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.

[gblcfc]

I had alreadyguessed as much - especially when the responses have a very scripted corporate communications feel to them

However it seems that in this instance we have a lot of Business Sellers deliberately masquerading as Private Sellers to share their 'insight' on a subject that has no bearing on their activities.  Fundamental dishonesty and hardly in the spirit of the 'ebay Community'?

Frankly, I am surprised that they have the time, surely business sales must have soared to the heavens following the introduction of BPF? Although given that ebay have already stated that sales projections for Q1 have been revised downwards  it seems that all is not going to plan - the Q2 Investor Call will be very interesting.

In the meantime -  life goes on

[goodpal111]

really? this is brilliant news, since it's only shareholder value that motivates them - they need to reverse the con of the BPF and work out a more transparent and honest way of monetising private sellers' activity

[gblcfc]

It is only good news if they take action - in the meantime all sellers are losing out

They may tweak it a  bit but there are be too many senior  ebay people invested in the this new scheme - admitting that it is a bad idea won't happen overnight and the damage will take a long time to repair. Pride comes before a fall and all that.

[cassidy_r_private]

No chance.

It's far too early to even consider a u-turn.

Despite the many thousands of posts on these forums, many of them heated, you're only seeing a tiny snapshot of opinion. There are several million active UK sellers.

Furthermore, the idea that eBay are paying undercover forum posters in order to sway opinion is for the birds. For every seller on here that is unhappy with their lot, there are tens of thousands of others who are just getting on with it.

[the_book_seekers]

Frankly, I am surprised that they have the time, surely business sales must have soared to the heavens following the introduction of BPF? 

I wish. ebay has mightily upset buyers and they are not discriminating between private and business sellers. It's ebay they want to kick back at and all sellers are in the firing line.  As with all changes ebay believes the anger will dissipate and buying will return to normal when it does. 

[carrotdrusus2]

Or there are tens of thousands who have just walked.

[goodpal111]

I hear you, but what my buyer's experience tells me is that *buyers* are unhappy (with the impossibility to combine postage, the huge fees on tiny purchase prices, the fatuous 'service' it supposedly pays for, and obviously the crazy stuff around bid consistencies, plus who knows what else), and whilst more sellers will notice if buyers give them a kicking, I'm saying we need to encourage buyers to complain to Ebay CS themselves, loudly and frequently

[bigfproductions]

I am one of those buyers who ticks all those boxes and do NOT give any of
my sellers a hard time because I know where the fault lies

I will happily give Customer Services the hardest of times however I have
no voice ......

I can only communicate by email [can't use phones] and have no way to get
to them as that half baked AI system [being a little too kind there]
constantly tells me to *call* them whenever I explain my access issues
.....

Even more frustratingly, I have been unable to get it to swear at me

So, if anyone knows how I can break through to them via email, I would be
eternally grateful


oooops, spoke too soon .......

I just found this ....

eve.williams@ebay.com

UK MD no less










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to hopefully alleviate this.*


*Please be aware, therefore, there maybe delays in my email responses.*


*I also use a speech system for text entry which can be poor at
capitalization, grammar, and syntax. I am not always able to correct these
manually due to arthritic hands and the **aforementioned** poor vision. *



*and ..... due to cognitive impairments, I neither have nor use telephones
of any kind. I communicate only via email and standard letters.*


*PLEASE ENSURE you always include my email thread in your **response** or I
may not know what you are talking about!*



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non-essential websites.*



*Please don’t ask me to do these things that are prohibited by my access
needs.*

[kath3735_wxmjn]

Your comment is not entirely true, some of us sellers are bidders as well!  Since this started i have bought several items, most on auctions, won some and knew what i would be paying.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

that is more than likely true as most e bay staff are humans who have the ability to use the site for their own personal uses (i would asssume anyway but you know what they say about assuming!).  Anyway i digress, what you are implying (once again i assume!) is that they are paid to come on here and defend e bay.  As you say though there is no way of knowing so why do you state it at the first sentence as a fact???

[kath3735_wxmjn]

OMG!   Talk about tin foilers....   Could it be that a lot of us commenting are just pensioners with plenty of time to do so?  What is your excuse?   At the moment the majority of people on here bemoaning all the changes really are the pseudo business sellers.  Now they really are the ones that should be busy doing other things.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

doubt if any changes would be brought about because of one quarters results.  There are also outside influences that make a big difference to share results, take here for example where we are brinking on the edge of recession, jobs being lost etc.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

Oh please, do stop talking sense!   That is not what they want to hear, you must be being paid by e bay etc etc....

[theelench]

---

@*devils.advocate* wrote:

By the same token then, are some of those deliberately sowing discord employees of eBay’s competitors?

And, no, I’m not an eBay hugger - in case anyone thinks that.

---

Why would they bother when it's ebay's policies and their lack of enforcement that is the source of the discord.

And now that ebay might be taking some action against the real culprits, but hitting the innocent even harder, is the source of this massive wave of discontent. 

Ebay's competitors don't need to employ anyone, they're already 🤣

[1956glyn]

Small online enterprise.......aka a business who sells on the iternet

[*devils.advocate*]

The assertion that eBay employees populate, and comment on, this Board is an absurd idea - who would honestly want a job like that - and equally so is the idea of competitors - hence the comment (but it loses something just in the printed word).

But the number of times that the (eBay employee) comment is made - and others foolishly latch on to - has, like many other things, become boring and just sums up things when all other arguments fail.

In very early days, yes, eBay employees bought and sold items (that’s why it worked properly) and would join in on the (US) Boards.

They had a vested interest in the site and they knew the workings of it (the ins-and-outs) and they knew of the problems everyone experienced (because they experienced them as well).

Nowadays, I can’t imagine that situation.

But I can imagine a load of enthusiastic youngsters who have no life-experience and are only eager to impress - who know only the theory and who spend too much time in their Game Room floating airy-fairy ideas which are then put into practice without testing and which end-users find just don’t work.

However, too much money has been invested in these ideas that they can’t be reversed (short-term) - if it makes eBay money, then it’s acceptable.

eBay has been a mess for so many years but it’s now just got a wee bit messier.

[cblack68]

Hi ya. I'm in the same boat as yourself. I sell mainly 2nd hand clothes and usually start the auction at .99p to get some interest, sometimes it works sometimes not, but was still making sales, now with this 'buyers Protection Fee ' all of my items show as 1.75 and basically not alot of interest at all. I have emailed eBay, messaged on chat, I don't know what else to do. Its absolute c..p, and they thank me for my loyalty, wheres there's to us, none! I wish you well, hope things pick up for us All.

[theelench]

I agree with you.  Back last summer ebay had 'Open Days' in several UK cities where sellers could meet and talk with some of the inhabitants of Ebay Towers about their current problems.

Unless the ebay reps. were consistently telling well scripted lies, it appeared that they had little appreciation of the problems and that all too often they weren't even aware that the issues were even causing problems for sellers.

I.E.  EDDs and the problem of businesses pretending to be private sellers, just two issues that I remember being reported back on the boards.

[action_man]

You said "why do you state it at the first sentence as a fact???"

I didn't.

Obviously if you imagine annoying things you are going to annoy yourself. I can't really help you with that.

[cassidy_r_private]

All you can do is change your model either by auctioning bundles at a higher start price, listing at a higher price in buy it now format, or changing your account status to business and using your old price structure.

In writing to ebay hoping they will make a concession, you are just wasting your time.