feb 4th the clock is ticking

[reasonable-robert]

a lot has been said on S/C about this but what will e bay really be like after the 4th of feb as quite a few private  sellers intend to walk away from e bay will it no longer be viable to sell on e bay and it just implodes from within with sales plummeting to the point of oblivion.

buyers could turn to e bays biggest rivals like amazon or ali express to buy and as someone pointed out if they wanted a £10 blue ray dvd thats what they want to pay not £11.75 and would shop elsewhere to get it at that price.

or if not the above rivals but cheaper at tesco, sainsburys ,morrisons or asda with the weekly shop.

the BS may dance with delight about this decision but to be honest if the buyers have gone where will your meagre sales come from this may turn out to be e bays biggest blunder and may come back to haunt them and they maybe even back pedal but once you lose those sellers it will be difficult to attract people back to e bay.

so what of the future if e bay want an even bigger slice of the cake after all they do answer to their shareholders and investors what else is around the corner.

we know simple delivery is right behind the buyer protection fee where e bay take total control from the sale to the delivery forcing use of their packlink service making them more money as well as intrest which they claim they dont make on held funds this is before we get on to the potential scammers taking advantage of more holes than a swiss cheese.

B/S dont think you will escape the wrath either because as fees plummet with the private sellers  the will turn to the B/S to recoup lost money as they are ebays cash cow.

who knows what e bay will come up with next both buyer and seller paying a fee just like auctions perhaps.

this is just the beginnning

[asleepingdragon]

eBay will be just the same.  The hysterical overreacting on here will disappear and all the people claiming they'll quit will still be here too.

People have been claiming eBay doesn't want private sellers for 20 years.  Doesn't make it true.

[ady9701]

Ive noticed items don't get views anything like they used to but in bold letters you get " promote your item ". Yet another cost they seem to be pushing us towards. Seems a lot of hassle just to sell an old DVD or a Model car worth a couple of quid. Which is what eBay was originally about. Now it's like we are all dealing in gold bullion and everyone must  have their cut of the profits. The other gripe I have is eBay's interference with the postage side of things.  My item is sold so what has it got to do with eBay how I get it there. Seems it's just another angle to get more cash out of us.  My parcel drop off point is literally 100 yards from my house. It's down to me how I post it . And now of course we have the buyer protection racket which means any profit you do make will sit in eBay's account while you wait for you parcel to be marked delivered.  Nah not for me 

[1956glyn]

Everything has to work on a practical level for individual private sellers too.    If the new rules dont then some wont have a choice as to whether they quit or not 😞     Yes we can deal with waiting however long with the funds from any sales BUT if simple delivery is going to be as most suspect........it just wont work for us for the forseeable future.

Also quite a few private sellers moan about no sales.   I cannot see how adding a buyers fee is going to change that.

[jckl1957]

I plan to revisit some of the 'I will be cancelling all my items' posts to see if sellers have done so.

I would guess that a lot of people will have a rethink.

[mawels_87]

As a private buyer, and once seller here I now buy more from other sites now because items on eBay+postage has become expensive generally. I still buy here from time to time , but nothing like I did a few years ago. Come 4th Feb depending on the total cost of items with the buyer fees added,. If they  end up working  out generally more expensive I will buy even more off site. I don't think most members will close their account, but just won't use eBay anywhere near as much. Ebay as far as know count active buyers even if they only buy 1 item a year. 

[game_raid]

Some of these sellers have over 2000 listings, they are not going to shut up shop and end all their listings on the 4 Feb and eBay know this and they know this but seem to be happy to try and coerce other sellers to stop selling.

I have seen many posts we should all close our listings and so on, but no doubt they won't be closing theirs, incidentally they also appear to a running a business. 

The analogy of the blu-ray is total nonsense, it's like saying every seller will be at £11.75 for that item which simply is not true, eBay is a dynamic marketplace so prices will vary, it all depends on what the seller is trying to get back on that item because not every private seller is looking to profit.

Believe it or not there will be sellers happy to absorb the fee so they can get a sale because getting something back is better than nothing.

There are people who are housebound that will not have the luxury of just nipping to tesco to buy a dvd, there are people who can't afford an amazon prime membership for free shipping, so will turn to eBay to try and get a second hand bargain and will hunt down the best price whether there is a fee or not.

[jonatjonatjonat]

The bluray analogy also doesn't work - because if its a new Bluray - well the seller should be a business paying all the fees that entails.

If its a second hand bluray there shouldn't be price parity with a new bluray (rare special editions might be the exception here) and if you sold that same bluray on amazon, well, there would be fees there as an Individual Seller as they refer to it.

[9150simon]

Business sellers aren't "dancing with delight" at this, as they have been paying fees and continue to pay fees, so nothing much changes there.  Our sales have been meagre for months and I don't think that is about to change.

Something has gone wrong within ebay over the last year or so and sales just aren't what they were. It is no doubt a combination of things that has lead to this but ebay seem to be slowly but surely running the train off the tracks.

[wellingnorth]

Is it clear yet how ebay will be presenting the buyer fee on a listing / search results?

For a buy it now if I list something at £10 will the buyer just see £11.15 final price or will it be like vinted where they see a basic price and price with fee added?

And for an auction if I set my starting price at £10 will the starting bid be £11.15? Then if the buyer puts a maximum bid of £21.55 will that include the buyer fee to equal a final payment to me of £20? (If I remember correctly I think this is kind of how it works with EU buyers bidding on UK auctions - their bid includes the local VAT they pay via IOSS).

[tressygirl]

Apparently,  for a Buy it Now item, for your example  the buyer will see £11.15 on the listing.

At eBay checkout if they care to,  or remember to,  they can see the breakdown before paying, showing Seller item price ..... £10.00     Buyer Protection Fee.....  £1.15

The wording above may not be exactly correct but that is where the breakdown is shown at eBay checkout.

I'm afraid I'm still puzzling the outcomes for auctions as there have been a few versions here as to how that scenario pans out.

@wellingnorth 

[the_new_wigan_stamp_man]

The whole thing is a total farce.

Look at it my way, up to the end of September last year before my forced absence, I sold, on average, 6 items every day. Since I returned here at the beginning of this month, in total, I have sold just 4 items. No views, No questions, a big fat NOTHING.

I cannot and will not pay more money to these morons for a much worse service. Why should I pay money to so-called Promote a listing and get no sales. Sheer madness. 

I offer a stamp at 99p and this lot then bung on the Protection Racket fee and that means NO SALE again. Do they actually think we are all idiots who cannot see this new `sales tax` fiddle.

I will leave a few items on here just to see if it changes anything but as for new listings, I`m off elsewhere to pastures new where you are not ripped off for every penny they can get out of you and, where you are treated as a HUMAN BEING and treated with compassion, not as this lot did, after I was on LIFE SUPPORT for many weeks.

eBay`s answer to that was, we are taking all your listings down and you will lose 15 years of hard work with 100% Feedback. Oh, and just to rub a few more unwanted bits into the wound, you can now only have 200 listings per month when everyone else can have 300.  Thanks for that eBay, just shows the type of people you are.

We can all moan and groan about these idiots who now run eBay but, at the end of the day, unless some savvy Billionaire comes along with a new concept, we are lumbered with them. They may still be here but once the Private Sellers have jumped ship, the Business Sellers will really moan as gone will be most of their buyers. Common sense, no buyer = no business. Instead of battering Private Sellers, Business Sellers should, if they have any brains at all, be supporting us.

[wellingnorth]

---

@tressygirl wrote:

At eBay checkout if they care to,  or remember to,  they can see the breakdown before paying, showing Seller item price ..... £10.00     Buyer Protection Fee.....  £1.15

Thanks, that makes sense. Surely it must work in a similar way for auctions as well, they can't have a buyer put in a bid for £10 and then be expected to pay £11.15 when the auction finishes. Maybe something similar where they put in a bid for £11.15 and it shows how the total breaks down alongside?

I'm hoping that the listing tool may incorporate something to show both price received as seller and final price to buyer - in an ideal world you'd have two price boxes one for each and you could choose to either set the price shown to buyer OR price received and the other one would update to reflect it. Personally I hate the messy prices you get on Vinted and it would be good to be able to set prices to avoid them.

[nutrafituk]

Agree with all your points but one thing - having sold 19k items you are not a private seller in mu opinion. Obviously you can claim a collection but that is just between you and HMRC. All the best.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

not me!   When they bring Simple Delivery in i will be gone.  Not fussed about the buyer fee or having to wait up to two weeks for my money but definitely not going with SD.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

as a buyer i would say the biggest thing to go wrong for me is that the search engine is just not fit for purpose.    Apart from the fact that i get fed up of having to scroll through pages and pages of cheap china type cr.ap before i even get to what i want and what makes it worse is the cheap china cr.ap actually does not resemble anything i have put into the search!   I more often give up completely.  You can be really specific with your requirements but e bay will still show you a load of *bleep* that you are not interested in!  Quite often i put in used just to try and get rid of a lot of it but that then takes out all the proper business sellers from my view.

[lucy_farmer]

'.....Maybe something similar where they put in a bid for £11.15 and it shows how the total breaks down alongside?.....'

Perhaps the buyer will place a bid of £10.00 and be shown a 'total' box next to that bid, that's says 'bid of £10. including buyers fee = £11.15. Please continue if you agree with £11.15'. ??  or something along those lines......!

When you place a bid now, there's a box for you to place your own bid *and* some boxes where you can just tick 'bid £10' or 'bid £12.00' or 'bid £15.00'. Maybe, in the future, those 'bid £10' boxes will say 'bid £10, total bid of £11.15'.

So the buyer knows what they have bid, and also how much that will cost if they win.

I can't imagine ebay will show the seller the *total* price paid by the buyer, or give the seller the opportunity to see it. why would they?

[insidethe93]

My recreational buying will reduce, for certain things drastically. If I carry on buying as usual I could see £15+ added to a single Basket's worth. Making buyers pay fees is poor psychology. I've just had a last shopping spree, no more sprees after 4th Feb.

I used to enjoy buying small secondhand low-priced items for one of my hobbies. eBay will remove that pleasure, but maybe in time I'll get the urge to indulge a little (though not as much) but wouldn't last long if eBay's driven away too many private sellers. 

I will remain on eBay and support those business sellers I regularly buy from, but with much of my liking for eBay being removed I've already started shopping from them via their own websites or via craft websites. But I notice I've tended to reduce those purchases too and buy only things I really really need/want.

I doubt I'm the only one, so BPF could reduce business seller sales too.

[insidethe93]

Don't forget a seller may need or want to take a while to close down, and some may remain active so as to keep an eye how things fare for eBay and, who knows, participate in the discussion forums.

I've noticed that one private seller has effectively closed down whilst remaining on eBay, apparently still selling, by increasing her charges per item from the more or less standard £6.99 to £16.99. She was expensive before (but great quality) as the going rate was and is under £5. Looking at her feedback, only a handful have bought from in the past 6 months, being a huge drop in numbers. Her feedback score's plummeted as neutral or negative feedback - if I recall correctly she never had any negative feedback previously. I don't know her reasons, of course, as I don't want to pry, but it's possible for sellers to appear to be still selling actively unless you look at their feedback in detail.

[theelench]

Yes ebay will still be the same, an over complicated mess heavily biased towards business sellers (correctly registered or not) who are willing to Sponsor their listings to be able to sell anything at all and these days increasingly useless for private sellers who are not.

Hysteria doesn't come into it, just the cold, hard logic of taking the time and effort to create around 50 one off listings, regularly 'refreshed' to try to get a bit of visibility and at the end of the year realising what a waste of time it was, having sold 4 items in total.

13 years ago when I first started buying glass for my collection on ebay it could boast of around 15K listings in the glass niche that I buy in.  About 5 years ago that number had fallen to about 10K.  This morning I was researching a price for a listing (elsewhere) and the number of listings (if ebay's figures can be believed) are now 6K+, including all the pages of miss-placed, wrongly ascribed by the use of incorrect IS almost random, mostly modern items.   Lets say the real figure might now be somewhere around 5K.

The truth is more likely to be that two thirds of the listings have gone because private sellers have been giving-up on ebay for years and I would suggest that private sellers in many niche areas have seen a similar decline if they know anything much about their own area of interest.

This was the variety of searched for items that brought buyers flocking to ebay, although often dismissed by business sellers of modern tat as 'stagnant, unsaleable rubbish'.  

So now ebay's latest panic effort at reversing the trend is to copy a site designed to sell second-hand clothes because it's previous strategy of 'Focus Categories' is starting to fail visibly.  Having thrown away the booming sales of collectables  that brought so many buyers to ebay, they are now going to try (IMO too late) to revive the site by turning it into the worlds second-hand clothes market.

I'm now officially recognised as the sort of seller that buyers need protecting from and am too stupid to arrange my own deliveries without ebay's interference.  Although I've run a spotless account for over a decade and have the FB to prove it.

Yes, I've gone. (You can check my listings if you want to, but do check my Sold listings if there are any on it as my last sale was months ago.)  I doubt very much I'll be back, so you can check after the 4th to see if I am.  Whether or not ebay wants private sellers to leave is really a moot point.  They've turned the site into somewhere that (IMO) no right minded private seller would put up with.  It's now just a horrible place to sell.