eBay "Buyer Protection Fees" (New charges for buyers from private sellers) - Details just recieved

spud17

soolin said:

savergrant said:

First listings under the new regime, a couple of old laptop chargers. When setting the buy-it-now price I got a message 'UK bidders will pay £1.06 buyer protection, so I had the opportunity to tweak the price.

Thank you, that’s  handy to know , that makes setting a start price easier for those who want to show a ‘set’ price for a potential buyer, rather than an odd amount. 

I've just been looking at newly listed items on one of my saved searches (electronics) and I'm seeing strange starting prices.
This bears out what has been already stated.
e.g. I'm seeing a start price of £57.95, which works back to the seller setting a £55 starting price.
Bidding has now gone back to round figures.

savergrant

spud17 said:

soolin said:

savergrant said:

First listings under the new regime, a couple of old laptop chargers. When setting the buy-it-now price I got a message 'UK bidders will pay £1.06 buyer protection, so I had the opportunity to tweak the price.

Thank you, that’s  handy to know , that makes setting a start price easier for those who want to show a ‘set’ price for a potential buyer, rather than an odd amount. 

I've just been looking at newly listed items on one of my saved searches (electronics) and I'm seeing strange starting prices.
This bears out what has been already stated.
e.g. I'm seeing a start price of £57.95, which works back to the seller setting a £55 starting price.
Bidding has now gone back to round figures.

I guess the start price is based on the minimum the seller will accept plus ebay fees but if it bids higher ebay will simply deduct their fees from what the buyer bids and pay the rest to the seller (as they did before free selling). If the seller has set a reserve that might have odd pence on it.

MDMD

Sorry if it’s been mentioned already but just noted my items have gone up in price - and on the app when I list it says buyer protection fee will apply. It looks like they have rolled it out to more than electronics now.

i have an item in books on at 9.99 now showing as 11.11

noitsnotme

MDMD said:

Sorry if it’s been mentioned already but just noted my items have gone up in price - and on the app when I list it says buyer protection fee will apply. It looks like they have rolled it out to more than electronics now.

i have an item in books on at 9.99 now showing as 11.11

I’ve got one listed in books that also now has the buyer fee added.  None of my other listings have it yet though.

MDMD

Looks like it’s being expanded already then.

As a buyer it seems overkill to need “protection” when I’m spending £4-£5. I’d personally prefer to be able to opt out for low value items. 

As it is, there’s a low value item (also books) in my watchlist, which has gone up in price, so has been deleted as cheaper to buy from a business!

Phil_82

Yeah, not surprising at all! eBay's been gradually increasing fees for a while now. It’s frustrating how they keep chipping away at private sellers' profits. That extra £0.75 on top of the 4% feels like they’re really squeezing every penny. Makes you wonder if it's still worth selling there sometimes!

soolin

Phil_82 said:

Yeah, not surprising at all! eBay's been gradually increasing fees for a while now. It’s frustrating how they keep chipping away at private sellers' profits. That extra £0.75 on top of the 4% feels like they’re really squeezing every penny. Makes you wonder if it's still worth selling there sometimes!

There really isn't any profit though for private sellers to worry about if they are just selling on unwanted items.

It is annoying to have to pay any fees at all, but as has been said, private sellers have had 3 months of completely free selling, I don't think anyone really thought that would continue for ever. I agree that some things might no longer be worth selling, but that's up to sellers, and I certainly deleted a lot of low cost items that had been hanging around for a while, and some I listed just for the free selling period- and donated them all to a charity shop, or bundled them up to make the costs more attractive to buyers. 

se2020

They are expanding the categories covered as of yesterday.
 Vehicle parts and accessories &
 Business office and industrial are both included now. (+ maybe others I haven't looked at)

Sold one item from each of the above categories this morning. Apart from the payment hold the sales page looks the same as normal.  No mention at all about the buyer having paid any fees.

Neither of these items seem to be showing the expected price though.
One I listed at £22.49. It shows on ebay as £24.11
I make it 22.49+4% = 23.38 + 75p = £24.13

So 2p cheaper than it 'should be' 
Sort of good news but makes it hard if I wanted to list an item with the buyers price at 23.99!

GadgetGuru

eBay should make this optional. 
So the item is listed at the actual seller's price. 
During checkout the buyer has the choice to opt in and pay extra to be covered by buyer protection.
Either that, or eBay should list the seller price and the buyer protection price separately rather than 'hiding' it within the listed price. More transparency would be nice. 

soolin

GadgetGuru said:

eBay should make this optional. 
So the item is listed at the actual seller's price. 
During checkout the buyer has the choice to opt in and pay extra to be covered by buyer protection.
Either that, or eBay should list the seller price and the buyer protection price separately rather than 'hiding' it within the listed price. More transparency would be nice. 

Or they could just rename it buyers premium, same result same income for buyers- and that's more of an industry standard term.