R.I.P eBay (UK) ------>> 19th Feb 2025

[yorkscollectables]

The introduction of the eBay Buyer Protection fee of 75p plus 4% of the value of goods,  effective from 19th February 2025 has effectively killed off eBay (UK).

Buyers have walked away and Private Sellers are now forced to drastically reduce their prices to try to compete with 'Business Sellers', who are not subject to the eBay Buyer Protection fees.

It's a great shame, and unless eBay's management team in San Jose, California see the error of their ways, and quickly, there will be nothing left to salvage from the wreckage !!

[1956glyn]

Here are my thoughts and what i am find is happening.......

As a genuine private seller.......no i am not being forced to dramatically reduce my prices.    I am not in competition with properly registered Business Seller nor do i want to be.  I am happy with my current sales.

I will not necessarily walk away as a buyer.........if there is an item i wish to bid on and its still a good deal even with the extra fees then i will still bid

IF you were registered as a Business Seller then these extra fees would not currently apply to your listings.

[andha-21]

Why 19th February?

It started on February 4th.

& though I agree with most of what you say above I think the 2 biggest problems haven't fully hit us yet.

Mandatory Simple Delivery is a platform killer for multiple reasons that have been discussed at length on other threads.

& it looks like crashing auctions may well be too.

I only follow stuff I'm personally interested in, Warhammer models, certain hiking boots and certain outdoor clothing and auctions for all 3 areas are crashing out far lower than they would 2 months ago.

If that continues then both private and business sellers of readily available items have a big problem coming as the auctions basically define current market value.

At that point the sellers have to choose whether to drop their prices, to hold and see what happens or to jump ship and sell elsewhere.

All 3 of those will eventually turn round and bite eBay square on the ass.

This is the Titanic Iceberg moment.

Are eBay going to say "Full steam ahead"?

Ps. This lifeboat is mine, the rest of you can *bleep* off and find your own ...

[papso22]

No-one is forcing anyone to do anything in relation to pricing or leaving ebay.

[1956glyn]

I also think simple delivery will have a far greater effect than the BPF.  That in its current expected form will result in us leaving Ebay.

Think i better get listing before it kicks in as mandatory 🙂

[ruby*ryan]

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@andha-21 wrote:

Why 19th February?

It started on February 4th.

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Collectables category was late to the party.

[valleyrc1]

Seems to me that if any genuine wild scale harm really is happening as a result of all this (I remain thoroughly unconvinced because sprawling threads about poor sales are a mainstay of these boards) then it would have more to do with how people CHOOSE to respond to it.

It would be ironic if private users were doing each other out of sales due to how they chose to react to changes, rather than the changes themselves being the direct cause.

[andha-21]

Rather simplistic rationalisation there.

You are conveniently forgetting the whole action/reaction, cause/effect deal.

They made the first move. Any response to that is something they themselves caused.

Nice try at shifting the blame though. Keep going, you may get it right at some point.

[valleyrc1]

This.

Like I always say, there's always a proportion of people seeing slow sales at any given time, and I haven't seen anything out of the norm in terms of large threads about slow sales, it's an ongoing thing.

But if sales ARE taking a hit because people made the decision to leave or not buy etc, it's pretty ironic, because that means their reaction is the problem, and not the thing they are reacting to.

As always, it's nigh impossible to get a clear impression on here, anyway.

It's a mainstay of "slow sales" threads that anyone who reports slow sales but then goes back to normal, you'll likely never hear from them again, just like you'll never hear from the other 99% of users who are seeing normal sales.

Add to that all kinds of variables and poor data such as sellers who have only been on here mere months claiming to already know what is and isn't "normal" and sellers who list 500 deceased relatives items and can't tell the difference between "sales are dying" and "As time goes on, I have less and less desirable stuff left over"

[*vyolla*]

The Multi buy feature is also going to be removed from private sellers too.

For example, the listing format you had up for 8 identical items can no longer be used, if you have lots of duplicates in your medal collection they'll need to be listed one at a time (you can't have duplicate listings either). 

[valleyrc1]

I can see what I said caused you some cognitive dissonance.

"They made the first move. Any response to that is something they themselves caused."

This is pure logical fallacy.

"cut off your nose to spite your face"

Typical example:

"It is now becoming a principle thing for me, old and stubborn maybe but the more they try to force it the more i am agin' it"

[ruby*ryan]

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@*vyolla* wrote:

The Multi buy feature is also going to be removed from private sellers too.

For example, the listing format you had up for 8 identical items can no longer be used, if you have lots of duplicates in your medal collection they'll need to be listed one at a time (you can't have duplicate listings either). 

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I thought it was only multi variations that were being stopped, not multi quantity?

Though the help page for multiples says nothing about it only being for business sellers, I can't find the announcement about it now and I see private sellers still listing this way, so maybe it's been dropped?

[cobwebcottage]

'I thought it was only multi variations that were being stopped, not multi quantity?'

It is. Private sellers can still list multi quantities. Ebay messes that one up too!

[ile136yz]

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@yorkscollectables wrote:

The introduction of the eBay Buyer Protection fee of 75p plus 4% of the value of goods,  effective from 19th February 2025 has effectively killed off eBay (UK).

Buyers have walked away and Private Sellers are now forced to drastically reduce their prices to try to compete with 'Business Sellers', who are not subject to the eBay Buyer Protection fees.

It's a great shame, and unless eBay's management team in San Jose, California see the error of their ways, and quickly, there will be nothing left to salvage from the wreckage !!

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eBay now needs a TV advert to encourage Buyers back to eBay.

It is not the eBay Sellers fault that they are being swept along with the many changes.

Has there been any report/s that the changes eBay has made has helped in the reduction of the Businesses selling/trading on a private eBay account?

How many private businesses have converted to a registered business account in 2025?

[andha-21]

An advert won't work for buyers.

What are they going to say?

Come to eBay where Offers are confusing and you typically end up paying more than the offer you receive as we are charging a Protection Fee that we basically used to give for free and technically still do as it's still included separately on all our listings.

And you can use our marvellous app as long as your phone is new enough.

[ile136yz]

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@andha-21 wrote:

An advert won't work for buyers.

What are they going to say?

Come to eBay where Offers are confusing and you typically end up paying more than the offer you receive as we are charging a Protection Fee that we basically used to give for free and technically still do as it's still included separately on all our listings.

And you can use our marvellous app as long as your phone is new enough.

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I'm sure eBay can come up with something to encourage Buyers.

Why would a Buyer pay extra to shop online, they may as well go into town to shop.

[andha-21]

@ile136yz 

So something like 

"We will typically try to refund any unnecessary fees and in some situations we will usually try to provide you with a free eBay app compliant phone."

?

[*vyolla*]

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@ruby*ryan wrote:

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@*vyolla* wrote:

The Multi buy feature is also going to be removed from private sellers too.

For example, the listing format you had up for 8 identical items can no longer be used, if you have lots of duplicates in your medal collection they'll need to be listed one at a time (you can't have duplicate listings either). 

---

I thought it was only multi variations that were being stopped, not multi quantity?

Though the help page for multiples says nothing about it only being for business sellers, I can't find the announcement about it now and I see private sellers still listing this way, so maybe it's been dropped?

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"We’re writing to let you know about a change to our Multi-buy discount tool, which you’ve used in the last 6 months. As a reminder, the tool allows you to offer discounts based on the number of items a buyer selects from your listing. From 20 Jan 2025, Multi-buy will become exclusive to business sellers, and no longer be available to private sellers."

My bad, it's multi buy discounts, not listing format.

[ruby*ryan]

Multi-buy,  multi-quantity,   multi-variation.

Too many things have similar names - I always refer to Simple Delivery as Special Delivery 😞

IMO eBay would have been better stopping multi-quantity and multi-variation. Stopping multi-buy discount is pretty pointless anyway, as someone buying 10 items from the same private seller (from different listings) will be hit with the 75p per item fee, so most won't bother anyway.

[yorkscollectables]

Judging by the comments from you other great cobtributors / eBay users, its fair to say most folks are not happy.

Myself included.