Being asked to upgrade to business account

[seraphims_odditorium]

Hello, 

this is my first post so please be kind. 

just looking for advice please.

Today I received an eBay email stating : 

“

Your selling activity indicates you’re operating as a business seller.

In order to comply with government consumer protection legislation, we ask that you upgrade your eBay account to a business account in the next 30 days. If you don’t, your account will be subject to selling restrictions, as outlined in our Business seller policy.” 

but I am not & have never been a business seller. I have sold our junk basically!  - unwanted kids toys, clothes etc etc  & more recently some of my late father’s items (he collected film memorabilia). 

at no point have I made or purchased any items to sell as a profit. So I’m not sure why this is happening or what to do ? 

[dan-myers]

It is perfectly legal for a sole trader to sell under a private seller account. Most private seller account obey consumer rules by default anyway. 

[sml192]

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@dan-myers wrote:

It is perfectly legal for a sole trader to sell under a private seller account. Most private seller account obey consumer rules by default anyway. 

---

One of the requirements of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 is that a business seller must display contact details pre-sale.  That is not possible with an eBay 'Private seller' account.

Also, 'Private seller' accounts on eBay state the following:

'Registered as a private seller

Thereby, consumer rights stemming from EU consumer protection law do not apply. eBay Money Back Guarantee still applies to most purchases.'

That means, therefore, that any business trading on an eBay 'Private seller' account is automatically misrepresenting itself. 

[cheap.as.chips65]

if you will take some good advice DONT DO IT .

i tried it and returned to a private seller to auction my last lot after which i am gone for good and i have been a e bayer since it started as a small sell your tat site started by pierres before the greedy corprate machine took over with its offshore champagne swilling shareholders.

since BPF was brought in e bay is absolutely dead you only have to read the boards and look at the auction listings cars seem to be the only execption.

this tells you that since BPF many members have either given up selling or gone to places like vinted or back to the car boot sales.

e bay has almost achieved what it set out to do rid itself of its private sellers and become a wanna be amazon with just business sellers but e bay has shot itself in the foot as usual and the plan has backfired not only has it lost many members who have walked away and practicly killed the site but it now trails far behind 

amazon and even vinted in my opinion and like the titanic didnt heed the warnings thinking itself unsinkable untill it hit the berg and its now trying to rescue itself with the tv ads sell for free on e bay .

if you can find a better place to sell i would say go there because e bay is sinking as fast as its namesake.

[mike10010_11]

I sell fishing reel spares as something to do more than for the money. I recently advertised a set  of 3 reels for £549 and the fees were around £15. They are now wanting me to register as a business. The business fees for the same item will be  £59.84 PLUS VAT totalling £71.82. How can any business absorb such ridiculous fees? Let's not forget you now have to pay to list every item unless you buy a package allowing you to advertise something like 270 items a month. Who on earth, as a previous private seller, advertises anything like that amount of items? Basically, i will just become an unpaid worker for ebay. It's the end of an era as it's just too expensive.

[london-mac]

Do you honestly think that Ebay deliberately wanted to get rid of the private sellers who 'made' the site in the first place? Genuine question.

It was a great place before it became mainstream, and overrun with plonkers and scammers. If so, my only guess is that it happened due to the waste of time and energy that they caused sorting out customer service issues.  One bad deal/scam could easily waste an hour or more of customer service time.

I've notice that customer service are also becoming a lot more short, i.e. you can a copy and paste of what the website says, and then they disconnect you. There's no time for rational argument, or even pursuing what is legal.

I suspect they've been instructed to follow time limits, hence they only want mass retailers (i.e. the Chinese) who are will to take a complete loss on an item rather than fight it.

[london-mac]

I was told that they've limited it to 30 items per year, and/or £1,740 value, if you are a private seller. Any more than that, and you're bumped up to being a business account. And they provide your details to the HMRC annually too so even if you're not reaching legal limits to pay tax on earnings ... you still have to declare it.

It is ridiculous when you think a) how many perfectly legal items of junk we have in our lofts or garages to get rid of, or how, e.g. a bicycle could be one item or 20 items depending on how you sold it (i.e. as parts).

If you then trigger the HMRC, who are bound to have general sweeps at some point or another, you'll have to be able to prove how much you bought it for, and how much profit you made, as they'll know how much you sold it for.

And how are you supposed to do that when you bought it 20 years ago, or pulled it out of a skip?

Beancounters have no idea how the real world works.

[4_bathrooms]

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@london-mac wrote:

I was told that they've limited it to 30 items per year, and/or £1,740 value, if you are a private seller. Any more than that, and you're bumped up to being a business account. And they provide your details to the HMRC annually too so even if you're not reaching legal limits to pay tax on earnings ... you still have to declare it.

---

Whoever told you that has no idea what they are talking about. Those figures are the digital sales reporting thresholds and have nothing to do with account status. Nobody selling their unwanted personal possessions has any new tax obligations nor should they require an eBay business account.

Someone who is trading - that means someone buying, making, growing, repairing or refurbishing things with the intention of selling them on needs an eBay business account. They also need to register for self-assessment with HMRC once their turnover reaches £1,000 in a financial year. However, this only applies to those who are trading; it does not apply to those who are simply selling their unwanted personal possessions.

[*vyolla*]

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@mike10010_11 wrote:

I sell fishing reel spares as something to do more than for the money. I recently advertised a set  of 3 reels for £549 and the fees were around £15. They are now wanting me to register as a business. The business fees for the same item will be  £59.84 PLUS VAT totalling £71.82. How can any business absorb such ridiculous fees? Let's not forget you now have to pay to list every item unless you buy a package allowing you to advertise something like 270 items a month. Who on earth, as a previous private seller, advertises anything like that amount of items? Basically, i will just become an unpaid worker for ebay. It's the end of an era as it's just too expensive.

---

You are trading as a business though, no matter if you're doing it because you enjoy it or to make money.

A private seller is one who is just selling off their own personal items such as clothes from their wardrobe, bits from their loft/garage etc.

A Business seller is someone who buys or makes items to sell on.  They need to be registered as a business to meet the requirements of UK law. They need to declare income to HMRC once they reach £1,000 worth of sales (eBay will be providing HMRC with your details anyway so it's vital to keep correct accounts for your tax return). You can obviously offset more expenses as a business seller, but can't offset any at all as a private one. 

Business sellers can't represent themselves as private individuals

Taken from:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/selling-policies/selling-practices-policy/business-seller-polic...

[*vyolla*]

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@london-mac wrote:

I was told that they've limited it to 30 items per year, and/or £1,740 value, if you are a private seller. Any more than that, and you're bumped up to being a business account. And they provide your details to the HMRC annually too so even if you're not reaching legal limits to pay tax on earnings ... you still have to declare it.

---

This is not true.

The 30 items and/or £1,740 in sales is a reporting criteria, it's got nothing to do with the kind of account you're trading on.

A private seller is one who is just selling off their own personal items such as clothes from their wardrobe, bits from their loft/garage etc. There's no limit on the amount of items or payments they can receive, but when they hit 30 items and/or £1,740 in sales that info will be sent to HMRC.

A Business seller is someone who buys or makes items to sell on. 

See eBay's guidance page here, where they state

An eBay seller must register as a business if, for example, they sell items they have bought to resell, they make items in order to sell them, or if they buy items for their business.

What is the policy?

Business sellers can't represent themselves as private individuals

Taken from:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/selling-policies/selling-practices-policy/business-seller-polic...

[mike10010_11]

I've actually no problem being classed as a business seller, in theory anyway. I've always declared my earnings on my self assessment, so, I've absolutely nothing to hide. What you're missing is that the fees are just too high for a  business such as they want me to be. Not only that, business sellers are charged VAT on their fees, and if I'm correct, this includes VAT on the postage too. Again, that's fine if you reach the VAT threshold and you can claim it back. Who really wants to submit a VAT return every 3 months and the headache that goes with that? If that's how things are, then that's how they are. I don't need the money and I'm certainly not becoming an unpaid employee for ebay or the government. It was good whilst it lasted but things change and I'll just spend more time in Thailand.

[*vyolla*]

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@mike10010_11 wrote:

I've actually no problem being classed as a business seller, in theory anyway. I've always declared my earnings on my self assessment, so, I've absolutely nothing to hide. What you're missing is that the fees are just too high for a  business such as they want me to be. Not only that, business sellers are charged VAT on their fees, and if I'm correct, this includes VAT on the postage too. Again, that's fine if you reach the VAT threshold and you can claim it back. Who really wants to submit a VAT return every 3 months and the headache that goes with that? If that's how things are, then that's how they are. I don't need the money and I'm certainly not becoming an unpaid employee for ebay or the government. It was good whilst it lasted but things change and I'll just spend more time in Thailand.

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What you're missing is that business sellers operating on a private account and not paying fees are  undercutting the genuine business sellers who are paying fees.

[*vyolla*]

Y'know, this is how we ended up with the new Buyer Protection for private sellers, to try and persuade them to upgrade correctly or have a fee added to their listings which would bring their prices in line with business sellers prices. It's skewed logic, and using a sledgehammer to crack a nut when all eBay had to do was to make the business sellers trading on private accounts and dodging fees to upgrade before continuing to list their items. 

So, thank you all business sellers trading on private accounts because it was only a hobby/they didn't want to pay fees/they still completed a self assessment/whatever lame excuse who have ruined it for the genuine private sellers, particularly the ones selling low value bits and pieces who now have a 75p + 4% buyers fee added to their 99p item. 

[kidmore_kats]

I think that just about sums up the current situation 

Of course eBay could have gone about it more logically, but basically business sellers trading on private accounts have nobody to blame but themselves.

[jonatjonatjonat]

The obvious solution seems to be don't sell those items on ebay, given you don't need the money.

[mike10010_11]

I guess if you're a full blown business and your mark up can absorb the selling fees then that's absolutely fine. I make very small profits on most items, i just can't absorb the fees. There's no utopia, it just won't work for me. I've filled a gap in the market for a while, and, have kept a lot of people's reels up and running rather than having to scrap them. I wish the very best of luck to all business sellers but if there is so much money in doing what I've been doing, then why isn't everyone doing it? In my opinion, there's a lot more losers than winners. 

[mike10010_11]

I think the parts i sold are very specific and I'm not sure there's another platform that would have the audience (would like to know if there is). I've been pushing back the tide with ebay for a while now. One has to know when it's time to walk away. Life is too short, trust me.

[papso22]

If you are a business and can't afford an ebay business account, then you shouldn't be selling on eBay.

[sml192]

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@mike10010_11 wrote:

Not only that, business sellers are charged VAT on their fees, and if I'm correct, this includes VAT on the postage too. Again, that's fine if you reach the VAT threshold and you can claim it back.

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All sellers pay VAT on fees and postage where applicable.  The only difference is that for Private Sellers the VAT is already included in the published prices instead of being shown separately.  

[mike10010_11]

I've never really seen myself as a business but if that's what the rules say. You're totally correct, if can't afford to be a business then i won't be. On saying that, seeing as no one else is doing what I'm doing, i could just bump up my prices and let the customer absorb it. They'll be more people upset than me. I'll have more time to do what i should have been doing. 

[mike10010_11]

Thanks for the information.