Ebay's new Buyers' protection fee from the 4th Feb

[rsbrickshop]

I'm a private seller. Items I sell are between £2.90 - £10. Is It just me or will ebay's new Buyers' protection fee from the 4th Feb make it near impossible to sell competitively. A few months ago Ebay got rid of Sellers' fees for private sellers, which was a welcome move. But this new change and getting rid of multi-buy discount for private sellers will make it worse than it was with the original fees.

[jma2815]

If its going to be introduced it should be across the board. 

Clothes are not immune from seller scams and failures of all kinds. I was primarily a seller of clothes but since ‘free to sell’ came in I’ve bought from some total chancers and been very glad of the MGB, which as far as I can see is the service buyers will now be paying for. 

I don’t believe its actually a seller fee as some have suggested as I don’t believe anyone will lower their prices. They didn’t in October with ‘free to sell’ and they won’t now. 

[lucy_farmer]

'I would not ask a seller if they were a business or private,  '

No, I've never done that myself, and I've never noticed who was a biz and who wasn't.

(Though perhaps that's because I've been very lucky and had no serious problems to deal with when buying. And things going wrong is often the time to discover whether a seller *knows* they have any responsibilities or not!)

Recently I decided to have a look through my 'saved sellers/favourite sellers' list. Most of them had the account they should have had, no worries......except for one (whose rocks I *love*)  was a definite 'private/pirate' seller and I'd never noticed..☹️

[sammylou40]

Ok. When I spoke to an “advisor “ , this is what I was told 🙄.  Thanks for the info 

[jma2815]

Well that’s clearly not true. CS storytelling at its finest. 

I don’t have the app or an android phone so please forgive any inaccuracies on that score but I thought it was confirmed yesterday that it was a system update that was planned - the new version requiring android 10 and above, or something. Not the fee roll out causing a crash of some kind. 

[thesmi42]

You are probably right, nobody is ever going to take that opportunity 🤣

[tressygirl]

If you were told as you posted....  ' The buyer protection fee and 4% are added at checkout, not to your listing prices '  by an advisor you were wrongly informed.

The Buyer Protection Fee when added ,  will show on the seller's listing, then at eBay checkout the buyer will see the breakdown, that is,  payment to seller,  and the Buyer Protection fee.

Take a peek at some electronic items being sold today by Private sellers, for example laptops or MacBooks they all have prices ending in odd pence,  32 p  78p  etc.  The BP is add to the listing price, buyers can see up front the total they are paying.

@sammylou40 

[papso22]

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@lucy_farmer wrote:

'I don't see how that can work on auction listings,'

That's a good question, and until we actually see one we're not going to find out for sure!

But there has to be a logical way of doing it; perhaps something like...

The Starting price includes the BPF.

Then when you go to place a bid, your placed bid goes up by the BPF% +.75p *as well* as what you placed as a bid, with a box next to your bid showing the breakdown of what's going on. (so you don't get a nasty suprise if you win)

OR;

When you place a bid, the ebay system takes out the %+.75p from the total bid and only shows the seller the smaller amount (so there would have to be minimum amounts that you are able to bid in order to make this happen......? ) and the buyer doesn't get the nasty suprise.

Arrgh...now I've given myself a headache and have to go back to my first sentence.....

'That's a  Good Question!'  ... (and I dunno the answer🤣)

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I think it will be the latter.  Seller chooses auction start price on the listing form, when the listing goes live ebay will add the BPF.  The bidders will choose what to bid and the winner will pay the highest bid at checkout, which will include the BPF, as will each of the bids made before.  So bidders can still bid round amounts and pay those amounts, but the BPF will be taken out and the balance passed to the seller.  

[vintique*violet]

😂........ maybe some will who knows, but some won't - I am in the latter category. 

[chekov_42]

The buyer's fee rollout (where fees WILL be added to listed price shown) has indeed been postponed part way through implementation (eBay software issues i presume) but I notice they have put the 'sellers don't get funds available for up to two days after delivery confirmed' update in place without any problems!

eBay - gotta love 'em. It is sadly the only realistically global game in town...

[jbrusby]

Something weird going on with how prices are presenting in electronics items, and not just with the BPF. On top of most of the private seller listings showing odd number prices, when you click through from search result to the actual listing the price has risen by a small amount more. For example, a listing priced at £27.46 in the search result, shows £27.75 in the listing itself. One priced at £14.76 in search results, shows £14.97 in the listing. It's the same on all the BPF affected listings. 

Those slight rises aren't a consistent percentage or amount so don't seem down to anything connected to the BPF, but if they're not then what are they? It's incredibly confusing seeing one price and then another price when you click on it. 

[papso22]

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@chekov_42 wrote:

The buyer's fee rollout (where fees WILL be added to listed price shown) has indeed been postponed part way through implementation (eBay software issues i presume) but I notice they have put the 'sellers don't get funds available for up to two days after delivery confirmed' update in place without any problems!

eBay - gotta love 'em. It is sadly the only realistically global game in town...

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Fees will not be added to the listed price shown, they will be included in the price the buyer sees, or the buyer bids.

[toptap1]

I've been on Ebay since 2004.
The seller fees then were 5%, and you didn't pay seller fees on postage.
Can't we have that back?

Sent from Outlook for Android<>

[chekov_42]

sorry I worded it badly. yes, only the buyer will see the inflated price,
if seller is looking at their own listings they will still show original
price (i.e. what they'll receive) thanks for clarification

[thegoldstandard_hp]

I more so hate that the fees are not actually displayed to the buyer and the buyer will think the seller set the now higher prices on listings. I didn't increase them, eBay did. There is no transparency to the buyer about dispatch times now along with the fees. It should show the seller set price and the fees and then the total price beneath. It should not take to the checkout to make that clear to anyone buying.

Numbers are psychological, £29.99 instead of £30.34 and seeing £2x.xx is better than £3x.xx everyone knows this except eBay.

We need on the search for this to index prices to display seller set price then when and only when opening the item page to show both seller set and eBay added fees all on a single page.

Now I have to check all the listings make dumb choices on pure luck to make the total price rounded or psychological to appear lower.

[papso22]

See my reply to your post on the other thread.

[department28]

It will be interesting to see what happens with the auction situation... hopefully someone will soon find out & report back!

I'm thinking either the BFP will appear only when the auction is all over, so if you win the item, you have to be prepared for whatever the 4% + 75p will be, on top of your winning bid. 

Or, the BFP appears every time a bid is placed, so you can see it increase as the bidding goes up...

It is sad that this will be the end of 'simple' bidding... no more 99p winning bid + postage, end of. 

[sid.123]

Its gone midday on the 06th, No indication of any buyer protection fees being implimented yet. Any one know when its going to start?

[vintique*violet]

It has on electronics, they are starting with that category before rolling out on others. 

[papso22]

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@sid.123 wrote:

Its gone midday on the 06th, No indication of any buyer protection fees being implimented yet. Any one know when its going to start?

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It's already on a lot of listings in the electronics category.

[papso22]

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@department28 wrote:

It will be interesting to see what happens with the auction situation... hopefully someone will soon find out & report back!

I'm thinking either the BFP will appear only when the auction is all over, so if you win the item, you have to be prepared for whatever the 4% + 75p will be, on top of your winning bid. 

Or, the BFP appears every time a bid is placed, so you can see it increase as the bidding goes up...

It is sad that this will be the end of 'simple' bidding... no more 99p winning bid + postage, end of. 

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Seller chooses auction start price on the listing form, when the listing goes live ebay will add the BPF.  The bidders will choose what to bid and the winner will pay the highest bid at checkout, which will include the BPF, as will each of the bids made before.  So bidders can still bid round amounts and pay those amounts, but the BPF will be taken out and the balance passed to the seller.  

The only time the buyer will see the BPF is at checkout, just like with BINs.