they've got something to hide by not being upfront about the total cost in the first place...

[ed_58611]

I bought a number of DVDs recently and there was no mention of the Buyer Protection Fee either in the listing or at checkout... it has only become apparent when I check the invoice.

[tressygirl]

There are certainly many things need attending to,  or just waiting sometime for it to all fall into place and work. 

I recently purchased 2 items , one had a breakdown of the BPF at checkout,  the other didn't,  both for the same 'type of item'.

Lots of teething issues !

@ed_58611 

[ed_58611]

I was wondering if the addition of the BPF to "Film & TV" category was very recent?

I'm only miffed because I believed I was getting in before the hammer fell!

I was still happy to pay the final price but I really should have been able to see it beforehand rather than as "stealth tax" revealed post-sale.

Another oddity, if you will, was the added protection coming for free with the purchase of a DVD at £3.71 from a seller based in Armagh???

[amymirrors]

I agree. They have removed listing fees and buyer protection is essentially a way of clawing back fees either from the buyer or seller; they dont really care who pays - hence the mess.  Theyve copied this from another website's model - the one beginning with v.  I am an occasional seller and recently had a long haitus from ebay and have returned to find that it hasnt improved. Withholding funds for 2 days to allow the buyer to make a complaint is the worst of the new policies and tantamount to a scammers' charter, as private sellers are discovering.

[ed_58611]

Apologies! My mistake... he's trading as a Business so no BPF in any case. 

[pennyspad]

In theory the buyer pays them. BUT as a private seller, if you want to keep your prices low and competitive,  then you often end up making the starting price less, to allow for the protection fee. So its often the private seller who ends up standing them!

[amymirrors]

Exactly. Ive reduced all my items. They were already heavily reduced but now I am obliged to reduce them even more.  Its clear that ebay regards private sellers as second tier e.g. business sellers dont have to provide tracking. If I dont provide tracking, ebay wont give me my money. Once Ive sold the last few things, I'm jacking it in.

[buffster1963]

Business sellers have to abide by the consumers rights act. They also pay a lot in fees. 

[downshiremarket]

I have just lost an auction item to what appears to be a lower bid than mine.  I bid £7.35 and the winning bid was shown as £6.88.  When I looked at the bidding history, my bid was listed as £6.38, so ebay has deducted the buyers protection fee from my bid.  This is quite wrong. If I buy from a conventional auction and win with a bid of say £100, then I expect to actually pay £120 or so with commission and I expect the same to apply with ebay.  My £7.35 bid was made in the expectation that if I won, I would have to pay £7.35 plus 75p plus 4%.

These are trivial sums and I might have lost anyway, that's life, but it would be nice to know what the rules are.

[papso22]

Your expectation was wrong. If you had won you would have paid £7.35.

They didn't actually deduct the BPF from your bid, it's just that the bidding history shows what the seller would get from the bid amounts.

[anpas_4429]

I just came on here this morning because i feel exactly THIS

2 sales and i have ended up with less than what i was offered.

i understand the way eBay are trying to make this look but it just isnt that. I dont believe when a  buyer now considers a purchase that they are working out the BPF and including it in the offer. Why would they? I certainly wouldnt. 
i was led to believe By ebay that the BPF was going to be easy for a seller to see what they would be getting for a sale and vice versa.

leaves a bad taste in the mouth

[lucy_farmer]

'I dont believe when a  buyer now considers a purchase that they are working out the BPF and including it in the offer. Why would they? I certainly wouldnt. '

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You're absolutely right. The buyer is just offering the maximum amount they wish to pay for the item without a thought of how the payment is split...  this is why the BPF comes out of that amount and the seller gets the remainder.

Conversely, when the seller make an offer to the buyer, the seller is offering the lowest payment they will accept for the item so the BPF has to be put on top.  This means the buyer receives a higher offer than the one the seller sent.

(personally, I think the whole biz is very silly and I, along with a large amount of  sellers, would be more than happy to go back to old-fashioned selling fees!...)