NO LONGER SELLING DUE TO SIMPLE DELIVERY

[rugbyguy1960]

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]

I’ve done that with some clothing. In the past, I would have sold them but SD is too much of a headache to contemplate now so I bagged it up and took it to charity. Books I take to various charity tables - I discovered one at a nearby pub so I dropped off and then purchased replacements from the same table for £1 each. Triple win there, I got rid of read books and picked up unread books, the charity got a donation and the pub got money for a pint (it would have been rude not to since I was already there 😅).

[pegr-834437]

I have never once stated you were breaking any rules and can you please advise on where its breaking ebays policy or rules to have more than one account?

How many of those thousands of items have you sold via SD? If you havent sold many then using your argument you cant really comment on simple delivery either can you? For the record I have purchase/sold thousands on eBay, but like has been pointed out to you previously you can disagree with somebody on here and they can then ruin all your listings, thats not something I am willing to take a risk with. Not agaisnt eBay policy though

End of the day I believe SD isnt as bad as the handful on these threads make it out to be, yes if you sell very niche items it may be a problem but selling unwanted personal possession you'd be extremely unlucky to have thousands of those niche items. People just dont like change and want everything their way and free, if having custom postage is such a great thing then upgrade to a business account and you get it, downside is you need to pay selling fee's and accept returns. Thats the compromise, its not great but thats how it is, constantly complaining about something you dont use and will never use is pretty pointless. Anyway hope you have a fantastic day as we will never agree and I'm pretty sure you wont stop complaining either.

[punzel9072]

"you can disagree with somebody on here and they can then ruin all your listings"

How does that work then?

My problem with 'simple delivery' is that when selling a low-value item, say at £2, which would go as a Royal Mail Large Letter with a certificate of posting (in case of loss) for £1.55 or £2 (depending on weight), SD requires you to send it tracked at £2.70 - a significantly higher cost for the buyer, making the item too expensive - 17% to 32% dearer.

[lucy_farmer]

'People just dont like change and want everything their way and free, if having custom postage is such a great thing then upgrade to a business account and you get it, downside is you need to pay selling fee's and accept returns.'

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'Don't like change' - well okay, some of us *don't* like change, but if it's a change for the better we will eventually go for it!

'everything their way and free.' -  *free*? The vast majority of grown up humans know 'there is no such thing as a free lunch'. We are happy to pay for a service that makes life better for us.

'accept returns' - I have never been anything other than a private seller and have never *not* accepted returns (except when ebay switched the 'no-returns' button over itself at one stage; that took me a little while to notice and flip it back..)

'upgrade to a business account' - not when you aren't actually a business. Okay, it's not as immoral as pretending to be a private seller when you're really a business, but pretending to be a business when you're *not* one is seriously not going to go down well with 'officialdom' and bureaucracy.....

[pegr-834437]

People can just buy/bid on your listings and not pay, you have it off site for 4 days and they can then either not pay or just pay (if its low value) and claim its inad and leave negative feedback. Yes it takes a special type of person to do it but we all know there are people who would do it and have done it. The

Fully agree with under £20 thats why eBay have moved many categories over to custom postage, the reason they will have made it mandatory though is they get all the figures showing amount of INR for under £20 and we all know theres many a complaint about the postman not scanning when they should. I'd extend custom to all under £20 but i dont have the figures showing how many INR cases are opened and lost by buyers.

@lucy_farmer 

I just tagged you lucy as I didn't want to spam the board like previously (sorry anyone who has notifications on)

Sd is a change for good for many people though, I've never said it was great for all, theres a small percentage that it doesnt work for but many who were so strongly agaisnt it at first tried it and enjoy it.

What issues would being on a business account raise with 'officialdom'? If youre just selling unwanted personal possession you'd be fine, I wasnt directing the accept returns at you but many private accounts dont so thats why I mentioned it as we know that would have been a come back. I'd argue its far less immoral, you are not taking any consumer rights away from people, you're actually giving them more, how is it equal to removing consumer rights?

Their way or free was agaisnt the people who are forever complaining, unless everything was free and what they wanted they complain, people complained about bpf when it was introduced as they were happy with 0% seller fee's and now they'd just added Sd into their complaints, all whilst claiming to never use the site anymore and havent used SD.

For the vast majority SD works perfect, for a small percentage it could be altered and work perfectly, for a tiny minority it'll never work. The constant bashing on here is crazy, again though we are all open to our own opinions, even if you havent sold or used it, its a forum for discussion. Hope you have a great day on the farm whilst the weather is decent.

[dantwocats]

 i hate change but its not the change , its the fiddling with the postage rates you have already set , letter and small parcel moved up to medium parcel sizes , clear overcharging , and no letter post which took them months to half sort out , should be simple but a nightmare why should anyone be forced to be a business because of a mess ebay made !

[suelel1968]

So finally Ebay uk filed their accounts for 2024. They are very short on information about the current state of the UK business. They do say however, that revenue was 10% down during 2024 due to "Free to sell" .

Free to sell was only for clothes from April 24 and for everything from October 24. It was also only for private sellers. So for 3 months of a year private sellers managed to reduce revenues quite considerably and it carried on until the end of Feb 25.

Sellers themselves know that this year has been tough for sales. BPF must have been part of that problem or Ebay would not have reduced those fees. Whilst we don't know the impact of SD on sales or whether the advertising campaign has increased private seller numbers, we do know that it is still very tough to sell with postage increases, absorbing buyers fees and total disrespect by ebay management to gauge opinion before acting to create this mess for themselves.

We didn't ask for any of this. The most complained about issued private sellers had prior to this was not being given the 70% discounts. But it does seem that Private sellers have more of an impact on turnover than most people imagined. 

[rugbyguy1960]

Sorry I didn't reply before but to answer your question, YES I would definitely consider selling again if I had to pay Sellers Fees, because they could be incorporated into my listing price. But I would need to be able to choose the courier I want directly, that works best for me.

I am one of the people affected by SD because I sent my items by LL and i will only use RM 48hr Tracked and their doorstep collection and pay their postal charge by buying online.

But with the platform trying to fix what wasn't broken this monumental mess was to be expected.

[rugbyguy1960]

That info is great to know.

They need something called a THINK tank here regarding changes made.

I know SD may be a fairly good thing for sellers who sell low value small items because a lot can use the opt out available.

I'm not a qualified expert but in my mind all this UK platform needs to do is make SD optional across all categories so those who want to use evri can.

Reintroduce Seller Fees as nearly all of us can see through the smokescreen of SD.

They should make BPF optional so buyers who want to pay for extra protection can do.

I'm pretty sure that those 2 changes would get more users selling and buying again.

Ebay would still make a lot of money and things would become transparent again.

Ebay may not be forgiven but at least sellers like me would most probably list again without the mess of having to use Simple Delivery.

[rugbyguy1960]

I agree. Plus there is no way that a lot of genuine private sellers would be able to become a Business Seller.

Firstly because me and many others sell personal items, and secondly I would never consider becoming a Business Seller just to avoid Simple Delivery.

I'd rather stop selling which is something I did in early April.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

I agree with what you’ve said, but ebay can’t reintroduce seller fees under the current system because they’ve made such a big thing about advertising “sell for free”.  What they *could* do, however, is create a special category of private sellers, call it “Custom Seller” status for convenience.  Applying for and being granted Custom Seller status would enable a private seller to pay a [fair and reasonable] fee in exchange for custom delivery across all categories, sizes and shapes, and no BPF.  Doing this would still enable ebay to claim “sell for free” because those who wanted SD and BPF would still be able to do that.

Unfortunately, getting out of the hole that ebay has dug for itself requires more creative thinking than is currently evident with ebay who seem to be obsessed with copying Vinted, so I doubt anything along the lines that I’ve suggested will happen, or any other imaginative solution to the current exodus of sellers and buyers.

[rugbyguy1960]

I agree. A category called custom Seller would definitely work for a lot of private sellers like me. Instead of having to use Simple Delivery which doesn't work for me but users who qualified could pay a sellers fee instead. Nothing is actually "Free" because there will always be a cost somewhere along the line.

I just want transparency and not a half baked thing called Simple Delivery forced upon me which isn't even something that is fit for purpose for me as a private seller.

Plus as long as I created a listing that wasn't unlawful I wouldn't want my listing altered or tampered with.

[rugbyguy1960]

I've brought 4 things in the last 2 weeks from ebay sellers in the US.

They love selling to the UK at present because they don't have to use Simple Delivery for now.

They just send things to a ebay hub in the US who then manage delivery to  the UK.

Simple Delivery as it is here in the UK would create uproar.

So moving forward I am interested in seeing what SD morphs into here.

It at least needs to become fair and usable for everyone.

[jonatjonatjonat]

Look you and I have disagreements, but let me be clear.

- BPF I see the negatives of adding a fee on visible to the customer.

- Simple Delivery still has issues but it can be made to work if they could sort out bundling (because the pricing of postage is relatively similar to Vinted on somethings I’ve compared). 

but there’s misinformation here that I’d question irregardless of who posted it

Reintroduce Seller Fees as nearly all of us can see through the smokescreen of SD.

the only link between seller fees and Simple Delivery is that ebay will have built some of the lost seller fees they used to charge on charged postage into Simple Delivery. Otherwise - they aren't even related. I hope this maintains the on topic quota for the post.

They should make BPF optional so buyers who want to pay for extra protection can do

I still can't believe you are suggesting this. Unless you are proposing that for some reason, there is seller fees AND an optional Buyer Protection Fee. But if there were seller fees - there wouldn't be any need for a BPF and if there were just an optional BPF - no-one would choose to pay it and ebay wouldn't make any money. The BPF, for the umpteenth time is covering ebays fees. Argue the inclusion of the word protection in the name of it all you like, its clear its ebays cost covering  + profit on the sale.

I think moonlight-rhapsodys suggestion is sound below though - if ebay could work out how to do that. The only issue would be how that is presented to the buyers as you have an even more fractured postage model. I think someone said above from the ebay open - they were told one of the reasons to move to Simple Delivery was due to buyer feedback - they didn't like how all over the place postage was.

[department28]

'I think someone said above from the ebay open - they were told one of the reasons to move to Simple Delivery was due to buyer feedback - they didn't like how all over the place postage was.'

Well, I hope whoever complained is happy with what they have now... 

[suelel1968]

The Exec Team phoned me in response to my letter to Jaime and said  that they were working on an opt out of SD on an application basis, then they said they were not allowed to discuss it further, and they haven't. We can live in hope that the one positive they have come up with was not just the utter.... that it now seems.

If i knew that unless i did something about SD, revenues would be further down or flat in the 2025 accounts I would uses the next 2 months to throw everything at it but they are leaving it too late really to do that. Perhaps the revenue from SD and BPF masks the problem but it won't mask things forever.