eBay

sanzibar17 · ‎18-09-2025

Let's face it. Small sellers are doomed and have been since eBay decided to concentrate and subsequently bend over backwards for their larger seller's needs.

Those that are barely hanging on in this unequal system, with its flawed fee structure and monthly shop subscription, which is on average about 18% to 22% of sales have probably just been handed a death blow from non other than Royal Mail.

I'd just like to thank RM for its decision not to increase the price of letters of which I send 2 a year and instead put all its price increase into parcels which is 99.99% of my business and if you're reading this probably yours.

eBay could help by either not passing on these price hikes or giving us smaller sellers some cut in fees, but I'm not holding my breath.

tribalgiftsuk · ‎18-09-2025

Im feeling your pain and annoyance too. On my last accounting round i paid 25% in fees to Ebay (thats without promotions and includes shop fees and VAT) and 20% in postage to Royal Mail. Im working for pennies profit on some items and anything at the £10 mark going as a small parcel is now going to be a waste of time. So some of my stock will have to be taken off and some prices increased where i think it is viable to do so.

Its becoming so difficult to sell low priced items now and we will all be affected even private sellers will find customers having to pay at least £1 more per item as the buyer protection fee will also increase to cover the increased cost of postage.

I think its time to put the postage fees on instead of saying fee postage as things are going to look to expensive. I always liked saying free postage but those days are over.

tribalgiftsuk · ‎18-09-2025

I just realised what i said and i cant edit it now for private sellers it will probably be about 25p more on a small parcel not £1 and if you use Evri or any other non royal mail service it wont make a difference to you at all.

sanzibar17 · ‎18-09-2025

Yes, but Evri are the worst of the worst.

tribalgiftsuk · ‎18-09-2025

I agree with you about Evri but i am sure they are going to lap up a lot of work with the new RM price increases. I personally wont be using them anytime soon. Would rather find a way to cover the extra charges with RM where i can. But im on the verge of throwing in the towel anyway on here anyway, selling gifts is not what it used to be 😄

sml192 · ‎18-09-2025

@tribalgiftsuk wrote:
Its becoming so difficult to sell low priced items now and we will all be affected even private sellers will find customers having to pay at least £1 more per item as the buyer protection fee will also increase to cover the increased cost of postage.

The Buyer Protection Fee only applies to the item price, not the postage, plus Simple Delivery prices won't be directly affected by the increase to Royal Mail's published prices.

tribalgiftsuk · ‎19-09-2025

Thats good that at least private sellers wont be affected by the price increase. Just bad news for business sellers ☹️

sanzibar17 · ‎19-09-2025

Yep. I'm scaling down my business by about 60-70% and partially retiring. It's no longer worth the hassle just to make peanuts. We small businesses made eBay what it is, not the conglomerates on here today who have priced us out of the market, and all the vultures have swooped in to take their cut of our hard work.