More New Policy Changes Coming

[rugbyguy1960]

Not all totally bad news this time.

Opt in/opt out and eligibility

Can I opt out of Simple Delivery?

Yes, you can opt out of Simple Delivery when you’re creating the listing. 

For now great news. One that needs to be heeded is:

Without limiting other remedies, we may limit, suspend, or terminate your user account(s) and access to our Services, restrict or prohibit access to, and your activities on, our Services, cancel bids, remove or demote or otherwise restrict the visibility of listings, delay or remove hosted content, remove any special status associated with the account, reduce or eliminate any discounts, and take technical and legal steps to keep you from using our Services if:

we think that you are creating problems or possible legal liabilities for us, our users, suppliers or other third parties.

My query is: does ebay now holding a sellers funds slightly come under the profiteering umbrella.

[rugbyguy1960]

It's like my experience this week.

Item collected by RM on Monday. Delivered on Wednesday as it was 48hr tracked. My money not available until today.

So apart from it being a 5 day process I also had to pay the postage and packaging costs to begin with.

[porte2425]

There is no need for any of it. They paid sellers within a day for all that time and it was fine. Buyers could still raise the same claims as they did before – which puts a sellers funds instantly on hold, for a long time. The biggest risk group for taking the money and running, i.e. new sellers, have always had their payments on hold anyway. And the mess with how it works with postage and refunds coming out of cleared payments/available funds adds extra insult to injury.

[rugbyguy1960]

I do agree with all you have said.

I know I'm old school and maybe not the seller or buyer they love but I've always believed in :

Why fix what's not broke.

[valueaddedresource]

@rugbyguy1960  - nothing in the section about Simple Delivery changed with this UA update...and that doesn't mean things couldn't still change before the end of Q1.

More info:

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Seller-Central/Expanded-Simple-Delivery-to-be-optional/m-p/7774907#M...

[valueaddedresource]

I ran both the old User Agreement and new User Agreement through a difference checker and the main points that changed or had sections added are:

• Adding sections about Illegal Content and Appeals About Illegal Content
• Adding attempting to circumvent buyer fees to the list of activities for which eBay may limit, suspend or take other action against user accounts (due to some clever buyers finding a workaround to avoid the fees)
• Changing the timeframe for providing notice of seller fee changes from 30 days to 15 days, while keeping the previous language which allows eBay to change buyer fees at any time with no notice required

That's really pretty much it for major changes - the rest of the UA has stayed mostly the same and most of it has been the same for years.

For anyone who wants to try the experiment for themselves, this one is free and easy to use, you just copy and paste the old version on one side and then copy and paste the new version on the other side and click "find difference" https://www.diffchecker.com/

[rugbyguy1960]

Sellers fee changes from 30 days down to 15 days is a bit ominous, but it was the wording of :

If we think you are causing problems etc etc then it goes into all the options they can choose from.

[rugbyguy1960]

I only offer RM 48hr tracked and normally on my listings I state that I only charge what RM charge me.

All packaging costs etc I pay for.

Plus hopefully buyers will understand why I only use 48hr tracked.

[valueaddedresource]

@rugbyguy1960  I understand that sounds ominous but, that paragraph you quoted in your original post has been in the UA for years, followed by a list of prohibited activities, many of which have also been there for years and some of which are new.

That's why it's so important to look at what changed - if things which have been in the policy for years haven't negatively impacted you before, they probably won't now and you'll need to identify any new/changed info to assess what the impacts of the changes may be for you.

For that section, we can  see that the only thing which has changed is the addition of a few items to the list of things for which eBay may limit, suspend or take other action against user accounts:

Specifically they added:

...you circumvent, or seek to circumvent, any fees that may be payable when using eBay.co.uk;

and

we think that this is necessary in order to protect other users from illegal content being posted or listed on the eBay site.

That's it - those are the only changes to that section and the only thing you need to be focused on/worried about...if you aren't trying to circumvent fees and you aren't posting illegal content, then literally nothing about that part of the policy has changed for you.

[rugbyguy1960]

I know these forums are ebays and I understand their need to control and moderate them but I think the more often and more things that change in the user agreement is what will get people thinking that there is a ulterior motive somewhere.

[valueaddedresource]

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@rugbyguy1960 wrote:

I know these forums are ebays and I understand their need to control and moderate them but I think the more often and more things that change in the user agreement is what will get people thinking that there is a ulterior motive somewhere.

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@rugbyguy1960 I don't disagree in general and I think there is *a lot* eBay can and should do to communicate about policy changes better...including providing a side by side comparison of the changes.

But sellers have been asking for that for years and eBay has for years ignored that request...which is why I always recommend for sellers to empower and inform themselves by using easy tools like a difference checker to get that side by side comparison so they can understand what has actually changed and how it may impact them.

[rugbyguy1960]

For me personally there has never been a time in the last 20 years of using ebay to mistrust or really question their motives as much as I do now.

[porte2425]

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@rugbyguy1960 wrote:

I only offer RM 48hr tracked and normally on my listings I state that I only charge what RM charge me.

All packaging costs etc I pay for.

Plus hopefully buyers will understand why I only use 48hr tracked.

---

That depends on the items.

If I were looking at an antique postcard for 99p + £1 P&P, I might be tempted.

But with buyer fees - 99p + 79p fees + £1 P&P is possibly going to put me off.

99p + 79p fees + £2.70 P&P is never going to work – the buyer is expected to pay over twice the price, and the seller also loses the 15p that they used to charge for packaging (15p may not be a lot, but when they're only charging 99p for the item, it is 15%).

[rugbyguy1960]

That is definitely very true.

It definitely depends on what a seller is selling and what a buyer wants to buy.

It's like for me personally I sell off signed cd's from my collection to make room for new ones.

I have sold items for between 8 and 25 pound and because some come in plastic cases and because they are signed by the artists then I feel that 2.70 for postage that's tracked is a fair choice by me.

[goodibags]

"Specifically they added:

...you circumvent, or seek to circumvent, any fees that may be payable when using eBay.co.uk;"

Aww, no more trips to another site beginning with the letters 'ebay' and ending with 'om'?

Even when Ebay's very helpful notifications intentionally take you there.

[rugbyguy1960]

What you've said is so true.

I don't want to stop selling on ebay either.

But the same feeling about hopes being raised and then dashed is a concern.

Things like notice to sellers has gone down from 30 days to 15 so I was told on here hasn't filled me with hope. While I can continue to use RM through choice is great but the thought of SD  being compulsory will be the last straw.