Yet another buyer protection fee thread

[johnjaybikebits]

I'm sure I'm not alone in having not quite got my head around this yet. I have an item for sale at the moment... It's up for £275, which with the buyer protection fee comes to £286.72. Someone has made me an offer on it: my seller dashboard tells me the offer is £270 including buyer protection fee; in other words, the offer is £258.92. Does that mean that the buyer has offered that very precise amount, or that I'm paying the buyer protection fee on a £270 offer? I can't quite wrap my head around those figures. All advice gratefully received.

[papso22]

The offer made by the buyer is £270, that is the total they expect to pay and so it includes the BPF which will go to ebay from the buyer's payment.  They have not offered a funny amount, they have offered a round amount of £270.

You will receive £258.92, i.e the balance after the buyer has paid the BPF to ebay.

[wintersdawn1]

As far as I know, if you accept an offer from a buyer, the buyer protection fee will be deducted from the offer amount and you get the rest.  In effect you are paying the buyer protection fee, or this is in fact a seller fee.

[action_man]

You are offered £270 and you will receive £258.72

It's really simple... Everyone knows it's free to sell on eBay. 🤡

[johnjaybikebits]

Hmmmm. I see the logic, but that does feel an awful lot like I'm paying the buyer protection fee. If I sold it at the full price, the BPF would be tacked onto the asking price, whereas this way round it's deducted from the offer. I get why that is, but surely a more consistent way to apply the BPF would be to add it to any offer made? I think I'll hold out for the asking price, and remove the option to make offers in future.

[sml192 · Accepted solution]

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@johnjaybikebits wrote:

Hmmmm. I see the logic, but that does feel an awful lot like I'm paying the buyer protection fee. If I sold it at the full price, the BPF would be tacked onto the asking price, whereas this way round it's deducted from the offer. I get why that is, but surely a more consistent way to apply the BPF would be to add it to any offer made? I think I'll hold out for the asking price, and remove the option to make offers in future.

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The 'Buy it now' price that the buyer sees on the listing is inclusive of the BPF so pretty obviously any offer the buyer makes against that price must also be inclusive of the BPF.

I think what is causing the problem is that eBay is initially showing the seller the offer price inclusive of the BPF, which isn't relevant to them, and then only subsequently showing the seller what they will actually receive.   

[wintersdawn1]

I was never a big fan of offers but now I am put off even more as I'll pay the buyers BPF!

Because of the clumsy way ebay has modified their system to accommodate the BPF, they will actually make less from their bogus BPF because if private sellers do not use offers this will result in less purchases from buyers and less BPF for greedbay.  Of course ebay won't care about the negative effect on the private seller but who knows, if they identify a drop in their turnover,  they may amend the offers system.

I think they were in such a hurry to start grabbing all those lovely BPF's knowing full well they were not going towards additional buyer protection, they didn't think it through properly with regards to offers or combined invoices, both aspects of their system which are either broken or not worth the hassle of using.