The release of the so-called "Buyer Protection Fee" has broken eBay's pricing and Make Offer completely, resulting in the latter trying to overcharge the buyer.
I am looking at a listing (this one) where the price displays as £29.83. When I add it to my cart, the price displays in the cart as £29.52. You can even use the mouse-over cart popup to see the 2 prices on one screen. (See attached screenshot).
If instead of adding it to my cart, I click the "Make Offer" button and enter £25 as my offer amount, then click "Continue", on the next screen it tells me that my order total will be "£29.22 incl. £1.38 Buyer Protection fee, plus postage"
£29.22 minus £1.38 is £27.84, not £25. £27.84 is £2.84 more than £25, so not sure whose pocket that goes into. I'm guessing not the seller's.
I am a tech Product Manager and have worked in multiple bootstrap ecom startups with small budgets. I have NEVER shipped code this bad and there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for eBay - which has the resources for huge development teams - to release bugs this bad.
Entirely aside from how completely ridiculous and ill-conceived this fee is to start with, these bugs are now stopping me from both buying and selling. As a buyer, I don't want to be overcharged and as a seller I cannot trust any of the calculations the site is making so I don't want to accept offers on any of my items in case the amounts coming through are wrong, and the user making the offer intended to offer more.
eBay mods, if you are reading this, you need to ROLL BACK THE CODE and ditch this fee before you lose half the sales on the site. As is, I am trying to liquidate the last of the stuff I'm selling then I will leave eBay UK permanently. You are a joke.
