THE EBAY OF 2025 - WHAT TO EXPECT AS A SMALL PRIVATE SELLER - SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO ?

[bittyboy101]

Just as the title says...

Apparently a few disturbing/concerning changes to eBay coming in January & February 2025... 

1) eBay Managed Shipping.

2) Payment Holds until delivery of a sold item has been confirmed.

So I'm a bit confused about number 1 - eBay's managed shipping... Not sure how this is going to work ? and whether it will be something like Packlink (only made compulsory instead of optional) ... or will it be like an "eBay Global Shipping program" type of setup where we send our sold items to eBay's 3rd party distributor and they then forward the item to the buyer by their default postal service ??... something tells me this could be Evri  (Hermes ! )  - Not happy or comfortable with this !  knowing Evri aren't always great !  😞

Moving on to number 2 - payment holds/delays until a sold items has been confirmed delivered (or 14 days have passed since buyer purchased the item and the buyer hasn't opened any cases during that time)... This can now be time consuming to get paid... Like eBay's new managed payments wasn't already slow enough !... now it's getting even slower !... not ideal if you've  got little money in the bank that week and have to 'find money upfront' to pay for posting sold items (this can get pretty expensive if 2 or 3 heavy items which cost £20 to post sell on eBay at the same time to different buyers)... Oh wait a moment... Conveniently eBay now does managed shipping and  they'll let you have an advance on your buyer's payment to cover shipping costs PROVIDING YOU BUY IT AT AN INFLATED RATE FROM EBAY ONLY !... How nice !  😞 

Now the debate of whether I should stay ? or go ?

I have always loved buying and selling on eBay for many years... Would it be worth carrying on with these new changes which are very worrying... or would it be better to do what the old saying says and QUIT WHILST YOU'RE AHEAD ???

All comments welcome - The good, the bad and the ugly - Let's know what you all think !

would a small private seller be skinned alive by the new 2025 eBay ? I wonder ! 🤔 🙄 😁   

[dch2112011]

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@jackpants wrote:

 Where else in the world of commerce do you hand over your goods to a buyer with receiving payment ?

Every single direct credit card transaction - the seller does not receive the payment before the buyer receives the goods ?    - And even when the seller receives the payment the buyer can reverse the payment by raising a chargeback !

Every time a seller accepts a cheque - the seller does not receive the payment before the buyer receives the goods ?  The cheque can bounce !

These are but two obvious ways a seller releases goods before receiving payment - there are many many more  - in fact nearly all acts of commerce leaves the buyer with the goods before the seller receives cleared payment 

[vintique*violet]

Not for up to 14days!

And in this " digital world" it is almost instant! 

[da-vids]

Reckon if business sellers pay 12% and private sellers pay 0% why not just charge every seller 6% and leave things alone. Then sack the expensive eBay employees making all these silly complicated decisions, employees who think they are clever but aren't.

[vintique*violet]

It has gone beyond any " selling fees or not" for me... sadly. 

[mitchiemasha]

What if a buyer buys multiple small items? will they pay the buyer protection 75p on each? Surely now we'd be better off making a buyer a unique listings for all the items they would like. Obviously the 4% would still be the same. 

[punkwroc77]

I have just seen these new rules.Personally I am exactly the seller you describe.I cannot afford to payout on postage and wait for payment. Right now my B/A balance is £0 . I withdraw sales money as soon as I can and it goes on Electric or Hot water  within hours of it going in the B/A. These new changes will be a disaster for me and even more so if I am forced to use only one postage method.I already only make £1 or so on most of what I sell on Ebay.This sounds like a Vinted kind of thing except on Vinted buyers pay for postage labels in advance so waiting for payment isn't as much as an issue. (You just never know if a buyers will say they have an issue after delivery).

I have read a few posts on this tonight with OP's saying about other selling sites ?....I only know of Amazon - Costly. Vinted - OK for clothes. Facebook Market Place - Never sold anything on there ever.

Ebay is so easy to list on as well compared to Vinted who delete listings then tell you what they think is wrong.

Finding this all very scary !!

[kath3735_wxmjn]

according to the CEO it will be mandatory in the first quarter of this year, time will tell.

[daro2096]

I will probably not buy or sell here on eBay ever again. No way am I paying an extra £25 plus on an item that sells for £600(just an example).

[*maetrix*]

I'm guessing ebay will swiftly fire the "genius" who has come up with this kamikaze scheme & then have to come up with yet another new (expensive) tv campaign to try and win back all the people who have left.

The stupidity is off the scale at times.

[*maetrix*]

100%.

I take my stuff down to the Post Office once a week and send anything under £20 in value by 2nd class...over £20 and it goes recorded/tracked.

If ebay interfere with my process that i've been doing - perfectly simply for 16 years - then i'm off along with all my items AND purchases.

Ebay really need to re-think this nonsense.

[ebmikmo]

I will stop selling on ebay if they force me to use their own shipping arrangements, which would mean I can no longer use Royal Mail Collection from my home.

[valueaddedresource]

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@da-vids wrote:

Reckon if business sellers pay 12% and private sellers pay 0% why not just charge every seller 6% and leave things alone. Then sack the expensive eBay employees making all these silly complicated decisions, employees who think they are clever but aren't.

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@da-vids  Here's some fun math - eBay will probably actually end up making more on these private sales now than they did before switching to fee-free selling. 👀

While 4% looks like a lot less than the average ~12-13% standard final value fees, previously private sellers were often not actually paying the full FVF amount due to eBay's very generous and frequent promotional discounts of 70-80% off of the standard fee.

To keep the math simple - if you had a sale at $100 total in a category with 10% FVF = $10 in fees, 80% off of that would be $2 or 2% of the original sale, plus a fixed charge of 30p per order.

Many sellers would wait for the promo before listings items and presumably set the pricing with that discounted FVF fee in mind. Since it's now fee free for private sellers, they no longer have to price anything in for fees - but starting in February eBay will basically be doing that for them with the buyer fee at 4% plus 75p per item (instead of per order).

That means on many of these sales, eBay will likely end up making more than they would have previously with the private seller setting pricing to account for the discounted FVF. And that's why a simple flat rate of 6% for all sellers like you suggest just won't do for eBay.

Truth be told, with business sellers still paying full fees, plus interest they will earn on delayed private seller payouts, plus whatever revenue will be generated by mandating private sellers use Simple Delivery, plus the way that buyer fee breaks down compared to previous discounted private seller fees.....eBay actually stands to come out decently ahead on this deal - assuming that sellers keep selling and buyers keep buying of course.

[elaine1066]

I have been with ebay for 20 years.  I am not great when anything gets changed however I do not like the idea of the buyer being in charge of shipping.  I have always used tracked and had no problems but what is to stop the buyer paying for cheap delivery and then claiming item not received which then means, as we know, ebay refunds them and we are left with no goods or funds.  It just sounds all against the seller.  So my decision is to go and close my account.  I am finding that anything I look for now I can buy on Amazon anyway.  Good luck with your choices.

[da-vids]

eBay have been pocketing interest on balances for a while now. I did notice the maths regarding the old 80% off and the new 4%. Corporates work for their shareholders so will do anything but reduce costs for it's customers, but they would probably make more money reducing costs for us whilst blowing the competition out the water, but share price might dip briefly so cannot go that route. They have lines of code and algorithms that basically print money but still will never do right by us all.

[da-vids]

So eBay say it's free for private sellers when it actually isn't free. Quite insulting to everyone's intelligence, like the 'free' postage nonsense. eBay clearly believes people are stupid !

[department28]

Yes, I assume it'll be 75p per item - but goodness knows how 'Simple Delivery' will work for combined shipping?  The mind boggles...

I suppose this is the end of ever getting anything for 99p... & any item priced, for example £9.99 will now be £11.14, or thereabouts. It won't look right if items no longer end in 99p...!! ☹️

[da-vids]

Oh and to be clear I've milked the private seller promotions for ages. Probably do most through business account from now on and pay full fees like a good boy. Having private and business accounts I can say that for the extra cost in fees one will sell more through a business account.

[valueaddedresource]

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@da-vids wrote:

eBay have been pocketing interest on balances for a while now. I did notice the maths regarding the old 80% off and the new 4%. Corporates work for their shareholders so will do anything but reduce costs for it's customers, but they would probably make more money reducing costs for us whilst blowing the competition out the water, but share price might dip briefly so cannot go that route. They have lines of code and algorithms that basically print money but still will never do right by us all.

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@da-vids exactly - pocketing interest is nothing new but creating new and different ways to keep that money in their account longer for that reason is a much more believable story behind the new payment terms than the buyer protection nonsense they are going with right now. 😂

And yes, Wall Street did get a bit nervous after the Q3 call when eBay provided weaker Q4 revenue guidance than they had previously, primarily due to fee free selling in the UK and not yet (at that time) "remonetizing" those sales.

 I expect Wall Street will be much happier about the math I described above than buyers and sellers. *sigh*

[lucy_farmer]

'......but what is to stop the buyer paying for cheap delivery and then claiming item not received which then means, as we know, ebay refunds them and we are left with no goods or funds. .....'

Well, ebay say that the 'seller is covered as soon as the parcel enters the Simple Delivery system'.

So that means ebay *should* be sucking up all the non-delivery refunds and the broken-in-the-post refunds, and the I-received-an-empty-box-scam refunds etc........

But I just can't see lap-tops  or cameras for instance, being delivered by evri and covered by ebay when they, inevitably, go pear-shaped.

I know ebay will have a much much better deal with any delivery company than us *bleep*;  but seeing as Ervi give a maximum insurance payout of £20 and have an exclusion list as long as your arm, ebay must have a phenominally  good deal with evri in order to make it pay.

So it's possible, after a while of underwriting evri's appalling delivery record, ebay may have a rethink on this?

[mitchiemasha]

WAIT A MIN!!!

They've branded this fee as "buyer protection", surely that is a massive mistake. Remember PPI! Buyer Protection is misleading branding. If ebay refunded the buyer for lost, damaged items, "Buyer Protection" would be true... but they don't, the seller does. The buyer is being forced to pay for something they do not need. Will we see this as a future pay back or will ebay need to rethink the naming!!!

I'll put this in it's own thread