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.

[Anonymous]

After 8 years as a private seller I have a 100% rating. Not boasting, but like yourself, an I likely to default? No if course not. But the buyers are more likely to under the new rules. Its A scammers paradise.

[goodibags]

"The only change that came into FULL effect on the 4th of February was eBay keeping money and gaining interest on it for 6+ days whilst items are sent, delivered and then private sellers waiting a further 2 days to receive payment."

That's an important point. Seller Payment Retention was intended to come in with Buyer Fees. But when fees finally started last Thursday (on Electronic items) the payments were being retained for ALL sellers, regardless of category.

In the last week I sold 5 items, none of which attracted Ebay's whizzy Buyer Fees. And yet my payments are being retained by Ebay to cover a non-existent service?

[*devils.advocate*]

As a buyer, who is more directly affected by this new fee, there are a goodly number of sellers, who have posted on certain subjects over recent weeks, I will never now consider buying from.

Heaven help anyone who buys from them, and has a real problem, if this is how they act on an open public forum.

And I’m amazed how many sellers automatically think that all buyers are scammers - geez, thanks.

Not exactly the greatest advertisement?

And I certainly, consciously, will not buy from any of these pseudo-private chancers - and I hope others will not do so as well.

Frankly, you can put me on your BBL (please) - I don’t care because you won’t get my custom anyway and probably not, I hope, from many other lurkers.

Just saying - as one of your possible buyers.

And if something I look for isn’t now available from a genuine private seller because they’re no longer listing, not a problem, there will be properly registered businesses who will take up the slack.

[jow1995]

spot on post, well done!

[lucy_farmer]

'stupid thing is I was far more likely to respend on ebay the evening after selling something as even after all these years  I am still on an adrenaline high of  getting some free money (as anything I have for sale is already written off in my head from a cost perspective). '

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👍That's exactly how I felt about selling on ebay.

Treat money 😄

[goodibags]

"Any contempt businesses have for 'private sellers' should be reserved for those clearly trading as a business but using a private ebay account."

Do you think the introduction of Buyer Protection Fees will increase or reduce the likelihood of Ebay dealing with this serious problem? I suspect the latter.

[dch2112011]

I do not think the buyer fee will have any impact on businesses using private accounts - SD might ?

At the moment ebay are not actively policing businesses registered incorrectly - quite the opposite they are totally ignoring any that are reported.

Reading what ebay are claiming with the buyer fee it looks as though it might not apply to all categories which will be interesting to see  if some categories are left untouched whether they become super categories with everything listed in them because if there is a loophole unscrupulous sellers will find it !

[goodibags]

Yes, since Ebay is now getting their 'cut' do you think it's possible that the part-time person that led these 'investigations' may now be laid off? 😉

Where did you read that the fees may not be rolled out to all categories? I was expecting they would get there eventually.

[Anonymous]

"Yes, since Ebay is now getting their 'cut' do you think it's possible that the part-time person that led these investigations may now be laid off?"

Doubt it. He/She/Person Identifying As A Llama, is possibly masquerading on here.

Be wary.

[incredible_how]

ah, I might have been looking at my father's account and one of his 2 books is on auction. So my mistake.

[theelench]

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@papso22 wrote:

Any contempt businesses have for 'private sellers' should be reserved for those clearly trading as a business but using a private ebay account.

Looking at the various responses and posts on these boards, the recent changes have brought these fake private sellers out in force, many of them are the biggest complainers yet the solution is so simple.  Upgrade to a business account,  trade legally, avoid the changes.

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I beg to differ with you on this occasion.   

How many hundreds of posts have there been on the various threads?

All the usual "Private Seller" hunters are here on every thread?

So why are they not joyously pointing their fingers at every other poster?

My random checks on mostly sellers new to the boards show that the majority of new posters are Private sellers, many long-term private sellers who have been on ebay since near the start.

Yes there have been a few "private" sellers that have been Named and Shamed, but only a very few, probably because that's all they could find to point at.

You can't pretend that ebay's latest support for business sellers by further down-grading, restricting and hurting genuine private sellers hasn't caused genuine outrage.  IMO from the usually non-visible core of private sellers, those that have quietly used ebay as it was intended for decades, weathered all the pro-business changes and complained very little.  Until now, as they at last give-up on ebay, tired of being the sacrificial lamb for ungrateful business sellers.

[incredible_how]

I too feel that it slightly suggests that private sellers are not entirely trustworthy. My experience of buying is that private sellers are mostly very good

[m-bevis-1815]

"usually non-visible core of private sellers, those that have quietly used ebay as it was intended for decades, weathered all the pro-business changes and complained very little. "

That sums me up, been here since 2009. Decluttering my house, quite successfully at the moment.

I'm not too bothered about BST (Buyer Sales Tax, aka the bullsh*t tax, aka the Buyer Protection Fee, aka the classic neo-liberal trick of charging people for a service they used to get for free) - it's basic economics that if you put prices up sales go down. So I'll sell less, so ebay will earn less, regardless of the extra income from the sales tax. The standard method of getting round less sales is to either reduce prices or give consumers more choice, ie list even more items (!)

The sales tax will last as long as the accountants at ebay think it's earning more in fees than its losing in lost sales.

The holding onto fees, otherwise known as renting out our money without our permission, is another thing altogether. I'm currently running a little spread sheet, assuming a 4% interest rate, Ebay have already earned 27p from my money Feb 6th-13th. Which doesn't sound much, but if we multiply it by all the private sellers across the UK, over a year, I bet you are looking at enough to pay the CEO's next salary and bonus in 2026.

So, does anyone know the number of UK private sellers and their total turnover?

Another question, for business sellers, do they get their money instantly at the point of sale, or do they have to wait 24hrs? I do note that business sellers pay heavily, ~15% of their sales in fees.

The next point of research is, how much energy does an ebay listing use? We may find that a 99p listing (as was) costs ebay more in electricity than it generates in revenue. And like most corporate businesses, I wouldn't be surprised if ebay was functionally broke, and if everyone stopped buying for a day it would collapse. Which would go further to explain the measures implemented.

[incredible_how]

I read the phrase "eligible categories" and I wondered if that meant that it wouldn't be on all categories, or that eBay were reserving judgement on the effect it might have and allowing flexibility

it's in this article paragraph 5 https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Announcements/Buyer-Protection-Pokémon-Day-VAT-invoices-amp-other-la...

[m-bevis-1815]

Yes, I've had more problems with business sellers than private sellers. Few that there have been in total.

Since 2009 I have had:

1 private seller that failed to deliver a £5 item, and scarpered off ebay

4 faulty sized products (ie not as described) from business sellers, but have made that money back from reselling those items.

2 private sales where part of the item was not included, but I've made that money back reselling recently, accurately describing the items.

In addition, 1 private buyer that was overzealous with a product not arriving within 5 days, putting my whole sales amount on hold, where I was forced to issue a refund.

 I've had far more problems with delivery services, Evri or whatever it used to be called, and Royal Mail.

So it's not a Buyer Protection Fee we need, it's a Seller Protection Fee.

[Anonymous]

Well someone said that private sellers are covered by the MBG. Which they.are largely not. It favours the buyer like eBay does. The private,seller actually had no obligation to either refund a sale or indeed accept returns. I've never accepted returns and bar one failed scam and two lost in the post have a 100% rating over 8 years. What you know and many others know its about reputation. Ebay should wise up to that.

[m-bevis-1815]

"What you know and many others know its about reputation. Ebay should wise up to that."

YEP. I was once described as the nicest man on ebay 🙂 because a seller sent me the wrong item, my item went somewhere else and they refused to return it, I didn't make a fuss about it, think I kept the item in the end.

Just providing a good reliable service is paramount, and not be emotion-baited when things go wrong, is a powerful selling point.

I had one recent return, but it was item not as described, due to me being conned previously (probably a decade ago lol). All well and good, the item is back for sale at reduced price.

Suppose I'm lucky that most of my items are relatively low value - £5-20 range mostly, so if I lose a sale it's not the end of the world.

[theelench]

"So, does anyone know the number of UK private sellers and their total turnover?"

Only ebay with any accuracy.

I used to sell in a niche glass category.  When I started it had about 15K listings (I'm guessing that the majority were from private sellers).  About 5 years ago that had declined to just about clinging to 10K.  Then ebay started 'streamlining' its search results making comparisons more difficult. 

But a month or so ago I tried to estimate again.  The search results said about 6K, but that included all the IS mis-matched items + all the irrelevant "Similar" Sponsored items, so I reckon my niche now has about 5K items, still mostly being sold by private sellers. 

IMO ebay has been loosing private sellers for years, ever since dumping Paypal and making ebay primarily useful to businesses but more and more useless for private sellers.

These changes take the biscuit.  Private sellers are no longer just ignored, but allowed to sell if they can among all the businesses Sponsoring themselves into bankruptcy.  These measures are actively dis-advantaging private sellers.

My last live listing died at the end of November (unsold as usual).  I won't be listing any more.  I listed about 50 items last year and sold 4.  I sold 28 items on ebid.  There are far easier and more pleasant places to sell these days than ebay.  

I don't think ebay is broke, it can still give millions to the share-holders every quarter, but I do think ebay.uk is getting near to broke, just going by the monthly "Sales Dead"  threads.  There are far too many businesses trying to live off falling numbers of private sellers (who make up most of its buyers?)  This latest act of pure stupidity will see many more leave and take it another step closer to the cliff edge.

[akemp1]

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@dch2112011 wrote:

I do not think the buyer fee will have any impact on businesses using private accounts - SD might ?

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It will affect all sellers if private individuals get annoyed at all of ebay's changes making things more painful to both sell and buy so end up buying less overall or just spending their time on other platforms.

[lucy_farmer]

'Any contempt businesses have for 'private sellers' should be reserved for those clearly trading as a business but using a private ebay account."

Do you think the introduction of Buyer Protection Fees will increase or reduce the likelihood of Ebay dealing with this serious problem? I suspect the latter.'

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I suspect the latter as well. Because I think ebay are hoping that the BPF will do it for them.

 BPF, held payments and the up and coming compulsory SD, are going to be really awkward and unwieldy for use in a business setting: (which is where "private" sellers are) ebay are hoping those sellers will change to business accounts.

So why do ebay want people to change *now*?

Well, the first and obvious reason; ebay have dumped private seller fees so they can attract new sellers with 'free to sell', and look like their competion - Vin Ted.

The BPF isn't going to bring in as much as the old seller fees, so the more on business fees the better...

AND, very soon, thanks to the OECD wide (who are basically the whole western world) program of passing all online money information to govts. (in the UK case, that'll be dealt with by HMRC) it's going to be pretty obvious who is trading and who is not.

Ebay have never made it obvious who should be on which sort of account.

They have offered private accounts 'shops', 'out-of stock-options' (for sellers who weren't even supposed to 'stock' in the first place!) and 'multi-buy options'.  So, understandably, many small businesses thought it was perfectly acceptable to trade on a private account. And, as a consequence, break UK Consumer law. 

And ebay's total disinterest in sorting out the one type of account from the other, made it look like consumer law was being broken with ebay's blessing.

So it will *look* as though ebay are facilitiating law-breaking in the UK.

Which is not a good look for a global American Tech mega-corps.....