Upcoming ‘Buyer Protection Fees’

[lady4838]

I’m a member for 14 years - I have today complained fiercely to EBay with regards to 4% + 75p charge on each item purchased as we all know this is a Back Door way of recovering the Seller Fees which were scrapped recently - Buyers already have adequate protection - as to payment 2 days after delivery - we’re at the mercy of Royal Mail to scan all  items when collected (not guaranteed) 😡

 Fellow  members I urge you to let your disproval known - SHAME ON YOU Ebay😡😡

[twin--turbo]

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@cheshirevintage41 wrote:

I am as frustrated as everyone else! 

1) I am pretty sure it is NOT legal to hold funds in this manner

2) Did Ebay not read about the issue with ETSY and the turn around they had to make?

3) the email sent is not clear, who pays the 4% plus 75p? I think it is deducted from the SALE PRICE although being called a buyer fee (not a seller fee), in other words it will be deducted from YOUR £20!  very crafty! (I hope I am proved wrong!)

4) is 4% added to the postage costs ? how?

5) What are the acutual percentages as the email says upto 4%? and for higher value items?

6) What happens on non tracked, undeliverable, lost post etc? and sellers have to bank roll the cost of postage!

7) This is a way of contacting the BBC Faarea Masud reported on ETSY, the more people who raise these issues the better

You can also get in touch in the following ways:

Email: haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk

WhatsApp: +44 7756 165803

Tweet: @BBC_HaveYourSay

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1) It's been discusssd , they are holding funds in trust whilst a transaction they are insuring is completing.
2) Probably, Did not care.

3) It's clear, the buyer pays the fees, you get what you asked for.
4) Postage is handled entirely by ebay, they have not as far as i can see published the costs to the buyer. 
5) Most items 4% +75p excepte some higher value items

6) Postage is handled and insured by ebay, it's not the responsibility of the seller.

7) ...

[cm90691]

Absolutely, even if 50% of private sellers leave ebay will still be making a great profit.  I wonder though if the remaining sellers will be happy to reduce their prices to accommodate the buyer's fees. If not, they may find a reduction in sales. I'm put off vinted by the additional fees. Also postage costs have gone up so much in the last five years that buying on ebay is less viable. I've just paid £4.06 for delivery of a teapot from an ebay seller for example; with additional buyers fees I'm reaching a point where I may return to shopping in the high street (at least I'll be able to see that the teapot is actually 'new' as described or the inside is tea-stained so should have been listed as 'used!)

[neanderthal777]

i totally agree with you on this.....EBAY YOU ARE VERY DECEITFUL AND LIARS😡

[kath3735_wxmjn]

but E Bay are not currently responsible for your postage unless you have opted into their system (or opted out, i forget which now).    When it comes in is when i go

[kab7607]

Wow! I didn't know that!! So proof of purchase will mean nothing then if we take things ourselves to send off.  How can that be right?  Proof of Postage is Proof of Postage.  That has made me even more mad now! And more determined to not sell on here again if Simple Shipping is made compulsory.

[papso22]

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@kab7607 wrote:

Wow! I didn't know that!! So proof of purchase will mean nothing then if we take things ourselves to send off.  How can that be right?  Proof of Postage is Proof of Postage.  That has made me even more mad now! And more determined to not sell on here again if Simple Shipping is made compulsory.

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Proof of postage has never meant anything as far as ebay is concerned.

[kab7607]

I'm down HUNDREDS of Feedbacks over the years.  Most people now just don't bother.  I always leave feedback for people, even if it takes me a few days to get round to it.  But yeah, mine's definitely down hundreds & hundreds for what I've bought & sold over the last 20 or more years.

[kab7607]

I did this the other day. It just felt so wrong! One binbag of clothes which were my wifes & were in fantastic condition & another bag of sundry things from around the home as well (we are moving next month).  It felt so wrong to just give these away when normally I'd be listing them up here for a minimal amount & making a little bit of money at the same time, but I can't be bothered now & we don't know how the shipping stuff will work so charity won out this time.  And I expect on the clothing side of the things I gave to them, the shop will sell them for more than I would have on eBay... Ridiculous.

[stimpson_jc]

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@kab7607 wrote:

I did this the other day. It just felt so wrong! One binbag of clothes which were my wifes & were in fantastic condition & another bag of sundry things from around the home as well (we are moving next month).  It felt so wrong to just give these away when normally I'd be listing them up here for a minimal amount & making a little bit of money at the same time, but I can't be bothered now & we don't know how the shipping stuff will work so charity won out this time.  And I expect on the clothing side of the things I gave to them, the shop will sell them for more than I would have on eBay... Ridiculous.

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I used to give things to charity until I found out how much good stuff they throw away for hardly any reason. Just take a look in their bins out the back and you'll find huge dumpsters filled to the brim with perfectly good items and broken things that are still useful and sellable.

If everyone's planning on flooding the charity shops all of a sudden BEWARE! It's as good as binned.

[vintique*violet]

1) It's been discusssd , they are holding funds in trust whilst a transaction they are insuring is completing.

I think they are using " escrow" accounts... which are normally for high value items like expensive art, property transactions etc. it is usually for " complicated transactions " to avoid risk to seller and buyer and the " third party" hold on funds then releases them once both are satisfied the transaction is completed. 

These types of accounts are not usually used for straightforward. low value  and simple purchases, which by all accounts would be  " marketplace sales", the same as you would purchase from a supermarket.. a simple transaction. 

I think this is how eBay are getting around the " BPF" ... this  " contractual"  third party arrangement...  ie. using an Escrow account which is usually held by a bank, escrow agent, solicitor , stakeholder. 

 It is actually a  stakeholders dream in reality! 

The interest garnered will be in the hundreds of thousands if not more! 

[cm90691]

I work in a charity shop and that's simply not true! Clothing with holes/very shabby/dirty goes for recycling, but anything decent goes on the shelves and is sold. "broken things that are still useful" - no not a lot of market for those! (or electricals for safety reasons)

Please keep donating; but don't just bag up rubbish.  If it's not saleable on ebay, it's probably not saleable by a charity shop.

[cm90691]

I did this the other day. It just felt so wrong! One binbag of clothes which were my wifes & were in fantastic condition & another bag of sundry things from around the home as well (we are moving next month).  It felt so wrong to just give these away when normally I'd be listing them up here for a minimal amount & making a little bit of money at the same time, but I can't be bothered now & we don't know how the shipping stuff will work so charity won out this time.  

Me too! But the second time I did it, it felt SO RIGHT! You've saved so much time, got rid of so much clutter and done something really really good! If you donate with 'gift aid' the charity shop will email you and tell you how much has been raised with your items. Then you can feel proud of yourself.

[lyndap8888]

I also volunteer in a charity shop. If you wouldn't use it, wear it or buy it...don't waste our time donating it!

[akemp1]

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@lyndap8888 wrote:
I also volunteer in a charity shop. If you wouldn't use it, wear it or buy it...don't waste our time donating it!

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When I volunteered in a charity shop a couple of decades ago we used to have a problem with the local knitters making new items that were not desirable enough to sell. It was really tricky knowing what to say when they came in with the creations they had invested time and materials into. The manager had me under strict instructions not to accept them.

I should probably be more charitable and clear down some of my listings but then every so often something sells that I had no expectation of selling and had almost given up hope of ever selling. I used to have a rule that anything under £10 wasn't worth listing but now my local Post Office opens longer hours and is easy to park outside with no queues at the time I attend then I've relaxed that quite a lot. Now I am like a butcher making sure every bit of the animal goes to good use.

Whatever sells gives me play money to buy the next thing on ebay. I've so far kept my new years resolution  in preparation of this buyers tax of not adding new money onto the ebay platform and only spending from proceeds of sale. I took a  peek at my credit card balance and it's barely gone up in 2 weeks. Amazing.

[jma2815]

The thing that occurs to me with the new buyer fee is that just lowering our prices to accommodate it will not be enough, we’ll have to be seen to be doing so just before checkout - which means whatever price we put on an item will most likely be met with a message from the buyer saying ‘I see I’m paying an extra £1.20 (or whatever it is) on this, if you take £2 off for me it I’ll buy it’ or they’ll send extremely low offers ‘because I have the fee to pay you know..’  just like they do on the site this is copying. How many times have I heard “well there were buyer fees but the seller accepted £2 down from £5 so it was OK” 

In short, its going to make selling a right PITA and that’s before we even get started on the subject of Simple Delivery. 

[stimpson_jc]

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@cm90691 wrote:

I work in a charity shop and that's simply not true! Clothing with holes/very shabby/dirty goes for recycling, but anything decent goes on the shelves and is sold. "broken things that are still useful" - no not a lot of market for those! (or electricals for safety reasons)

Please keep donating; but don't just bag up rubbish.  If it's not saleable on ebay, it's probably not saleable by a charity shop.

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I'm afraid it is true for most high street charities nationwide. Maybe you claim they don't at yours but most have bins full of good stuff and it's absolutely sickening.

I'm infuriated that I gave charities my beloved possessions in the past in good faith thinking I was doing something good.

If I give anything to charity now it's only the run down charity shops because they don't throw away things just because they're old or broken or not fashionable enough for their shop.

Some years ago I would look out of curiosity after I'd been told about it and in a British Heart Foundation bin I found a silver plated antique teapot on the top of the pile! From Bernardos I found a pair of vintage Adidas tennis trainers that had nothing wrong with them. From another shop which was possibly an animal charity there were bag loads of action figures, valuable unscratched records and pretty much every kind of nick nack your gran would have on her sideboard that they simply couldn't be bothered to put out for sale and binned.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg, hundreds of thousands of pounds worth are being wasted and have been for years.

People used to fill trolleys full and sell it down the carboot -good on them!

[jma2815]

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@king-al_3 wrote:

Where will most people sell if they leave? This is the last straw for me!

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I won’t sell at all once SD comes in. 

I’m 54 so (I hope) I’ll have time to deal with my ‘stuff’ by disposing of it on gumtree, freecycle and local shop ads, taking stuff to the recycling centre (aka ‘the tip’) and being a lot more careful in future about what new things I bring into my house.

The  specific brand of vintage clothing I collect will likely just be kept, for now, whereas that used to be a bit of a revolving door with most items being bought and sold on here for £200 to £400 a time. I’ll miss that. 

My very large collection of specialist craft books and antique sewing equipment will go to a local auction house when the time comes. I had planned to sell them individually on ebay. 

[stimpson_jc]

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@dozyrosie wrote:

As a buyer on ebay, I am absolutely furious at this new cost from ebay.

Have they been taking lessons from reed and starmer on how to get their hands on every possible penny they can get from us.

In my opinion, it is just robbery and  I will have to need something desperately, that I can't find anywhere else, before I buy again on ebay.

Already the postage on US paper patterns are beyond purchasing due to ridiculous postage costs.  Now another reason not to use ebay, sorry to the many great sellers.

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It's as if the governments and eBay are all in cahoots with each other.

What with this and the digital sales reporting this year I simply can't do eBay anymore. I won't risk all these new postal arrangements unless its a few cheap items and yet at the same time they're making it extremely difficult and pointless to sell cheap items. As for more expensive items it's far too risky because I know how unreliable all the postal companies are and the odd customer who won't pick up their parcel.

As for the digital sales reporting I wont risk being taxed even if it's ok to go over the reporting limits of 30 sales /or £1700. I want certainty, an actual amount of money I can't go over or a limit of brand new items I can sell in a period, not something that's decided by the flip of a coin in a tax office.

The government said they won't tax everyone but where's my guarantee? And they've kept the tax allowances the same as the Tories who had been halving it each year to almost nothing.
This is obviously not going to create growth in the economy which is what the last government claimed the digital sales reporting was about, and this is not going to put extra cash in my pocket as this government claim they'd do, as now I'm loosing £100's in realtime from eBay and will be every year until they scrap digital sales reporting or say for certain I can actually sell for instance £18000 worth of items without being taxed like eBay claim here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sellercentre/selling/selling-online-and-hmrc

[johnwash1]

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@stimpson_jc wrote:

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@cm90691 wrote:

I work in a charity shop and that's simply not true! Clothing with holes/very shabby/dirty goes for recycling, but anything decent goes on the shelves and is sold. "broken things that are still useful" - no not a lot of market for those! (or electricals for safety reasons)

Please keep donating; but don't just bag up rubbish.  If it's not saleable on ebay, it's probably not saleable by a charity shop.

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I'm afraid it is true for most high street charities nationwide. Maybe you claim they don't at yours but most have bins full of good stuff and it's absolutely sickening.

I'm infuriated that I gave charities my beloved possessions in the past in good faith thinking I was doing something good.

If I give anything to charity now it's only the run down charity shops because they don't throw away things just because they're old or broken or not fashionable enough for their shop.

Some years ago I would look out of curiosity after I'd been told about it and in a British Heart Foundation bin I found a silver plated antique teapot on the top of the pile! From Bernardos I found a pair of vintage Adidas tennis trainers that had nothing wrong with them. From another shop which was possibly an animal charity there were bag loads of action figures, valuable unscratched records and pretty much every kind of nick nack your gran would have on her sideboard that they simply couldn't be bothered to put out for sale and binned.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg, hundreds of thousands of pounds worth are being wasted and have been for years.

People used to fill trolleys full and sell it down the carboot -good on them!

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Yes, it may not be true at every charity shop, but it certainly is at some, though I don't know the proportion.

Worse still, when some throw the unwanted donations in the skip out the back, the charity is then having to pay for disposal of trade waste.

[stimpson_jc]

Yep, if there's a surge of donations everywhere these coming months it won't be good -just half binned probably, as I say.