BEWARE OF SELLING LOW VALUE ITEMS ON EBAY!!!!!! DON'T DO IT

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Why is this thread not on the Ebay board?

Hasbeen

duncanthedog said:

Why is this thread not on the Ebay board?

I suggested that and even gave a link on post 2

But was as usual ignored. LOL 

But looking at the OPs posts perhaps the Rant board would have been better?

p00

It used to be that people made money from the postage ie 99p but £5 postage, as fees weren't charged on it then. Occasionally I still see excessive postage fees for some reason.
I see no point in selling anything for 99p less fees plus the effort of packaging and going to the post office.
Personally I either sell on FB or donate to charity, or many times I sell an item and donate the money to the PDSA or Cat Protection.
p00 x

soolin

I agree. A 99p start is rarely a good idea unless you have a super popular item and can guarantee on getting lots of bids. It is an especially bad idea when the postage is expensive as you’ll pay more in fees than the item was worth, my own rule is never even consider a start price that is lower than the postage cost and fees combined, so for a parcel (and the fees on this suggest parcel size as postage would be appear to be in the £5 range) I wouldn’t sell anything with a start price lower than at least £4.

I got a very nice book a few months ago, paid 99p and £3 postage, so buyer probably barely broke even , the daft thing is that a week later the seller listed another book at a 99p and I won again- so they had either under estimated their fees or were happy to make a few pennies. 

Rantband

OP you obviously had and still have very little idea of the charges you are paying,as molerat pointed out the Ebay managed payments work out slightly cheaper than the previous payments using PayPal.

RFW

I'm assuming it largely costs Ebay the same to "manage" the sale of a 99p item as it does the sale of a £1000 item.

Bundle items together. 10 x 99p items in one lot wouldn't cost you much more in final value fees and would be substantially less than £8.

jon81uk

ayeates said:

99p was the start price of the auction item if you read my post properly.  I don't really think I should be giving out explicit financial details on here to be honest, that's none of your business.  Again if you read my post I gave an example of one particular item which sold (at the auction start price!) of 99p   I was charged 80 pence in fees against that item.  I can't really say it much more clearly than that (there were a few but not many) - anything of a lower value the ratio between ebay and the customer is now really poor though since they started paying directly.  This was only an example.  I think this stems from the new fixed item fee plus the fact they charge you selling fees on postage and packing costs, even though you don't actually receive that money, it goes straight to the post office or to Hermes.................plus a percentage of the sales fee.  I have sold on ebay for years and years but it's just not worth it anymore.

I'm glad you have a bin, there really is no need to be so rude and mock people trying to supplement their income.  I obviously didn't plan to sell the item at 99p but you win some items and you lose some.  What I object to is ebay taking 80% of sales profit for any item as this is nothing short of extortion and I wanted to warn people about it.  

No one forced you to start the auction at 99p, it is up to you to work out the minimum acceptable sale price and start the auction at that price.
The fees have been what they are for years, it was 10% to eBay and 2.9% and 30p to PayPal, now 12.8% and 30p to eBay. You should have realised years ago what is a good start price.
I have occasionally done a 99p start to get rid of something, but I add 50p to the postage to cover the fee on postage (so Royal Mail second class parcel I charge the buyer £3.50 and I pay £3 to Royal Mail, 45p to eBay and 5p covers the packaging). That way I know that even if it sells for 99p I still make 56p getting rid of that thing. Yes it isn't really worth the effort to make 50p, but at least someone might get more use of the clothing than I am.
But most of the time the lowest I go is £1.49 start as then the profit is £1.

GadgetGuru

Just sold an item at £4
Postage is £3.99
Using the new payment system, fee's came to a total of 0.81p

jon81uk

IftiBashir said:

Just sold an item at £4
Postage is £3.99
Using the new payment system, fee's came to a total of 0.81p

Are you sure? Should be £1.32 assuming you are a private seller not business.

Old fees would have been 80p to eBay and 53p to PayPal.

kalsha

jon81uk said:

IftiBashir said:

Just sold an item at £4
Postage is £3.99
Using the new payment system, fee's came to a total of 0.81p

Are you sure? Should be £1.32 assuming you are a private seller not business.

Old fees would have been 80p to eBay and 53p to PayPal.

I think he means that it sold for £4 which was including postage.   Ebay fees on £4 would be 81p  which is 12.8% of £4 +30p.   I am guessing he did not charge extra for postage?