Private seller fees and business fees - why

[event_power]

I am a little confused and more than a little concerned by ebay dropping fees for private sellers.

As a small business, surely ebay should be supporting us who provide genuine service and legal products?

As the ebay commission charged heads towards 20% for businesses, any old peeps can sell 300 items without any comeback/guarentees/warranty for free per month.

We also pay for a shop, which only nets a small return.

We dropped Amazon when the commission reached 25%+, maybe we will ditch ebay and plough the money into google ads instead.

I just do not get it. Surely reducing costs to commerical users drives sales by reducing the overall cost to the consumer, and hence ebay makes more money? Whereas, reducing a private sellers fees to zero, selling a similar item once, does nothing for ebays bottom line.

Thoughts?

[tommystrezures]

There are plenty of other threads floating around on this today. I am not sure this is the end of the changes, but time will tell.

I am sure there are plenty of business sellers like you that have turned with aghast todays news. My view for what its worth is yes for genuine private sellers its not a bad thing, is 300 items too little per month, I would say its too much for the genuine private seller.

Timing - poor - the debacle of private business accounts should have been resolved properly before this, and this is what has got so many business users back up. (mine included)

Your point about comeback/warranties - thats not strictly "true", ebay have the Money Back Gaurantee and all private sellers will have to adhere to that. So if an item is not as described then the 30 day rule applies, and they will obviously be liable for postage returns etc.

Private sellers also can pay for a shop, but its one thing for a longtime that I don't really think is applicable to a private seller, there needs to be mechanisms in place that clearly differentiate business sellers, or "Bolt ons" to accounts such as shop, promoted listings etc that only business sellers can access. The line is now a bit muddy on these sorts of things.

I wonder, and there was a thread somewhere in the chaos of today, whether ebay are going to at some point change their business model completely. In our field of specialism there is one "rival" to ebay who earlier this year dropped fees for sellers, (private and business) and instead now charge the buyer a premium (as you would do say in an auction house) Vinted do something similar and I believe Depop do too. IF (thats a big if) Ebay were to take up a similar model then this would seem the obvious way for business sellers to be able to reduce their fees - and i feel it would be of use if the seller could actually define how much of a cost they want to pass on to the seller eg if its 10% fee then as a seller you can pass 5% or 10% (or what ever you want) to the buyer and you pay the rest. My food for thought anyway..... 🙂

[plpmr]

"In our field of specialism there is one "rival" to ebay who earlier this year dropped fees for sellers, (private and business) and instead now charge the buyer a premium"

Indeed its odds on eBay will charge buyers fees and if they do that for all purchases then eBay will get two lots of fees if the purchase is from a business seller.

Of course that means the bottom line for buyers outside UK will greatly increase.

[event_power]

My point is that this just makes purchases cheaper for the "fly-by-night" sellers/box shifters/scammers/dodgy and shoddy kit, who will just use a private account rather than a business account to sell, and hence under cut the market by 20%. With the addition of detailed seller/item requirements which we meet (all items are UKCA, CE, BS, ISO marked AND legal for the UK) that will come in in December) ebay have made this a hard market to sell with their markup. 

Re: warranties - we offer lifetime warranties on our products and include details with orders - private sellers will disappear in as little as a month but that is not important.

We have regular customers, who come back again and again either though ebay or direct but we have always directed them to listings on ebay, never again.

[sportex-uk]

There will be private sellers' heaven for a short while, ahead of the Festive, but banhammer is ready and business sellers trading from private accounts will become eliminated. Interesting is what preventive steps is ebay taking to stop people opening new private account, as soon as the old one has been hammered.

It used to be more difficult, as people had to do some effort first with brand new account, in order to start receiving FVF promo, it will now be an immediate return to free trading.

[artisanfurnitureshop]

To be honest, i dont think i can push my prices any further, its almost that ebay make more than me, its a tricky one and if they get any higher at all i will have to pull out. Its not really working.

I think its getting greedy

[radical_reseller]

I am one of these who was a private seller, but having seen a increase in business (sales) and wanting to take this more seriously we moved across to a business account.

Time will tell but I can see our margins are greatly impacted already. We did it though as we felt it was right. I also think it benefits the customer ie no buyer protection fee.

I not sure the benefits of the expanded tools and functionality helps us drastically compared to the cost impact per sale but we shall see. 

Regardless as I say, we have moved from private to business feeling it was right to do. 

[edwardian-dreams]

EBay was spooked by Vinteds success 

they took a lot of clothes sellers and buyers away

so they introduced free selling for clothing

it then later added  other categories

[radical_reseller]

Yes although we sell on both listing everything like for like price wise 

there are still plenty buyers on eBay and in fact our overall sales suggest 60/40 split in favour of eBay. 

I also think buyers offers are far more realistic on eBay. 

For us going forward we just have to embrace both offerings - and work out our margins as best we can.