It's absolutely devastating, and I think it's a sh*tshow.
I collect trading cards and sell the ones I get two or more of. My average price is £1. Before postage increased from £5 for eight 2nd class stamps to £6.80, after packaging and eBay's fee, I used to make about 10p to 20p per listing. And out of 400 listings, I'd be lucky to sell five a month.
Now, with the increase in postage costs and inflation, I virtually make nothing. So, I've had to start charging for postage and a bit extra for packaging.
Now, with this extra "legal protection fee," eBay gets rid of it's usual selling fee (which was at most 20% or 20p) and instead adds a flat 75p to the final price— which I've already had to double due to postage and packaging.
So now, a £1 card/listing ends up at £2.75 (£1 listing + £1 P&P + 75p protection fee). Nobody in their right mind will pay these prices, and I wouldn’t expect them to—they’re absurd.
Then there's the "legal protection" itself. Nobody is going to use it, and the buyer/seller protection was good enough before they introduced it. I'd rather pay the standard eBay fee on final sales than lose all my sales and have my account become worthless.
AND THEN if your item isn't registered as delivered—via tracked postage or otherwise—you have to wait two weeks for your payment. In my case, it's not a huge hassle. I'm not making life-changing money, so I can cover postage and wait. But it's extremely inconvenient and could seriously backfire on sellers like me who don’t use tracking.
I've had this issue a few times and am currently going through it again. I'm guessing it's a common issue. Buyers report items as "not delivered" after a week, but most cases resolve themselves when the item arrives a day or two later, and the buyer closes the case. I’ve had one instance where the item wasn’t delivered, so I had to file an insurance claim with Royal Mail (it was sent via International Standard, so no tracking) before refunding the buyer.
But what’s stopping people from falsely claiming their items haven't arrived? eBay has control of the funds and could just refund them without a proper investigation. Right now, I have a buyer asking for a refund, saying they'll "send me the money back if it arrives." Yeah, right. I'm not trusting that. I told them to wait, and I’ll file a report with Royal Mail when it’s been 20 days past the due date.
Another issue—what happens if eBay has a hold on your money and goes bankrupt? Everyone who sold something in the past two weeks will have to fight to get their money back.
I assume eBay is holding payments in case of undelivered items or disputes, but they should apply this to suspicious or new accounts, not everyone. They used to do that—new sellers had their funds held for two weeks.
So, is this what "buyer protection" really is? Sellers save on fees, and buyers pay 75p for eBay to hold sellers’ funds for two weeks?
EBay's website claims their buyer protection is:
24/7 Customer Service → But we already had that.
Secure Transactions → We already had that, too.
Sellers paid two weeks later → Cheers
I do like that eBay will now report to HMRC. I have nothing to worry about.
I make £1 profit a month. At this rate, to hit HMRC’s £1,000 side hustle threshold, I’d need to sell 5,000 cards a year and have 2 million listings.
For anyone who's old fees were less than 75p it looks like we've got to find a new marketplace.
Thanks to anyone who read through this.
