Ebay's new buyer protection scam

[wayne15071965]

So I have been a seller on and off her since June 2001, Over the years I have sent items recorded delivery that either never turn up , or arrive with no notification of delivery.  Now someone wants to charge a buyer a fee for safe delivery, when they would have been charged that in the P&P cost.  Frankly it sounds more like a scam than customer service and Ebay are also trying to force us to use their shipping option, So much for free enterprise, sound like trying to get the monopoly on delivery as well.  As for hanging on the sellers cash til 2 days after delivery, really so post office goes on strike and you don't get paid, Think I may start looking to leave. So much for eBay's loyalty to us .

[martinwh1]

"having 363 items for sale even if hobbiest looks like trading to anyone."

Yet another sweeping statement! It depends what and how you're selling doesn't it? I'm having a clearout as my kids and grandkids aren't interested so I'm selling my collections of First Day Covers and Crested China both of which I've had for many years. I have chosen to list them individually but I could equally have chosen to sell them in bulk lots so 3 listing of 100 First Day Cover each is still 300 items for sale which, by your argument, would "look like trading to anyone"

[superchallenge]

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@martinwh1 wrote:

Whatever Royal Mail allocate to cover up to £150 for loss or damage when Track 48 is used? 

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Do Royal Mail give money to eBay to allow them to pay customer service staff and developers, to run servers to facilitate things such as return requests, and to deal with things such as detecting fraudulent accounts, as well?

[pjbracer1]

Not really a sweeping statement as you keep putting it, the idea of a private seller is that of selling random items no longer wanted on a casual basis. This could well be lots of little items for sure but the OP has sold in excess of 18000 items not in value over the years and has sold in the last 12 months over 1100 items. That to most people would not look to be acting like a normal private seller but more of a trader, thats not to say he is making profits as a business but a quick look at the type of items say they are all the same kinda thing vintage objects, factor in that volume over the years, it would mean that private seller is certainly a dedicated enthusiast selling all of those items collected over the years if not making any kinda of return not too mention if they bought them in the first place at a higher value the losses. 

On the face of the profile it looks much more like a trading account acting as a private seller than the likes of mine that has been on here for same amount of time since 2002 and yet has only sold 300 odd items.

The OP's account over those years at a glance has far more sell feedback than buyer feedback and most of the buy feed back is from accounts with collector style names, now this could be their passion, collecting vintage items but seeing as this seems to be the only thing bought and sold would lend itself to being some sort of dealer or trader based purely on the information available.

This could be just someone who has way to many things in his collection which could well be true however, there are many many Chinese accounts with high volumes of very similar items for sale still operating as private sellers to avoid fees and tax, often linked to warehousing/duty scams, these would also not look like private sellers either due to volumes so when comparing the 2 it would be hard not see them as being very similar. 

A sweeping statement would be me saying it without any knowledge or reasoning. In the same way you made the sweeping statement comment calling my post a sweeping statement, without first checking how or why myself and others think otherwise.

No one is saying he is or is not a dealer but based on his profile it certainly looks that way in comparison to your profile or mine so you cant blame others for making that assumption (not saying everyone checked though)

Any this is hijacking the purpose of the thread so lets all get it back on track.

Its about the buyer protection fee inflating the pricing to the buyer and making the best offer thing a little more confusing on the face of it.

[martinwh1]

That's not 'protection" that's normal business expenditure

Sent from Outlook for Android<>

[crn303]

Please Martinwh1,

ignore those that assume, think, guess, predict etc

[jonatjonatjonat]

then consider this.

Buyer Protection Fee is a marketing term.

Its actually just a Buyer Protection Fee.

[pjbracer1]

It's not the fee itself it more the fact that its imposed upon the buyer and they cant opt out and more the items for sale are the higher the premium, however the same amount of customer supports will be offered for a £100 pound item or a £300 one

[jonatjonatjonat]

That is because it doesn’t just pay for customer support. It covers everything that makes eBay a secure site.

the can’t make it optional. Because eBay’s costs aren’t optional.

[martinwh1]

So what you're saying is that before they introduced it they didn't have a safe and secure site?

[pjbracer1]

The it would be a flat fee as their costs are not relevant to value of the goods being sold. 

All it is doing is re-branding the seller fees and passing them onto the buyer in the form or insurance protection. 

Vinted do exactly the same and have probably taken a chunk of the second hand clothing items away as seller make more as there are not selling fees.

Ebay have copied the idea of this by making selling now free attracting some of those they have lost back and maybe sparking interest in new sellers, hence the TV advertising. However they have now passed the fee onto the buyer instead, The have always offered buyer protection but it was essentially free aside paypal protection. but now the seller gets to sell for free and the buyer pays to get protection even when they might not want it but is sounds like security blanket for them. It also allows those buyer who like to get something for free to abuse the system and now the seller if left carrying the can even more as its now all about protecting the buyer and the sellers cant complain anymore as they are not paying anything to use the service! 

The waiting time is annoying but not all that bad for private sellers unless there is an issue with delivery which can delay it, that said no one should be that desperate to get the money they cant wait for a few days at least the bigger question is that on mass that amount held in an ebay account allows them easy cash flow for payouts without. 

It is what is it I dont have a problem with it as such its just a bit awkward when using best offer process.

It would be far easier to have the advertised price to the buyers as set by the seller and this is what is negotiated and then the protection fee is shown as the add on fee based on the current price or offer price

This just make its clearer as the buyer just sees one fee that includes the protection fee so its a bit like looking at a inc vat price. For seller this could mean and item that is advertised on other listings at say £80 and they set the price at that when they submit, the protection fee is then added making it now more expensive than all the others.

So to make it the right price seller now have to discount the item in order to play with the figures to get the correct sales price the buyer now see.

Just needs to be more out in the open for the buyer to see the sellers actual sales price and how much ebay are charging them for the protection fee, this solves the problem and keeps it all in the open. the buyer might decide Im happy with the sellers price but not the add on fee and most likely will low ball the seller to lessen the fee or not buy or go elsewhere. 

[jonatjonatjonat]

No.

before that of course it was secure. And that security was covered by the seller fees.

in fact it is still covered by the seller fees of business sellers

just ignore the word protection. It’s just marketing (and cribbed wholesale from Vinted)

it is a fee, for eBay to cover their costs and make what they deem a reasonable profit.

[superchallenge]

Yes, it is normal business expenditure that must be paid for somehow. Otherwise the business goes...out of business.

My local bricks and mortar auctioneer charges a 24% "Buyer's Premium" on top of any successful bid. The only difference is that they didn't use the phrase "Protection Fee." If eBay changed it so that their fee was exactly the same as it is now, but they called it a "Buyer's Premium" would you be happy?

[superchallenge]

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@crn303 wrote:

Please Martinwh1,

ignore those that assume, think, guess, predict etc

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Ignore those that think?

Now your posts make a lot more sense.

[jonatjonatjonat]

I honestly don't get it. I've posted the point about paying for a secure site a number of times - and that's always the response back. As if security of websites is a one off cost like buying a Yale lock.

[superchallenge]

Yep, people just don't get it. They assume that websites, apps, and businesses are just "there" and they don't cost any money or take any sort of skill to create or manage.

It's like when people on here find a small bug and then shout that eBay's developers are stupid or should be fired. Those critics can barely use their smartphones, let alone build a web service, especially one that has this many moving parts or supports this many users. But hey...they can somehow deem that a developer should be fired because...well...it shouldn't be THAT difficult, right? 😄

[papso22]

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@jonatjonatjonat wrote:

I honestly don't get it. I've posted the point about paying for a secure site a number of times - and that's always the response back. As if security of websites is a one off cost like buying a Yale lock.

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Too many members prefer to make up their own version of what the fee covers, just so they can make a point against it!  Even when they are directed to what ebay says it's for, they won't accept it.

It's also entirely up to ebay how they structure fees, a fixed element and a %age element seems standard.

[vinylscot]

To be fair, I worked for an IT company, a UK PLC, for around twenty years.

If any of our customer-facing products had remotely close to the numbers of "glitches" which eBay suffers, and if we had been totally unable to implement crucial changes without massive problems on anything close to the scale eBay has, there would certainly have been sackings.

IT is by no means simple. It is more complicated than many realise. But it CAN be done much better than this, and for a multi-billion pound, multinational organisation like eBay, it most certainly should be a lot better than it is.

[theelench]

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@vinylscot wrote:

IT is by no means simple. It is more complicated than many realise. But it CAN be done much better than this, and for a multi-billion pound, multinational organisation like eBay, it most certainly should be a lot better than it is.

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Without doubt it isn't simple these days when even the technically illiterate (like me) expect systems to be both sophisticated and user friendly, which to the illiterate means easy to use.

I think one reason why ebay gets a lot of stick is over the years ebay has added layer on layer of complication to almost every aspect of the site, making it less friendly, less easy and as far as i can see without any added sophistication, just more pages and boxes to click through to get the same result. 

e.g I get no more out of the Seller Hub than I did from the Classic Selling Page where every step of every transaction from listing to FB following each other logically and all on one page.  But with the hub I have to flick back and forth between columns and even have to move the pages left and right to see one whole transaction.

Ebay IMO deserves criticism for all the extra padding and whatever it costs in development, maintenance and all the glitches it spawns.

Another thing that causes complaint from some private sellers, especially those who see most of their income drained by various giant corporations is their sheer profligacy.

Ebay becomes complicated, less easy to use and costly to maintain and fees rise to cover it.  Yet billions are paid out to shareholders and execs.  It doesn't seem that they ever have to economise no matter how bad things get (including their site) for everyone else.

A lot of things should be a lot better for a lot of people .

[lucy_farmer]

'Another thing that causes complaint from some private sellers, especially those who see most of their income drained by various giant corporations is their sheer profligacy.'

'Ebay becomes complicated, less easy to use and costly to maintain and fees rise to cover it.  Yet billions are paid out to shareholders and execs. '

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Yep, but that's 'Ensh**ification' in a nutshell. 

Otherwise described as 'Late-Stage Capitalism' or 'trickle-upwards' economics.

It's not just ebay ☹️ It's anywhere with share-holders.

[the_book_seekers]

So what you're saying is that before they introduced it they didn't have a safe and secure site?

Yes they did. But the cost of maintaining it amongst other things would've have been taken from seller's fees. After moving to fee free selling for private sellers ebay had a hole in these costs/revenue which they were always going to fill some how and that's what they've done with BPF, SD and the PL changes.