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. 

[robscuriosities]

0123456789

[silicon_hell]

You are correct. Maybe.

The buyer is offering a round figure, ebay are taking the BPF from that, and you are now technically paying the BPF.

Try replying with a message such as "Thank you for your offer of £258.92, if you could make it a round £270, then we have a deal. I have sent a counter-offer of exactly £270.", and with the message, send a counter-offer of £270. This will cause a buyer malfunction, as they know what they offered was not £258.92, they know you countered with exactly the amount they originally offered, they know the figure presented to them is different.

They may walk away in a fit of pique, or they may contact ebay to ask what's going on.

Have fun!

[lucy_farmer]

'They may walk away in a fit of pique, or they may contact ebay to ask what's going on.'

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Or send 'em to the forums to read what's been going on!

[dancewithadingo]

Good Afternoon Johnjay

At the moment eBay's inept and sneaky system means that any offer you accept will be subject to the deduction of the buyer's premium,in other words you will be paying it as it will be taken from the money you receive.

[silicon_hell]

I would definitely rather pay the FVF than have the psychological disadvantage of odd looking 'converted from a random currency' prices.

Maybe an FVF of 4% plus 75p?  Or just a flat 10% for low value items?

[silicon_hell]

A BIN is easy, the BPF is added.  Any offers on the BIN, then the BPF is taken away. 

The former, the buyer loses, the latter, the seller.

Apologies for the TLAs.

[johnjaybikebits]

That's just it. I made an offer of £150 on something that was on sale for £167.48 (or whatever it was), little realising that my offer would actually be rather lower than that and bordering on risible. Now if I want to make sensible offers on stuff, I have to calculate what the offer will be with a 75p flat fee and 4% of the value (up to £300, then 3% on any part of the value over £400) subtracted from it. eBay seems to have made this rather more unwieldy than buying or selling secondhand stuff needs to be. And does the BPF cover anything which is not already covered by distance selling regulations?

[papso22]

If you are the buyer, then you simply offer the amount you want to pay in total, plus the postage.  Whether that is acceptable to the seller is an entirely different matter.

[silicon_hell]

I don't think there are any distance selling regulations as such for private sellers, and businesses aren't subject to the BPF. 

However, the courier/RM/Evri etc. offer protection in the form of insurance, so I think that the BPF is a little weird.  Unless it's for paying 'AI', whoever Alan is, for coming up with all those excellent descriptions.

[61stephenuk]

I thought everyone had heard of Alan