are e bay blind, or do they have a cunning plan baldrick ?

[farmer-ned]

hi please allow me to vent my spleen 

dont e bay ever read the boards on seller central if only to gauge the feeling of the sellers.

e bay has come up with yet another fee to get a bigger slice of the cake.

if you read the posts a lot of people have said they intend to close their shops and giving up selling  and thats just the business sellers without looking at the private sellers who are abandoning e bay in droves.

dont e bay realise that once these sellers leave it will be difficult if not impossible to entice them back.

the platform seems to be outpricing itself or seems intent on commercial suicide.

now if i owned e bay i,d be doing everything in my power to stop those sellers from leaving especially those small private tat sellers who made e bay what it is and the ones e bay seem intent to force off the platform.

add to that e bay passing seller details to HMRC can only frighten people off the site and sell elsewhere.

(is that legal)....

they are practicly gifting sellers to rival sites like FB marketplace,vinted and etsy the last two who have taken the best parts of e bays model and created a platform out of it.

those at the top must like politicans live in some sort of protctive bubble or just be insulated from just how bad e bay has become.

or is it part of some master plan discussed secretly in the boardroom as to e bays future  a future we have yet to see.

or could it be something to do with e bays biggest rival amazon a deal perhaps in the offing ???

are its sellers to be sold down the river or flushed down the kermit ... i fear the worst is yet to come   

[missdollydaydream]

It boils downs one thing...............................POOR MANAGEMENT

[papso22]

Passing sales details to HMRC is not only not illegal, it's actually a legal requirement. 

[kidmore_kats]

Vinted and etsy, along with Amazon, Deliveroo, Air BnB and many,many others will also be supplying this information to HMRC, not just eBay, a fact that you seem either to fail to understand or just choose to ignore because it doesn't fit your narative.

It's the law and eBay are required by law to provide this information to HMRC.

As for the rest, I've been on here nearly 20 years and if I had a quid for every post I've read forecasting the imminent demise of eBay, I'd be driving a BMW and not a 14 year old RAV that's just failed it's MOT.

[simplyessential_uk]

add to that e bay passing seller details to HMRC can only frighten people off the site and sell elsewhere.

(is that legal)....😂😂

 OMG please educate yourself before you keep embarrassing yourself.  Many told you this on the other post you vented on when you said ebay were "grassing its sellers" up to the tax man, but here you are ranting again about the same stuff

Reporting rules for digital platforms - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

[farmer-ned]

well all i can say is im glad i dont sell anymore i saw the light and stopped selling 

you,ll be on here soon enough whinging about fees and sales or whatever is coming 

i dont think we,ve seen it all yet

noticed from your feedback you dont like criticism either 

[vinylscot]

Come back in six months and re-read these threads. Then have a look to see how many of these posters have actually left. You'll more than likely find it's less than 5%, and some of those would have left anyway.

We see the same here every time there is a fee increase, or something else sellers don't like. They're just venting; very few will actually go, when it comes down to it, as there still isn't an alternative platform offering anything like as much exposure, and the viable alternatives for regular selling in any sort of volume, are no cheaper.

Nobody likes increases in fees, but this one is a) negilgible; and b) justified and understandable.

[simplyessential_uk]

no i wont as I sell on 4 other platforms, legally as a business.

Re my feedback,not sure what youre on about 99.7% cant please everybody all of the time with 2 negs out of 25k so Im happy with that...but thanks for looking.

[btr.style]

"justified and understandable."

Nope. I always say it but if eBay didn't give so many private business sellers the ability to undercut business accounts and pay less in eBay fees via the fee promo, then perhaps it could be justified and understandable. 

While that is still the case, which they could raise extra money by cutting back on, no fee increase whatsoever is acceptable. 40p per £100 is 40p less, which adds up. Based on our turnover that means there will be £37 less in readies each year for us. Not good. 

[vinylscot]

@simplyessential_uk   I get your point, but it's actually 16 negatives from 25k+ feedbacks, isn't it?

[vinylscot]

@btr.style  Get some perspective.

You sell about 100 items per month, so if it's going to cost you £37 per year, that is a touch over 3p per sale.

How much more are you making on each sale, compared to last year?

I agree eBay could be doing more about the "private" sellers, but I think that will work itself out over the next year or two to a large extent. I think you can cope. If not, you can join the hordes who will be leaving.

[bslim13]

Hi. I have been with Ebay since 2012. I would say that Ebay has shot it's self in the foot as they say. Charges are now getting out of hand. As you say Farmer ( commercial suicide) time to move on. Etsy looks promising. 

[btr.style]

Turnover as per every year is basically on 85k. It's a business strategy to avoid every being VAT registered (the bulk of our stock is already acquired, some 50,000+ items which will now be about selling way more than acquiring (so VAT will be a total stinger) as selling all that will give me more than enough to close the business and retire)

Stock was all purchased with an expected profit ratio (min and max figures). Based on the turnover, which is close to but cannot exceed 85k, profits have been more or less the same each year due to the profit ratios being the same on all items. 

So that £37 a year will be £37 less profits for doing exactly the same thing as I'm doing now. No less work for it. When factoring in no fee promos for 2 years, it's more money out of pocket. 

[simplyessential_uk]

So its 16 negs since 2005, if you say so, not even 1 a year, hardly making a revelation with your comment.

[vinylscot]

@btr.style   Surely, as you seem to be so organised, you allowed for possible increases in fees, etc. in your projections? If you don't allow for that sort of thing, you can leave yourself open to nasty surprises. What do you do when Royal Mail (or whichever courier you use) increases their prices, as happens usually at least once each year?

As previously mentioned, your own calculations show you losing around 3p per transaction due to this increase. Although I'm not sure your calculations are correct, that is a miniscule cost.

[magpiecorner1]

Oh, they have a plan and a pretty cunning one at that, and it seems to be working extremely well - judging by the fact that the Q4 2023 results - and anticipated shareholder dividend - were better than forecasted.

Seller numbers are down - I think its over 25% in the past 8 years - but its only recently be affected GMV (which is sales, kinda) which only really been dropping for 2 years and flatlined this quarter, but even though GMV is down, profit is up, with a nice profit from advertising.  

Sellers are obviously not that important, but then again why worry about 20 sellers selling the same thing when 10 sellers selling the same thing will still get the sale - and the bald figure about the loss of sellers doesn't necessarily equate to a loss in business, I doubt the lowest 100,000 equates to one MusicMagpie!  Heck perhaps not even the lowest million.

So selling less and making more money seems to be eBays plan.

Trouble is the drop in buyer numbers, although static in Q4, show a picture like a ski slope.  But charging sellers more to play and then more again to play, seems to have prevented the loss of buyers resulting in a drop in profits! 

[magpiecorner1]

Hmm, Etsy have just surveyed sellers about fee changes - including monthly subscriptions.

Moving from eBay to Etsy might just be from the frying pan into the fryer. 

[kidmore_kats]

On a more positive note, after some major brake surgery, the RAV has a new MOT. 

The garage is the only one I have ever used where you can collect the car and drive it away without paying, basically because it takes them a couple of weeks to work out what you owe them. 

I have a feeling that this may cost a few quid, but it's back on the road. 

[magpiecorner1]

Fingers crossed it will keep going well for you - my other half is a petrolhead, apart from having to put up with such things as wheels in the livingroom, our cars spend little time in garages.  Though son's car was off the road for 2 weeks and he borrowed my very precious RCZR for that time.   But hubby got it going again!  My car came back with no fuel, but I did get two bottles of very expensive wine!  

We must give a LOT of business to eBay motorparts sellers!  We get deliveries almost daily.

I thought my post was quite positive lol!  Well, at least for the shareholders!

[kidmore_kats]

143,000 miles and still starts first time every time. 

Here in the dark wastelands of rural Dorset where potholed roads and fast flowing streams are never more than a downpour apart, I wouldn't be without it.