eBay Is Dead

[pinball-fantasies]

I am thinking eBay as a selling platform is dead since the seller protection was added ? I wonder if eBay have notice the decline in sellers since new rules started . In my 20 years of selling on eBay Ive never seen it like this

I have 20 watchers on my account , most of them are still selling but their sales have fallen to almost to nothing over the last 2 months and a few sellers have gone from the platform , its like all the buyers have gone

I wonder if eBay have notice the fall in sales or do they really care anymore

Is eBay a sicking ship and now doomed ?

[ruby_retro*]

I have been selling on eBay on and off for 25 years, just the odd few things here and there. It is truly shocking now, I can't sell anything , I list at reasonable prices but just get messages now again offering really low ball offers AND HARDLY ANY VIEWS. Appalling.  The buyer fees have destroyed it.

It is like eBay have set out to deliberately destroy their own platform. I will have to move on and sell elsewhere.

[hettsville]

I sold my last item in January and decided not to sell anymore on eBay because I didn't agree with the BPF.

I'm glad I did now there's SD to contend with as well.

As a buyer I don't shop as much on eBay and BPF has put me off buying from private sellers.

I think I've bought one item from a private seller since BPF came in and that was only because they sent me a best offer price.

[6kitkat]

As above, used to sell privately on eBay but gave up in February. No reason to go to the site now, so I stopped buying too. EBay shot themselves in the face.

[storage.boutique]

I welcome the change.

eBay has a terrible reputation caused by terrible, dodgy private sellers.

Just to remind everyone, Private Sellers are those doing less than 30 sales per year or £1740 in income. Therefore it is not too unreasonable that such fellows should be paying extra fees due to the risk of a deal going wrong.

If there are still sellers out there who are trying to hold on to Private Seller accounts with more than these sales, well you kind of do deserve to pay extra fees for your daftness (or corruption). Check your feedback rating for the last 12 months, if it is more than 30, then you have the wrong type of account. 

If for any reason you have been a bit tardy completing your tax self assessment, then you have only yourself to blame as the net is closing very rapidly now. Think about the tax due on a 7 year assessment on your income plus fines plus interest. 

I am not seeing any difficulty in the eBay earning capacity, and if everyone has the correct type of account then it will mean we are being charged the correct fees. They can make appropriate and informed business decisions which will make it so much easier for businesses to navigate and control. May not be lower fees but at least vast swathes of the population will now be paying their taxes and the platform will be much more predictable and less risky.

[cluckington-palace]

Here comes the same old retoric, work for eBay???

[storage.boutique]

(sp. ) Rhetoric. No I dont, I am a proper registered business sick and tired of getting terrible messages from customers who have had rotten experiences at the hands of private sellers who have huge feedbacks and are clearly running businesses. I pay VAT, PAYE, NI and Corporation Tax and so I want HMRC to clamp down on those NI numbers who have forgotten to submit returns or claimed benefits whilst earning. In this way, everyones taxes will reduce significantly, I will get a decent pension one day, and eBay fees will be transparent and fair for everyone. The day cannot come soon enough for legitimate businesses I think.

[cluckington-palace]

Sure

[thepillenwerfer]

I find stuff still sells but more often than not on the maiden bid of if there are more they aren't for much more; I can't recall the last time something took off and surprised me.

As for the BPF I don't think it makes much difference.  In the past if I wanted £5 for something I'd start it at £7 or £8, depending on how much e-Bay's cut of the postage charge would be.  Now I'll start it at £5 so, with the fee, the Buyer will pay around £6 thereby saving a pound or two on what they'd have had to pay in the past.

I do agree that the fee disproportionately effects low-value items but so did the fixed 30p part of the old FVF, though obviously not to the same degree.

As for bogus 'Private' Sellers e-Bay seem to actively encourage them.  It's hard to see how somebody selling personal goods and chattels would require hundreds of free listings every month, especially for very similar items, or how somebody with a job could find time to draft that many listings and (hopefully) pack and post so many parcels.  e-Bay should also stop Private Sellers listing things as New and replace it with something like Good As New, Like New or Un-Used.

[jonatjonatjonat]

Just to remind everyone, Private Sellers are those doing less than 30 sales per year or £1740 in income

those ‘limits’ are nothing to do with whether you are a private or a business seller. They are the point at which eBay is required to request your NI number to provide it and your sales on eBay to HMRC. But selling over those limits does not all of a sudden make you a business.

[lucy_farmer]

'eBay has a terrible reputation caused by terrible, dodgy private sellers.'

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Worst ebay experiences *I've* ever had were with terrible chinese Business sellers.

Just to remind everyone, Private Sellers are those doing less than 30 sales per year or £1740 in income.

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No. They're not.

Those limits are the international OECD  limits after which the seller's info goes to their country's financial authority (in UK is HMRC) Absolutley nothing to do with the difference between private and business sellers.

If you think that selling over 30 items a year (!) makes you a business, you've obviously never had to cope with inheriting piles of stuff from various late relatives. Or trying to rationalise the contents of an over-stuffed garage or wardrobe or toolkit or attic or bookcase or garden shed or youflippingnameit!

[honeymonster007]

No don't think its dead, its changed a bit but nothing on the net stays the same and the collectors are still out there. The people that sell generic items may struggle a little as their up against the likes of Amazon now and every shop seems to have a good online presence now.

Just did a basic search for books and it came up with 40 million listings in the UK and some of those are going to be bundles. Dresses come up with nearly 2 million ect

[gjalp]

Absolutely with you on the piles of inherited stuff. Our loft space is stuffed and we’ve had to take on a storage unit. Even last week I was taking some of my late mum’s stuff to our storage unit to keep to one side until such time I am able to sift through it into ‘chuck, donate and sell’ piles. I have items from both parents, 3 grandparents and my husband has some of his dad’s items plus 2 grandparents. We live in a terraced house so the stuff has to go somewhere and while we do donate a lot of items, we plan to sell the collectables.

[storage.boutique]

Small numbers of sales, a low volume, a small income, thats a private seller.

Inherited items, thats much different. What you seem to be saying is that you have inherited a load of items that may be worth some money. Enough to be selling it on eBay and paying their fees. The schedule received from your lawyer of possessions and the value you declared to HMRC for the purposes of inheritance tax (a legal requirement) will indicate what level of tax, if any, you paid on the transfer of those goods. 

If you then decide to sell them at a business rate then you must declare the income. But you can put the schedule cost as your cost of sales so that you dont double pay tax. If HMRC came chapping, you could produce the schedule as evidence. 

Obviously if you then sell more than the schedule value, then you have an income to declare as you have made more money than you declared to HMRC. 

Of course HMRC are not likely to be interested in someone that has a feedback of  48 items in 12 months with a total of 759. But the seller who has a positive feedback of 58885 and 2554 this year is very obviously a business for tax purposes and I would say is ripe for an early inspection. If they have declared a large value for inheritance tax then they will be fine. The cost of the storage unit can obviously be deducted from business income as can all eBay and postage costs. It may be in the end that no tax is due, but I would say with those kind of numbers the HMRC are going to be looking at the last 7 years in due course.

[lucy_farmer]

'......am able to sift through it into ‘chuck, donate and sell’ piles.'

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Oooo, I wish I could have a 'chuck' pile!

Unfortunately my husband is a hoarder and truly believes that *one day* somebody somewhere will actually buy everything.... because it's all 'useful stuff' ..🙄

(I did manage to donate piles and piles of clothes thank goodness: clothes don't seem to come on to hubby's radar as 'useful stuff'!)

In the meantime we have to live amongst the piles of his parents', sister's and cousin's clobber...😒

This is why I'm so upset about ebay's changes: the BPF makes it pointless to sell  (it'd make no money for the time spent on it) and S.D. is just unworkably stupid for me.

[lucy_farmer]

There's a bit of  a big difference between - 'Over 30 items a year is a business seller' and a private seller flogging off about 300 items in a year from a huge mixed list of *used* items....

I'm talking about (amongst 1001 other items)--

A collection of used optical instruments. (late cousin was an optician)

Loads of 45 year old analogue electronic bits (late cousin was into audio as a hobby)

A load of old books about battleships and memorabilia of such ( F.i.L was in the navy) and the contents of his over filled toolshed and garage.

A collection of used (NOT-designer) shoes (M.i.L was the Imelda Marcos of the W. Mids)

Late S.i.L.'s collection of ex-library reference books (S.i.L was a librarian)

And 3 houses' worth of assorted kitchen, living room and household stuff , all used, some definitely in good nick and useable to somebody else....

As far as 'inherintance tax' and 'lawyer of possessions' goes.....?

S.i.L and cousin didn't even possess enough to go to probate. 

HMRC will not want to know.

[storage.boutique]

I think you are correct. There is a huge difference. If your relatives didn't own anything worth declaring to the lawyers, or the HMRC and no probate schedule, then you have no evidence of inheriting this stuff. Your cost of sales is zero - same as if you found something in a charity shop and they gave it to you for free and then you decided to sell it. You have then taken this stuff and decided to sell it. That is a business.

If the value is low - a few hundred items a year, then there may be no tax payable of course. But if say you were `also claiming benefits, or had a job, then tax may well be due. Not to mention NI. This would be what they are calling side hustles right now, and they are cracking down on.

Under normal circumstance, I would agree with you, HMRC will not want to know. However, looking into the not too distant future, I dont think it will take the AI long to run through the entire eBay website cross checking details and sending out intitial assessments. At that point, it is up to you to prove them wrong on paper.

To stay on topic, I dont think eBay is dead, but I do think there is a big clean up underway and I personally think there will be a lot of money raised this way for our common tax pot. People who previously had justified their own actions in their own heads, may well wake up to find an alternative reality. I would simply say get your self assessment in, then you will have no problem.

[vinylscot]

I share your concern about bogus private sellers, but many of your assumption are plain wrong.

Many thousands of genuine private sellers will be selling off large private collections, often individually. I have a huge private record collection, totally separate from my business. It numbers in the thousands. Likewise, I have over a thousand old magazines, football programmes and books, and thousands of CDs, none of which were ever bought with the intention of re-selling them. By your flawed reasoning, I would automatically become a business seller if I decided to sell them, by using my allowance on an eBay private account. That is utter balderdash.

Private sellers can legitimately be running unlimited listings, and selling an unlimited number of items per year, without being businesses, provided, of course, they can show that they were private possessions. (I do agree that a large number of transactions hints at a business, but doesn't necessarily prove it.)

Your diatribe about inherited items is also utter bilge, fabricated to try to reinforce your absolutely tenuous point.

Genuine private sellers, even at large volumes, are NOT the problem here. No sensible business seller has any objection to them. Your anger/disgust, should be directed at the businesses masquerading as private sellers, and at eBay for allowing (and pretty much encouraging) such behaviour.

[storage.boutique]

This is a classic case of missing the point and shooting the messanger.

I am not angry at all. I am simply pointing out some of the issues that will be cleaned up in due course by the AI. An (electronic) trail of paper and self assessments submitted clears everything up.

Selling off a private collection is a business activity and whoever suggested it is not has given you some duff advice. You buy the items and sell the items exactly the same as any other business and if a profit is made it will be in your self assessment tax return and everything is fine. A few items a year, or £1740 in income, which is easily found on eBay and nobody will assess you. Similarly, if you have a service business and only make £1k in profit, you dont need to declare that. 

The topic is headed eBay is dead. I dont think it is dead. I just think there is going to be a lot of rationalisation very soon. I see the new rules on postage through an OBA and on eBay and other platforms and I think the old way of thinking is based on some wrong assumptions. Yes, I may be wrong, but I would think long and hard about where I acquired any private collections or inherited assets and what is the potential tax burden.

[jonatjonatjonat]

Can you at least clarify that the figures you quoted of £1,740 and or 30 sales are not, in anyway related to identifying private sellers vs business selles because that is spreading false information.

[cluckington-palace]

Same as me dad died two years ago & we’re leaving the uk shores