Facebook Marketplace will begin charging some sellers for the first time from January

Former_MSE_Sophie

Facebook is making sweeping changes to Marketplace that will see the online buying and selling hub charging users for the first time if they choose to post items directly to customers via the platform. 

Read the full story:

Facebook Marketplace will begin charging some sellers for the first time from January

If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply.

soolin

This has been in place in the US for over a year now and I have been mentioning on threads that this was expected to be rolled out in the UK at some point. I can’t find any announcement yet though, MSE is there a link yet please?

In the US there are some real issues, but many of them are due to the difference in buyer protection rules, however people are finding claw backs to their payments after several months with no way of finding out what for, withheld payments for no stated reason, and no way of contacting anyone at FB sales. Fingers crossed any bugs will be ironed out before it is launched here.

I really would like to see a link though to the proposed UK roll out to see how it differs to that in the US to take into account the difference in buyer/seller rules.

My interest is that I am a fairly large seller on Facebook marketplace , around 80% of my items are posted so it will affect me. 

Spoonie_Turtle

Yikes.  I've bought on Fb marketplace using PayPal and was confident with that, knew what I was doing and what to expect.  This is just throwing yet something else in the mix - and requiring payment *through* Facebook itself could put a LOT of people off.  I'm not sure I'd be happy to, to be honest.

Hopefully groups can continue to buy and sell on their own pages without having to go through this scheme.

Spoonie_Turtle

Yikes.  I've bought on Fb marketplace using PayPal and was confident with that, knew what I was doing and what to expect.  This is just throwing yet something else in the mix - and requiring payment *through* Facebook itself could put a LOT of people off.  I'm not sure I'd be happy to, to be honest.

Hopefully groups can continue to buy and sell on their own pages without having to go through this scheme.

soolin

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Yikes.  I've bought on Fb marketplace using PayPal and was confident with that, knew what I was doing and what to expect.  This is just throwing yet something else in the mix - and requiring payment *through* Facebook itself could put a LOT of people off.  I'm not sure I'd be happy to, to be honest.

Hopefully groups can continue to buy and sell on their own pages without having to go through this scheme.

A lot of groups are already having issues with Facebook , two of my most used sites will not accept ads if they also get uploaded to marketplace , so stuff has to be listed, then Immediately edited to remove selling feature. It is near impossible to list now without the selling feature on which automatically uploads it to marketplace and will therefore put it in the scope of their charge of it sells and is posted. You know me I can’t always explain things well, but the issue in the US is that something is uploaded to say a book site showing 10 dollars for the book and 8 dollars postage , and ends up in marketplace. Buyer buys item through marketplace and pays Facebook and then seller is stuck waiting for their payment, even though it was only meant to go to a book site where a different payment method could be handled between buyer and seller direct. 

It’s not the cost I object to, it’s the system, PayPal costs me to use on marketplace so my sales aren’t free anyway, I just like to have control. That’s why I want to see the official link from MSE so I can see how similar this is to the US system. 

Spoonie_Turtle

soolin said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Yikes.  I've bought on Fb marketplace using PayPal and was confident with that, knew what I was doing and what to expect.  This is just throwing yet something else in the mix - and requiring payment *through* Facebook itself could put a LOT of people off.  I'm not sure I'd be happy to, to be honest.

Hopefully groups can continue to buy and sell on their own pages without having to go through this scheme.

A lot of groups are already having issues with Facebook , two of my most used sites will not accept ads if they also get uploaded to marketplace , so stuff has to be listed, then Immediately edited to remove selling feature. It is near impossible to list now without the selling feature on which automatically uploads it to marketplace and will therefore put it in the scope of their charge of it sells and is posted. You know me I can’t always explain things well, but the issue in the US is that something is uploaded to say a book site showing 10 dollars for the book and 8 dollars postage , and ends up in marketplace. Buyer buys item through marketplace and pays Facebook and then seller is stuck waiting for their payment, even though it was only meant to go to a book site where a different payment method could be handled between buyer and seller direct. 

It’s not the cost I object to, it’s the system, PayPal costs me to use on marketplace so my sales aren’t free anyway, I just like to have control. That’s why I want to see the official link from MSE so I can see how similar this is to the US system. 

Yes, I think I understand what you're saying.  I'm in a couple of groups and we haven't had this problem yet thankfully, selling posts are just normal posts with details and prices in the text.  Occasionally they come up as marketplace things but I don't know how; there doesn't seem to be any correlation between people using the app or a browser.

Understandable, I also sell (through the groups) via PayPal which have higher fees than this 2%, but like you it's just having control and knowing what's happening.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

soolin said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Yikes.  I've bought on Fb marketplace using PayPal and was confident with that, knew what I was doing and what to expect.  This is just throwing yet something else in the mix - and requiring payment *through* Facebook itself could put a LOT of people off.  I'm not sure I'd be happy to, to be honest.

Hopefully groups can continue to buy and sell on their own pages without having to go through this scheme.

 two of my most used sites will not accept ads if they also get uploaded to marketplace , so stuff has to be listed, then Immediately edited to remove selling feature.  

Do you mean that the group rule is that items for sale must be exclusively offered within the group and not also within Marketplace? 

If so isn't this a decision made by the group rather than Facebook, one that the group would have to abandon if Facebook force all listings into marketplace as default without the option to remove?  

Out of interest how does the group benefit from this requirement? I presume they get more members but other than preserving the interests of collectors is there anything to profit from by doing this? 

soolin

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

soolin said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Yikes.  I've bought on Fb marketplace using PayPal and was confident with that, knew what I was doing and what to expect.  This is just throwing yet something else in the mix - and requiring payment *through* Facebook itself could put a LOT of people off.  I'm not sure I'd be happy to, to be honest.

Hopefully groups can continue to buy and sell on their own pages without having to go through this scheme.

 two of my most used sites will not accept ads if they also get uploaded to marketplace , so stuff has to be listed, then Immediately edited to remove selling feature.  

Do you mean that the group rule is that items for sale must be exclusively offered within the group and not also within Marketplace? 

If so isn't this a decision made by the group rather than Facebook, one that the group would have to abandon if Facebook force all listings into marketplace as default without the option to remove?  

Out of interest how does the group benefit from this requirement? I presume they get more members but other than preserving the interests of collectors is there anything to profit from by doing this? 

Most of the specialist groups I use have the rule to ensure that stuff isn’t double posted, so if you list it on their group then it can’t be listed anywhere else. Also apparently if the stuff is picked up by marketplace it causes issues for the admin, although they have never specified what those issues are. I tend to list there first, leave it up for a few days and then pull the listing and post elsewhere. 

anotheruser

I can see sales dropping off.
Most people do it because it's free.

Maybe it's all those people saying "yes, sold on Facebook" that have encouraged this!

martindow

There's an article in today's Guardian about this

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/nov/06/facebook-marketplace-to-start-charging-some-uk-sellers

It refers back to MSE rather than FB, although they have contacted FB for comments.

soolin

martindow said:

There's an article in today's Guardian about this

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/nov/06/facebook-marketplace-to-start-charging-some-uk-sellers

It refers back to MSE rather than FB, although they have contacted FB for comments.

The only other article I can find is an article in a Welsh newspaper that also quotes MSE with no other source. It’s a shame as I can find any source and I would like to read what has actually been said.