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 .

[1928leafman]

I don't dispute that their sole aim is to make money but they chose to implement fee free selling for private users - nobody asked them, and the fact they chose clothing first suggests their aim was to wipe out Vinted which didn't work. The obvious thing would have been to reintroduce sellers fees on the old basis with occasional "free fee offers" but no, they decided to copy Vinted which charge buyers a fee so they introduced a buyers fee but  tried to dress it up as a "Protection" fee when it does no such thing. Unfortuately they thought they could do better than Vinted (who clearly and separately show the seller's price, their fee and the shipping cost) by adding the BPF to the price the Seller wants so we end up with loads of odd asking prices. They also overlooked the fact that offers in Vinted by buyer or seller are based on the seller's asking price whereas buyer offers on eBay are the price the buyer wants to pay so includes the BPF whereas seller offers don't. At the end of the day, all they have achieved is to severely affect private sales especially in the lower prices areas (up to around £5), upset a load of people and see Vinted seize take the opportunity to greatly expand their sales categories beyond their original "apparel" categories. 

show the buyer's asking price, 

[1928leafman]

I don't dispute that their sole aim is to make money but they chose to implement fee free selling for private users - nobody asked them, and the fact they chose clothing first suggests their aim was to wipe out Vinted which didn't work. The obvious thing would have been to reintroduce sellers fees on the old basis with occasional "free fee offers" but no, they decided to copy Vinted which charges buyers a fee so they introduced a buyers fee but  tried to dress it up as a "Protection" fee when it does no such thing. Unfortuately they thought they could do better than Vinted (who clearly and separately show the seller's price, their fee and the shipping cost) by adding the BPF to the price the Seller wants so we end up with loads of odd asking prices. They also overlooked the fact that offers in Vinted by buyer or seller are based on the seller's asking price whereas buyer offers on eBay are the price the buyer wants to pay so includes the BPF whereas seller offers don't. At the end of the day, all they have achieved is to severely affect private sales especially in the lower prices areas (up to around £5), upset a load of people and see Vinted seize take the opportunity to greatly expand their sales categories beyond their original "apparel" categories. 

[the_book_seekers]

I completely agree that ebay has made an absolute dog's dinner of recent changes, which haven't just hit the sales of private sellers, but a good number of business sellers as well. I was just pointing out that ebay has had to find a way to cover those costs that were paid for out of selling fees - and yes there is probably a healthy profit on top. 

[pjbracer1]

I'm sure many are annoyed about the fee's but then they have always been there before it was seller fees now it's buyer fees in the guise of protection.

Ebay is a business and is there to make money there is no argument on that, sure they could charge business sellers a fee and let private sellers and buyers trade for free, this comes back to the volume of what would normally constitute private junk clearing sales and trading in a specific type of item. This is not different to some software packages where it free to use for non commercial but use it more than and average person would use it and you are trading! 

The prices are a little steep when they could just be a fixed fee for prices ranges rather than percentages but thats where the profit comes from. 

The biggest issue for me and most I have spoken to is the perception the buyer is under that the price they see is the item price when its not, it the price inflated from the base price including a percentage that is the protection fee!

The buyer is most likely ok with the price or not using buy it now, but when it comes to making offers its not as easy they offer based on the over all price they see where as the offer comes it needs some thinking about as if you have a conversation with a buyer and agree say £20 when its up for sale for £25(including the fee) when they put in the offer you are agreeing a price of £20 but when the offer comes through it will be £20 less the buyer protection fee from their side making your actual offer maybe £18 or £17.5 depending on the protection fee mark up. (those figures are not actual they are for the purpose of the example)

All ebay need to do is show the buyer the sellers total price and separate the protection fee with a total of all on the page, not hard to do but then when negotiating with a seller the buyer and seller are both using the same sale figure to start with, thats all that is needed. 

Arguing about the fees being there is moot as they always were, it just different wording now. As I said be nice if it were free for personal selling and buyer for sure but thats not gonna happen.

[superchallenge]

---

@pjbracer1 wrote:

Arguing about the fees being there is moot as they always were, it just different wording now. As I said be nice if it were free for personal selling and buyer for sure but thats not gonna happen.

---

Indeed, because we've seen what happens when they make it so that private sellers have no fees. Or even discounted fees.

People running businesses see that it doesn't make financial sense to trade as a business and pay fees when they can stay as private and pay none, so they stay as private, regardless of any rules or regulations.

And when eBay offered 80% off fees vouchers to private sellers every other weekend, the site filled up with placeholder listings. Private sellers flocked to create as many placeholder items as they could during the voucher dates so they could alter them a few days later to contain the correct item details, and still only pay 20% of what everybody else had to pay.

We could say that neither thing would be a problem if eBay actually policed things better, or at all, but we all know that they absolutely don't.

[richmid]

It's the other way round, it's an extra fee added to the seller's price which buyers will have to pay. We have buyer protection with PayPal and this extra charge provides no further protection to what we had before!

[jonatjonatjonat]

That's true (though one can argue the buyer is protected in the fact ebay offer a secure site) but what it does cover ebays fees associated with the provision of their service that are no longer covered by the Seller Fees that ebay switched from.

That is all the BPF is - the way ebay gets its cut of the sale. Nothing more.

[parsnippete]

That may well be true. But why dress it up?  Insurance is often worth buying and if you have a claim you might be grateful. 

[richmid]

It's not insurance, paying by PayPal provides protection for transaction
problems. I've already had customer service tell me that this "buyer
protection" adds nothing more than we had before.
This is purely an extra surcharge to hit buyers with!

[jonatjonatjonat]

What do you mean insurance? The only  ‘insurance’ is the eBay money back guarantee. EBay should frankly have stated that for private sellers the money back guarantee was now included in the buyer protection fee.

in all honestly I imagine it is (in the way that free delivery on an item isn’t really ‘free’) but it would help in making it clearer what it is (especially as Vinted version of the MBG is included in their BPF)