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.

[get_luck_7777-0]

see like there coping VINTED they do the same nowe ebay are coping that and there keeping sellers money intill the item is deliveryed

[dantwocats]

This make no sense as just of the phone from  customer services , you sell item for £20 the 4% and 75p are with this price and you still get £20 customer services said the three times as i kept saying this makes no sense !! please explain.

 

[hobbit66]

Most private sellers wont become business sellers, they'll just leave, giving the business sellers just what they want ! But beware....Selling fees will continue to rise causing business sellers to up their prices and definitely no bargains to be found on ebay. A decrease in buyers on the site will then put some businesses out of business.  (In my opinion)  How times have changed !

[7135alan]

This buyer fee will remove the "lowest price" items from the site, as it will cease to be economical to sell anything "cheap".  Buyers like a bargain, but they won't get one here.

I am a private seller.  Business sellers do not have to contend with some of the joys of that.  The people who assume that as a private seller you must be naive, and complain that their item wasn't delivered, when it was tracked and they signed for it.  The people who report the item as damaged but won't send a photo to prove it.  Not to mention the ones who change their mind, and assume you will not ask for the item back, so they can keep it free of charge.  And the folk who offer you half (yes HALF) the asking price on a BIN listing, and get mortally offended when you don't accept it.

And then there is feedback.  Private sellers are low volume in general, so one bad feedback afflicts their standing way worse than it does a high volume business seller.

I have thought for some time that e bay wants to get rid of private sellers to focus on their business clients.  The problem being, of course, that e bay private sellers are also buyers, and many, like me, use the site to clear things we don't want in order to buy things we do - from both private and business sellers.

I also get fed up of this notion of business sellers "pretending" to be private sellers.  I used to have a business.  It closed ten years ago.  I still have some items of stock at home which I want to sell.  This does not make me a business.

Every decision is a backward step.

[game_raid]

6900 items listed as a private seller with 22k items sold.

From what the email states you will be asked to change to a business seller soon so I wouldn't worry about the fee.

[reasonable-robert]

oh christ does that mean using royal fail instead of the longer evri or yodel

[reasonable-robert]

and how many sellers would they lose mastermind....the answer at least 60 to 70% of them

[incredible_how]

Evri is tracked - as is I assume Yodel. I don't have drop off points near me (rural location), so have to pay the collection price, which for a larger than small parcel but up to 1kg it is cheaper.

I'll probably do royal mail tracked for everything (unless the large up to 1kg category)

[lionrock_technik]

It's tracked - BUT - if you don't pay the insurance and they lose it, you get nothing back. Their customer service is non existent.

So you lose your item and have to refund the buyer

[lionrock_technik]

A tad stalkerish, not sure why you looked.

Obviously just to brag brownie points 

[eddery]

In effect it WILL be paid by private sellers. Basically it makes your item much more expensive in the buyer's eyes - so to offer it to them for what still looks like the same target price you'll need to offer your item for a lower price than your target ... or find you sell less.

[thesmi42]

It is described as below, but obviously that isn't how an auction would work - the bidder is the one who 'sets the price'. I can't find an explanation from eBay about how this will be applied to auctions.

Item price set by the seller £20

Buyer Protection fee variable (4% of £20) = £0.80

Buyer Protection flat fee = £0.75

Price that buyer sees for the listing = £21.55 + postage

[bojangled]

@garcity 

From the Buyer Protection FAQ page 

How is this fee calculated for Auctions when the final selling price isn't known yet?

When you enter a starting bid, we add the Buyer Protection fee 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.

By including the fee in the buyer's bid price, we're making it simple and transparent so buyers always know what they'll pay and sellers know how much they'll receive.

[sweetcharity.2013]

So is there no fee on auctions or will the fee be deducted from the final price the buyer paid before it is given to the seller? 

Smacks to me as a private seller fee rather than a buyer fee if it reduces the sale price the private seller gets at the end of the day! 

I imagine that as a buyer the 4% would be added to my final bid price on an auction. I can't see ebay being happy with adding 4% to a 99p start item when it sells for £50 & a seller isn't going to be happy paying suddenly for a 'free' listing.

Already the boards are littered with disgruntled buyers. There's going to be a lot more if they see their item sold for eg. £5.95 & they only receive £5! 

[akemp1]

---

@eddery wrote:

In effect it WILL be paid by private sellers. Basically it makes your item much more expensive in the buyer's eyes - so to offer it to them for what still looks like the same target price you'll need to offer your item for a lower price than your target ... or find you sell less.

---

The nice thing about being a non-business seller is there is no pressure to maintain a cashflow / sales velocity to pay the bills. It's just annoying having unwanted items hang around until they sell. I did drop my prices particularly on the lower value item when the stopped seller fees as previously I had factored them in.  For me the new buyer cost just means things will just take longer to sell. Hopefully I still have many years ahead to get rid of my house full of junk. I'm going to try and get a lot of stuff listed this weekend to see how much I can sell before the fee starts next month. I'm also going to be a lot more careful when buying things in future so I have less than I need to get rid of. I crave a simpler life.

[millcottage]

So it will be the end of free postage?

As a private seller I normally offer free postage and price the buy it now price to cover postage costs.

If this is being inflated by 4% then it’s better for buyer to pay postage and avoid the 4% buyers premium.

How will the buyers surcharge work with auctions?

I occasionally sell gold coins worth a few hundred pounds and start at £1 that builds up to market value.

So if winner bid is at say £500, will eBay then add 4% onto that?

Buyers will not pay market rate plus 4% and that will come off what I sell coin for.

For me I will now sell gold coins to a bullion dealer.

The press will report the 4% as a buyers surcharge and put buyers off using eBay.

[incredible_how]

I thought they were insured for a basic £20, then you can pay extra for higher value. the only time Evri lost something I sold, a huge very expensive book, so I had paid the appropriate additional amount to cover the cost, they refunded me the item price and the amount I'd paid postage.

I don't know about yodel

[eddery]

If they see £20, in order for that to happen your price (and what you actually receive) has to be £18.50 ..... so if you currently sell items for £20, then effectively in a month's time you need to sell for that much less in order for your buyer to still see your item at £20.

If you keep it at £20, the price your buyer sees will be £21.55

[sweetcharity.2013]

"When you enter a starting bid, we add the Buyer Protection fee so you can see what the buyer's minimum bid amount will be." 

If I'm reading this correctly I would hope bidders could to see the fees BEFORE placing a bid, not after it's placed. Time will tell... 

[incredible_how]

thank you. still not sure exactly what that will look like to a buyer in practice...I'll see after Feb 4th!