its not free to sell - false advertising and needs to be taken down.

[byclickingsubmit]

"It’s now free to sell. What you earn, you keep. We removed fees for private sellers in all categories," 

Once you sell and item there is a fee applied. Its called a "Buyers Fee".

We removed fees for private sellers means, there will be no fees for private sellers.

When i list an item, even before it sells. Ebay add a FEE to that item.

Fees are still applied to the seller, they may not be responsible for paying this fee but one is applied to private sellers. so this needs to be changed as you stated youve removed fees.

Just because you called it a buyers fee, its sell applied to the seller.

[bzmotman]

"until ebay started grassing us all up to hmrc" - I think you mean "until ebay complied with the law".

Obviously this has the potential to affect businesses pretending to be private sellers unless they are correctly declaring their Business to HMRC.

Personally I am in favour of all sellers paying the correct level of tax & complying with the appropriate Consumer Protection legislation.

[superchallenge]

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@ebtyson wrote:

Under advertising law, you can't mislead and claim a technically.

The seller doesn't get all the money paid buy the buyer, so there is a fee to sell. The price of an item as viewed by a buyer is increased above the price a seller will receive directly impacting sale of the item. Higher price == less sales.

If the "buyer" fee was 50% would you still claim it's free to sell?

Yes. Because it would be free to sell. It would not be free to buy. As has already been explained to you.

This really isn't complicated.

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@ebtyson wrote:

Private sellers aren't paying tax, there is no VAT,  it makes no difference whatsoever who eBay claims is paying the fee. It's all a marketing scam and needs to be stopped.

Stop accepting companies taking the P out of you.

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eBay isn't "claiming" that buyers are paying the fee. Buyers are quite literally paying the fee. Private seller sells an item for £10...they get £10. The buyer pays £11.60 (or whatever it is.)

£11.60 is more money than £10.00.

£1.60 more, in fact. And that £1.60 came out of the buyer's wallet and went directly to...eBay. The seller never saw it or had possession of it, and was never asked for it by eBay. Because...get this...the seller was not charged!

It's crazy, I know, but it's about the only thing eBay have done recently that is actually REALLY clear and easy to understand.

[dch2112011]

Your flogging a dead horse unfortunately !

[superchallenge]

Pretty much. Some people can't be helped 🙂

[kath3735_wxmjn]

it is not e bay 'grassing' anyone up, it is a legal requirement for them to give the information to HMRC.   Depends of course on what kind of seller you are as to whether the government will take any of the money.  Genuine private sellers should be ok, just pseudo ones that have anything to fear. 

[kath3735_wxmjn]

and it would not be taken into consideration by HMRC when considering whether to tax someone or not (at least it should not be!)

[baibun-50]

Yeah I just got an offer for an item but I can’t complete the order because I have to pay fees on a “free to sell” website absolute bull*bleep* 

[superchallenge]

The buyer pays the fees.

What fee are you being asked to pay?

[therenewalworkshopltd]

So if you have to pay these extra fees, why have you cancelled the sale and relisted the item?

There are no extra fees.  Unless you have made the choice to pay for free postage, there is nothing extra to be paid.

[baibun-50]

The person cancelled because she was too far away to collect and fyi she
paid 40 and I was getting 37.50? That’s not free to sell

[lucy_farmer]

'...fyi she paid 40 and I was getting 37.50? ..'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What price was the item listed for?

Did you do any 'promotions'?

[therenewalworkshopltd]

When buyers make an offer and the BPF fee is there, the offer includes that fee.
In just the same way that your actual sale price, has the BPF added to it.

So you have obviously not accounted for this when accepting the offer.

You have accepted an offer of £40 and Ebay has deducted the fee from the sale.
So what have actually sold it at, is £37.50.  I'm assuming those figures are correct, as I'm not going to check them.

Therefore, the buyer has paid Ebay £2.50 in fees.  And you get your asking price.

I do agree that this is not very clear, but it is what it is.
And you are getting a sale with no fees.  

But this does just boil down to the fact that you don't understand how the fees work.

[collectors201010]

Previously, if you sold an item for £10, you might get £8.50 after seller fees. Now, to sell a similar item you need to drop your listing price to £8.50 that the sale price doesn't go up from £10 and cause buyers going elsewhere.

These are just example numbers and not accurate fees, but illustrate that the seller doesn't win anything in the new system.

[superchallenge]

Using inaccurate numbers as an example doesn't illustrate anything at all other than "I chose these numbers solely so that I can make my point, which may or may not have any standing in reality."

If you had used accurate fees and not just pulled random numbers out of the air, you'd see that the seller "wins" because they get more money than they used to.

Old system: £10.00 sale, £1.61 to eBay, £8.38 to the seller.

BPF: £10.00 sale, listed at £8.91 so it shows as £10.00, £1.09 from the buyer to eBay, £8.91 to the seller.

£8.91 is more than £8.38.

And that's with the original 75p  + 4% calculation. With the most recent change to the 10p + variable percentage calculation, the seller would do even better.

[jward5453]

To actually sell the item you have to drop the price to counter the fact that the buyer has to now pay a fee. Therefore you are still paying the fee or the buyer wouldn't buy your product. Massive con

[therenewalworkshopltd]

No, that's not the case at all.
Other than a relatively short period of time where there were free fees completely, you have always had to pay fees on Ebay.

The fact of the matter is, with the BPF, the actual amount of fees paid, is LESS than it used to be for private sellers.

So yes, the buyer has to pay a fee, which is added on to the price.

However, when the fee was included, you had to increase your price to end up with the same money!

So by saying that, you are being extremely short sighted and don't understand how it works.