eBay

rugbyguy1960 · ‎31-03-2025

AS OF 15TH APRIL MY DAYS AS A PRIVATE EBAY SELLER WILL STOP AFTER 19 YEARS.

I AM FED UP OF THE GREED OF EBAY AND I HOPE OTHER EBAY SELLERS DECIDE TO NO LONGER LET THE EBAY CONTROL FREAKS HAVE THIS MUCH CONTROL OVER PRIVATE SELLERS.

gjalp · ‎02-05-2025

Depends on the young person really. My eldest (20s) buys on ebay but mostly car parts although will browse for things that they are generally interested in. Middly prefers the other place that starts with e and ends in y as they like to search out unique hand crafted items. Youngest wants whatever asap so goes to the prime place although has bought pc upgrades on ebay.

gmij1961 · ‎02-05-2025

Its accumulative so its the constant rate revenue per day against how many days in sits in the Ebay account before they pass it on that builds up their interest payment and what they earn interest on is average amount over a year . So before delayed payment the seller could remove their payment with 24 hours if they wanted , that wait is now more like 5 days, delivery time + 2 days . So with delayed payments Ebay will on average have 5 days of sellers money to accrue interest and that is will sellers that withdraw there money as soon as it available

I have used 4% as a figure based on what I have earnt from my savings , investments etc . It could be less but also be more

mintsource3000 · ‎02-05-2025

Yes but to get 4p for 1 pound is more like 365 days,

inpoughkeepsie · ‎03-05-2025

I reported in a previous post that I had around £500 sat in my pending funds. I purchased 3 die cast trucks for £165, that purchase was taken from my bank account and not out of my pending funds. Also, when checking my payments etc, I have never actually managed to reduce my pending balance to zero for over 10 weeks. Hence, I have now stopped buying until the pending balance is significantly reduced. Absolutely ridiculous the way this company is treating folk and THEIR money.

gmij1961 · ‎03-05-2025

Its constant £1 per day rate that builds up a constant surplus that Ebay will earn a return on .

Before free to sell I was probably paying an average of 5% charges as most weeks I sold when I had an 80% discount . So if you assume a 4% earning rate on money sitting in Ebays bank then delayed payment is significant step in replacing that lost revenue . If you then add average 10% return on BPF fees then Ebay are now earning significantly more than they were before .

SD then adds an additional % on postage and compared to the good old days for every £1 ebay earned in fees the courier £2 its another significant return and a 4% return on that could represent the equivalent of 8% in selling fees .

However none of these "innovations" come for free so there is significant investment to re-coup and you could say April 15th was when all the new revenues streams are eventually in place .

The problem is if the dip in sales is more than Ebay have anticipated and there is no real increase in revenue to pay off the investment .

theelench · ‎03-05-2025

I'm going back many years so this might not be relevant any more. I used to work at the Greater London Council (abolished in 1985?) in a departmental finance dept. Every day, before mid-day, we had to phone the 'central' Finance Office and give them our total of cheques received in payment for goods or services.

Those figures were aggregated with those of other departments and the total was lent out on something called the "Overnight Money Market". If it was profitable for the GLC to do that for what was probably a few tens of thousands of pounds a day, how much more profitable would it be today if ebay is doing something similar with a few million ?

akemp1 · ‎03-05-2025

@theelench wrote:
Those figures were aggregated with those of other departments and the total was lent out on something called the "Overnight Money Market". If it was profitable for the GLC to do that for what was probably a few tens of thousands of pounds a day, how much more profitable would it be today if ebay is doing something similar with a few million ?

It's still possible to invest in a money market fund (via a S&S ISA etc) and get a rate of return roughly equivalent to the best buy cash ISAs without the hassle of keep transferring accounts between banks to keep on top of the best rates.

https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investing-explained/what-are-money-market-funds

Before knowing this I was wasting time shopping around for the best savings rates.

I still have a little in real cash for any immediate instant access needs.

shiqxion-gg · ‎03-05-2025

Who's idea was "Simple Delivery"

Accidentally left it on for an item, and go to post it and the buyer apparently chose letter so it's the wrong size

Has to cancel order as couldn't refund their label and buy another one that is the right size

Another reason to stop using eBay after my listings end

lucy_farmer · ‎03-05-2025

'.....and the buyer apparently chose letter so it's the wrong size'

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The buyer can't choose the size of the postage needed; they only get to choose the speed, 'Standard' or 'express'.......

The size appears to be chosen by ebay's AI sytem. How intelligent that is is debatable....!

But if you use the S.D. label on a wrongly sized/weight parcal, the post office are supposed to accept it anyway. (ebay and RM/Evri will apparently straighten it all up between themselves later!)

akemp1 · ‎03-05-2025

@shiqxion-gg wrote:
Accidentally left it on for an item, and go to post it and the buyer apparently chose letter so it's the wrong size

Has to cancel order as couldn't refund their label and buy another one that is the right size

It's ebay not the buyer who guess the size and provided the label has Marketplace Seller then Post Offices have been instructed to accept the item even if it's completely wrong not that everyone in a Post Office seems to have read (or agree with) the information they were sent about this.

There seems to be a process where ebay and RM settle up for any differences in actual postage between themselves.

I'm not in favour of SD just explaining how it's supposed to be work.

gmij1961 · ‎03-05-2025

When I started on Ebay , I use to pay my fees on a something like a manual monthly basis, before they stopped me from listing 🙂 , how things of changed.

Perhaps you can't begrudge Ebay for making the most of the money they process and that is a lot easier when you set up a new platform but move a platform 30 year old with out due diligence at every step you run a risk of ending up where they are now .

There should have been a massive charm offensive to manage customer resistance . I was wary of delayed payments and the implementation of SD was a final straw and a change they really should have delayed by at least another 3 months and just refine SD in the background as an option .

If you are going to impose SD in this way , then had to work properly and didn't and still doesn't . The AI dimension and weight guessing application will never work properly and it was so easy to allow and educate user to fill dimension boxes in correctly . Get the dimensions right then you work against existing pricings and not just create prices that compensate for random sizes etc . I suspect , Those fields are just hidden with RM Medium parcels size set as default when using SD . It by no means is not the only bug bear with SD but if they got it right , SD would not be so bad.

ruby*ryan · ‎03-05-2025

I have just had my first SD sale. I was surprised because the charge to the buyer was 2.94, and the label was Evri. I have left both RM and Evri options on, and this buyer is in a remote area, so I assumed eBay would put this label as RM to save themselves some money (possibly!). Had I sent this item myself, the charge to the buyer would have been over £5 via Evri, so the buyer saved a bit, and the postage cost possibly made my item look more inviting than other sellers charging the full rate.
Another plus was that I would only have had cover up to £20 buying my own label, whereas with SD it's (allegedly!) covered for the full amount, £40 in this case.
The only negative about it was that the second the buyer paid the item was marked as 'dispatched', which seems a bit premature, it would be better if it remained unsent until at least the seller has printed off the label.