Over the last couple of weeks, I have kept an eye on, and occasionally contributed to the post on ebay forums following the BPF fee imposed by ebay on buyers from private sellers. This new fee followed changes to the accounting system within ebay, restriction of the number of listings allowed to, and the removal of selling fees from, private sellers and subsequent changes to passing proceeds of sales to sellers. Taken all together, this appears to be the implementation of a planned strategy by whoever calls the shots in ebay, with more to come - but to what end?
At present the main bone of contention seems to be the 75p+4% levied on every purchase, inflating every private seller’s prices by just over 4% at the £300 per item level, and by 79% at the £1 level and much more at even lower prices. Adjusting prices to compensate for this extra cost (as suggested by a “Mentor”), especially at the lower levels, is simply not possible. To do so would require sellers to sell at profit levels so low as to be unsustainable or non existent. This is especially true at the low volume, low value level end of the market (which I confess is the level at which I mostly sell (but not necessarily buy!)).
Registered business sellers are not subjected to this additional fee which (again according to a “Mentor) is justified by not adding to the overheads they already carry as “legitimate” businesses thereby handing an unfair competitive edge to private sellers. A little research into the sellers I buy from reveals that, for a large proportion of them, ebay is simply just one (more) outlet for them to generate sales – some of them even have physical shops. For these , extra overheads associated with selling through ebay are minimal (ebay fees?). For legitimate businesses operated from “home”, overheads are already at least partially mitigated by tax relief on “expenses”. For virtually all ebay sellers I guess the heaviest overhead is time – and I would expect businesses of any sort to have factored this into their pricing policy already.
Unsurprisingly, the private seller community reaction on the ebay forums is an almost unanimous chorus of protest. Admittedly. a proportion of this comes from sellers - presumably those operating from homes - who by their own admission are buying goods for selling on, but are registered as private sellers (thus avoiding relevant ebay fees). They now find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. If removing this group (of effectively fraudsters) is an objective of these recent changes that’s fine, but it risks alienation of the people who were/are the very foundation of ebay’s “success”.
Buyers from private sellers have always been covered but are now being asked to pay for the privilege, but no-one in their right mind is going to pay over the normal commercial price for any commodity. So what is the purpose of BPF? Somebody must know but other than generating extra cash/income and/or discouraging spurious private buyers (surely self defeating objectives) there seems to be nothing obvious.
There is rumour of an ebay survey inviting opinions on the subject. Has anybody seen it? What comprises the sample? It’s obviously not everyone. Who designed, and/or is, conducting the survey? When, where and to whom will the results be revealed/published.
