New Buyer Fees - Possible New Discussion

[effing_wif_figs]

I mostly sell toys so it looks like the fees haven't been applied to that category yet. 

I do have a single Nintendo game listed. From my home screen, the price is £30.

If I look at it from a browser I'm not longed into, it shows as £31.92.

Like many, I'm not happy with the fees but will deal with them for the time being. 

The real issue with how eBay are quietly adding them but only from a buyer perspective is when it comes to offers. 

I don't tend to get a lot of best offers through the best offer option but I get tons through messages, the issue with this being, if someone messages me with a lower number and I agree to it or meet them in the middle, what number do they then have to pay? It's going to cause a lot of confusion, do we have to warn buyers through our listings that we can't see the actual price our item is listed for?

The whole thing is such a massive step backwards. I lowered a lot of my prices when the free selling came in because I wasn't losing fees. I'd honestly prefer if the 4% +75p (also stupid, just make it a solid percentage) was just taken from the seller's side like it used to be. They've complicated so much to the point that sellers and buyers will see different numbers and is nothing like Vinted's system of showing the fees like a lot of us believed. 

[papso22]

I think offers are currently a mess.

[effing_wif_figs]

Couldn't tell you. Haven't had a single offer in a week. 

[porte2425]

Video games categories are already affected by the buyer fees.

[effing_wif_figs]

I understand that. That's the only item I have with fees to make my point though.

[porte2425]

Sorry, I thought you were saying you didn’t know why the price was showing higher for that item. (Hence because buyer fees were being added already).

In regards to your questions about offers, I would say it’s too early to say much on it. There’s plenty that is still up in the air, and broken, so how offers will work via messages is probably low priority. If there’s too much complaint about it, and no easy solution, I wouldn’t be surprised if eBay pulled the feature/ability!

But I do agree that fees should be listed clearer. And they still might. I think eBay is still trying to hide it from buyers at the moment, and hope they won’t really notice. How else do you explain that the only notification currently is when you get to checkout, and it’s not even shown in the total breakdown box – which is what most people will probably be looking at.

[porte2425]

Interestingly, now it has sold, on the item page it is showing the fee breakdown.

£31.92
incl. £1.92 for Buyer Protection
or Best Offer

I think that is what it will show in the future on active listings. As I previously said, I think they are just hiding that for now.

[effing_wif_figs]

Yeah. It only showed the breakdown after it was payed for, I did wonder if the buyer could see that. 

I dropped a lot of my prices when we switched to no fees so hoping I don't run into more issues but I've had about as many sales in a week as I would have in a day just a week ago. 

[porte2425]

Sales have been weird for a while, as far as I can tell. Both businesses and private accounts. (I’m glad I haven’t really bothered with selling again *yet* with this new account.)

My son said his sales have been all over the place. But as a private seller with stock that’s dwindling, it is hard for him to tell. His recent sales were mainly in the categories affected by the new fees (which few of his items actually are). I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I would put good money on it being that eBay has been prioritising those listings in search results to make sellers calm down about the impact of the buyer fees.

But what do we mere mortals know. Ha ha

[effing_wif_figs]

That makes a lot of sense, that game is one of the few sales I have had today.

I'm just selling off my toy collection and eBay was the quickest way to do it for a long time but I'll likely move back to social media pages, it won't have the reach and I'll have to take a hit but I'd rather not have my money in limbo for up to two weeks. I've had too many buyers recently let their items sit in the post office for up to a month.