How are Buyer Protection Fees calculated?

[runninginlane4]

I'm sure I've probably missed the obvious and am at risk of making myself look silly but get a different result to eBay when calculating Buyer Protection Fees.

For example, I recently sold an item for £2.00 plus p&p. By my calculation the buyer should pay :-

£2.00 Price

£0.08 (4% fee)

£0.75 (fixed fee)

£2.83 TOTAL

What the buyer actually paid is £0.80 in fees. I know it is only a few pence but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

[jonatjonatjonat]

I believe in some cases the fixed fee is actually coming out as 72p instead of 75p

[moldosgifts]

yes that about right although i'll throw another spanner in the works it actually 72p they are charging at the moment.

The policy state up to 75p  they are currently running at 72p so £2.80 

[vinylscot]

When the eBay programmers got to work to add the BPF, they made an incredibly basic error in their calculations. Even more incredibly, it sailed past all of their quality control and compliance staff.

The programmers wrongly assumed that the 75p element was itself to be inclusive of the BPF, instead of totally independent from the 4% element. Therefore, only 72p was added as the fixed, element, as 72p + 4% would equal 75p.

Therefore every single price which includes BPF is wrong by 3p.

Do they intend to fix it? They haven't said, so private sellers don't know whether to amend their listings, to what they should be now, or to wait, in case they need to do it all over again.

It's hard to believe they could be so stupid.

[jonatjonatjonat]

I dare say the programmer will (and should) blame whoever wrote the brief!

[vinylscot]

Probably. But it should have been thoroughly checked and tested before getting the green light.

[theeminentdoctor]

I'm pleased to say having found this post my sanity has been reinstated, the discrepancy between the ebay explanation and worked examples of the Buyers Protection Fee and the spreadsheet I created to calculate the amount would not tally with my listing… YUP, by 3p !

The spreadsheet is to calculate what price to list an item so the selling price matches a criteria, for example, to sell an item for £80.00 the listing price will be £76.23.

Now the spreadsheet has been corrected replacing the 75 pence flat fee with 72 pence… sorted (for now).

[andyf117]

I posted in another thread yesterday my breakdown of the 'formula' they appear to be using:

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Seller-Central/Ebay-s-new-buyer-protection-scam/m-p/7834355#M727350 

[m1kegibson]

It is hardly a shocker that eBay are wrongly calculating this.  This whole Buyer Protection thing has not been thought through by eBay.  The impact on offers and thresholds, confusion over how its calculated and having weird numbers on buy-it-now and auction start prices  - it is a mess.

I would prefer that the eBay offered the option of "hiding" the cost in the start price etc. allowing me to offer items at a sensible figure.

In reality the cost of this is born by private sellers and eBay are disingenuous in pitching it as a buyer cost.

[eastern-lights]

Curious thing ...

I listed an item at £18.53 (post free) intended to give a price to the buyer of £19.99. The listing confirmed that the BPF would be £1.46. When I viewed my listing from another account the listing showed £19.99 as expected. It sold yesterday and when I printed off an invoice it showed that the buyer had payed £1.50 BPF to give a total of £20.03. I viewed the listing and it still showed £19.99 price to buyer.

When I look at my orders page it shows sub-total £18.53, total £20.03.

Of course I have no idea what the buyer actually paid. And I'm not going to ask.

😕