Buyer Fee amount error - are you seeing it too?

[jimthing]

(following on from this thread post: #10 in thread: "Buyer fee - how to calculate total? + Shipping: charge separately now or not?")

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@jimthing wrote:

(Another user who wanted to remain anonymous emailed me about the pricing error, with thanks.) 

Ebay have set this up wrongly, as they're working out the fee wrongly! 

While Ebay's help says in their example: 

£20 - Item price set by the seller

£1.55 - Buyer Protection fee (4% of £20 [i.e. £0.80], + £0.75)

£21.55 + postage - Price that buyer sees for the listing

£20 - seller earnings

The list-an-item page works it out incorrectly as: 

£20 - Item price set by the seller

-£0.75 - minus fixed fee

= £19.25

£0.77 - Buyer Protection fee (4% of £19.25)

= £1.52 - TOTAL FEE (£0.75+£0.77)

£21.52 + postage - Price that buyer sees for the listing

£20 - seller earnings

This is ENTIRELY THE WRONG WAY according to Ebay's own help page! 

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Is everyone else seeing this same buyer fee amount error, or are you seeing it fixed and showing the correct fee amount? 

Note: It should be 4% plus 75p to get the correct amount for your item. 

[lucy_farmer]

Hmmm..... I noticed something which i think is a bit odd. In that both the total selling price *and* the buyer's fees seem very 'neat and tidy'.... IYSWIM!

The selling price of the item, on the page I (the buyer) see is £7.99

On the actual buying page the buyers fee was £1.00.  Exactly.

Ha anybody got the neccessary maths to 'reverse-engineer' this one?

[goodibags]

Yes, I can confirm that a £7 item will appear as £8 with buyer fees added. Basically 28p variable and 72p fixed fee.

The £1 cut off should have been at £6.25 (appearing as £7.25 to buyers). But the fixed fee is 72p instead of 75p, so the price it starts at is higher.

[lucy_farmer]

Damn, too late to edit :

I just did it myself and it *is* correct if the flat fee is 72p, then the 4% brings it up to exactly £1!

Trust me to pick the only thing off my watch list that does actually work out to perfect figures 😆

Mind you the only mention of buyers fee is a bit small, greyed-out and low down the list of stuff.....not every buyer is going to spot that🙁

[goodibags]

"Mind you the only mention of buyers fee is a bit small, greyed-out and low down the list of stuff.....not every buyer is going to spot that"

It's fair to say that Ebay have thought of everything.

Oh, except maybe the buyers?

[cocobelle0]

Hi,

As a private seller, I was going to do exactly the same thing as you & try to make a spreadsheet to adjust my prices so that they looked more normal. I have given up, as nothing adds up to 4% of each of my list prices which makes it impossible. I was going to reduce all of my prices by between £0.80 to £2.00 so that the buyer doesn't carry the cost, which I can ill-afford to do. The majority of my items are low value & fall within £2.25 to approx. £14.95 with a few higher than this. My prices currently look very unattractive to buyers. Since ebay introduced the buyer protection fee, my sales have plummeted to rock bottom. My sales last year were already rocky until all seller fees were waived & things picked up again. I even passed on some of the benefit to buyers by reducing P&P as we were no longer paying fees on this. With the inevitable increase in Royal Mail prices again this Spring, it's not going to help the situation.  This is a nightmare for private sellers & making things too complicated, just as they were supposedly getting better. I think ebay should give buyers the option of whether they want to pay for the buyer protection fee or not & I agree that it needs to be transparent. I don't tend to quibble about refunds on low value items even though Royal Mail tracking is rarely updated on ebay (another issue)! I had a look at another couple of marketplace websites where I could sell instead of ebay & I noticed that V***** show the price with & without the buyer protection fee but unfortunately their percentage rate was a bit higher than ebay. Unless ebay fix this mess, I'm going to have to clear my stock & stop selling, but that is probably just what they want. I hope ebay reads all our concerns & takes them on board.

[drag0n_fire]

Totally agree with you. Ebay calculations are incorrect. This is basic stuff and they can't even get this correct. Unfortunately most of the customer service agents lack experience and understanding of such issues. Like so many other ebay system changes they implement system changes in a live environment and not in a test environment . Not sure whats going on at ebay lately but they appear to be self destructing. Shambles!

[drag0n_fire]

So please explain why this was implemented in a live environment and not tested in a test environment Please. This is basic stuff. 

[drag0n_fire]

I'll email Elon Musk and ask him to buy Ebay so he can sack them for incompetance! 

[auctionmike1]

I can tell you from a lot of experience, including in regulated industries, that software testing nowadays is frighteningly minimal. Why bother testing when you've got thousands of users out there who will let you know when something is wrong?????

[goodibags]

The irony here is that Ebay have been informed of pretty much all the problems by now and still seem reluctant to fix them.

The only conclusion is that all the seemingly 'broken' things must be working just as they're supposed to be working?