This is going to mean the end for many small private sellers. "Buyer Protection Fee"

[vinylscot]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/buying/paying-items/buyer-protection?id=5594

75p plus 4% buyers fee, so something which was priced at £5 will be £5.95 in February.

[m-bevis-1815]

My interpretation of what Ebay have said is that the seller's will be able
to see the sales tax (lets call it what it is, a buyer protection fee is
just a story) separately when we post/view our listings, on top of the
price we've put. The buyer would only see the net total so would have
little idea other than if they did the maths themselves.

Whether this will be applied to existing listings is not mentioned.

[kawas67]

It's a stealth tax on the buyer and as from the start of this system all listings and re-listings will be amended. I cannot find out about auctions and if it is accumulated as you bid or added on at the end?

[m-bevis-1815]

Ebay, now should be renamed Taxbay, says this:
"How is this fee calculated for Auctions when the final selling price is
unknown?

When you enter a starting bid, the Buyer Protection fee is added so you can
see what the buyer’s minimum bid amount will be. As the Buyer Protection
fee is variable, the fee amount that the buyer actually pays is calculated
as part of the final auction selling price."

Presumably they are hoping it'll work it out as it goes along. It doesn't
matter in a way, sellers aren't losing any money as such, just taxbay are
increasing inflation by making buyers pay more.

Far worse is a seller not receiving their money for 4-14 days.

[vintique*violet]

It is " recouping"  of  the " free to sell" for private sellers and penalising them by holding their funds until after " considered successful delivery"  and charging the buyers for the " privilege" by offering a 24/7 customer support. In my opinion.  I encourage you to read all the FAQ on the BPF 

Read here... 

https://pages.ebay.co.uk/buyerprotection/

[hobbit66]

The fee should be clearly visable for the buyer to see, otherwise it's dishonest. It should not be hidden !

[ian_w42]

Private sellers who sell enough have been 'verified' and given the reward of immediate payment for a while now. It's a good perk for good sellers but will be taken away with this change.

Shame since it really encourages you to provide a good service. You will still get a reward for fast dispatch and postage moving forward but maintaining an account in high standing used to come with that immediate payment perk.

[incredible_how]

I was thinking that the 75p per item is to pay for 24/7 customer support.

Is it needed?

[rockcd-6]

private sellers

will you HAVE TO BUY POSTAGE from ebay or will you still be able to take items to the post office and pay there ?

[m-bevis-1815]

Buying postage from taxbay isn't compulsory yet under these changes, but
it's something they clearly want to take control of too, judging by their
promotion of "Simple Delivery".
Given how *bleep* and overexpensive their international delivery thing is
(whose name I've forgotten), which you have to opt out of other wise they
assume you want to use it, I have every expectation that "Simple Delivery"
will be anything but.

I enjoy the half mile walk to the local post office and back, and using
cash to buy my postage. I will resist taxbay's attempts to control postage
too until the very end, as I continue to resist their international postage
thingy.

[m-bevis-1815]

We can do a simple maths test on this.

Google tells me that Ebay UK has 208 million transactions a month. call it 7 million a day.

Of those, lets say 1 million people spend £12 on private sales in a day, so that's £12 million sat in taxbay's bank for a day.

The national bank rates are ~4.8%, so lets be generous and say they earn 4% interest on this.

4% of £12 million = £480,000 but that would be in a year, so divide by 365 to get £1315 a day.

Doesn't sound much, probably doesn't even pay their electricity bill. (Bare in mind all this AI and advanced tech, up to 24 free photos at 1.5Mb each, adds up to an enormous amount of electricity)

Over a year though, its half a million quid, enough to pay the owners annual bonus.

So that is one day, which is what they do currently, and assumes £12 million in privates sales a day, probably an underestimate.

Now they are proposing to hold this money for 4 days minumum (2 days after delivery), so now that interest they collect quadruples, and becomes £2 million  a year. Or more, given that 48Hr  Tracked often takes 3 days, and many small sellers still use untracked.

Then you can see thats starting to become a significant earner.

Okay, they will pay tax on this, depending on the deal they have with HMRC, so the govt won't care if it happens or not, but even so, it becomes a significant amount of money in business terms.

So yes, it's a money grab pure and simple. And if Vinted and other online platforms are doing similar, well then, are they not just as bad?

[leafan1]

Yes, you can do that (although I have not tried it - it was confirmed to me by Royal Mail), but I doubt that will be a viable option for ongoing sales if a label is already purchased through eBay before the order even comes to you.

[johnwash1]

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@hobbit66 wrote:

The fee should be clearly visable for the buyer to see, otherwise it's dishonest. It should not be hidden !

---

So much conjecture, so much nonsense.  Was your 13.2%+30p fee before October hidden?  Of course not.  And it's already been widely explained that the buyer will see the total at the outset, this fee won't suddenly appear during checkout.

These forums would have half their clutter if people didn't just make assumptions and start jumping up and down without cause.

[hobbit66]

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not talking about the seller seeing it, of course the seller will see all his fees, but the buyer needs to see a breakdown of what he is paying. You suggest in what you've written, that the buyer will only see the total. It's a tax and needs to be clearly visible to the buyer.

[akemp1]

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@leafan1 wrote:

Yes, you can do that (although I have not tried it - it was confirmed to me by Royal Mail), but I doubt that will be a viable option for ongoing sales if a label is already purchased through eBay before the order even comes to you.

---

I hope the 21 kg  idea works as ebay say they will only offer it on eligible listings. If not and if it's as bad as I expect then maybe a note in the listing to say that if the buyer selects simple postage then the order will be cancelled or a note in the description to say for the fastest dispatch time please select royal mail etc.

I do wonder if the people making these decisions at ebay have any experience in either buying or selling stuff themselves. They should have a rule that you can't get into management until you have done at least 500 transactions in each direction.

[maujohwai]

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@leafan1 wrote:

Yes, you can do that (although I have not tried it - it was confirmed to me by Royal Mail), but I doubt that will be a viable option for ongoing sales if a label is already purchased through eBay before the order even comes to you.

---

I expect you're right that it would be difficult at best [just to explain: to cancel RM postage bought through eBay, and repurchase it in order to able to order collection] — all the more reason to keep UK delivery completely out of the hands of eBay, as I do now!

[m-bevis-1815]

" I do wonder if the people making these decisions at ebay have any
experience in either buying or selling stuff themselves. They should have a
rule that you can't get into management until you have done at least 500
transactions in each direction."

Have you heard of the Peter Principle? Basically in most corporations the
people making the decisions have been promoted beyond their abilities due
to being good at what they used to do before promotion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

So, yes, I doubt those making these decisions at taxbay have any experience
of either buying or selling stuff themselves 🙂

[maujohwai]

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@akemp1 wrote:

I do wonder if the people making these decisions at ebay have any experience in either buying or selling stuff themselves. They should have a rule that you can't get into management until you have done at least 500 transactions in each direction.

---

I do so agree with the sentiment. Perhaps 500 purchases and 500 sales is a rather high threshold, as it would exclude most private sellers, who are often the members most badly affected by changes!

[tsdragon63]

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

I too use my local post office and store, by doing this I'm supporting my local community another benefit to using eBay - I wish I could walk there but the 6 mile round trip would take me half the day and I probably wouldn't be any use for the other half 😂

[johnwash1]

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@hobbit66 wrote:

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not talking about the seller seeing it, of course the seller will see all his fees, but the buyer needs to see a breakdown of what he is paying. You suggest in what you've written, that the buyer will only see the total. It's a tax and needs to be clearly visible to the buyer.

---

I believe I understood you.  What I'm saying is why, as long as the buyer is shown the total, does the buyer need to see the breakdown?  The buyer wasn't shown the breakdown before October, but sellers were paying fees.  Did you think that was dishonest too?

Calling these fees buyers fees is just a bit of smoke and mirrors, a rather strange way of just altering sellers' fees but trying to make it more palatable to those who don't think about it and to make the site seem more like their competitors.  Instead of being creative and boosting the site on the basis of it being better than others in some respect.

[a45heaven]

Will the introduction of a buyer paid fee for Buyer Protection greatly increase the occurrence of cases being made by the said buyers by highlighting the procedure, not just on Private sellers but on all sellers on the platform?

Has ebay designed a wording of how this shameful project be presented to the buyers?

Obviously the odious task will fall on the sellers -

ebay constantly fail to communicate, even the none UK CS who are being paid grandly with this newly raised fee.