eBay Buyer Protection & Simple Postage System

[digitalclansman]

I have frequent conversations with eBay customer service about buyer protection which add unnecessary costs onto private sellers.  I actually question of this is legal. It has shades of the PPI banks forced on customers some years ago. Surely, if buyer protection is such a wonderful benefit to buyers, making it voluntary rather than compulsory would demonstrate whether buyers actually want this protection or not? It's almost impossible to sell low cost items like paperback books on eBay these days because buyers are exercising choice and purchasing from retailers who are not forced to use buyer protection. Buyers after all are automatically covered through postage carriers as protection is built into the cost of postage anyway.

eBay are also making it increasingly difficult for private sellers to send items without being out of pocket . They've taken away both buyer and seller choice on shipping items to customers.  Previously many of my buyers requested items be sent in a specific way such as signed for, recorded, tracked 24, tracked 48 etc. Now that choice has been taken away.

I don't reuse packaging and in fact buy all my packaging from eBay sellers. I also use Royal Mail Click and Drop. I need to figure in the costs of thermoplastic waterproof packaging, labels and printing into my sales. Simple postage means In frequently out of pocket, or, as often in the case of multiple purchases, the buyer is.

I was bypassing the simple postage system by purchasing a label through th simple postage system, cancelling the label, requesting a refund and simply adding my tracking number in the seller's purchase details. This wasn't ideal as I had to include the cost of postage in my bidding details which meant making buyers aware of this in the listings. An unnecessarily convoluted process. All eBay have to do to correct this is bring back custom postage options. I know a number of sellers who have left eBay because of both buyer protection and simple postage. 

Has anyone else experienced similar issues with buyer protection and simple postage?

[jonatjonatjonat]

On the Buyer Protection Fee side of things have you actually read what it is?

[papso22]

You don't understand what the buyer protection fee is for.  As it includes payment cover every buyer who pays for something uses it, so it can't be optional.

A few things on your Simple delivery issues.

Ebay does not like people deliberately avoiding a mandatory process.  They have already removed the ability to add your own tracking,  I suspect refunds for this pattern of behaviour will become more difficult in future.

As you have to list with free postage to do what you have been doing there is no need to explain anything to buyers in your description.  Buyers know full well that the postage is included in the item price as it was for free delivery items prior to Simple Delivery. 

Ebay uses Simple Delivery as a revenue generator and is tied into a number of contracts with courier companies including RM.  They can tweak it, but it is here as a mostly mandatory system at least until those contracts are up for renewal.