eBay and their fees...!?

Soldato
Joined
30 Dec 2004
Posts
3,388
Location
London
I've got a few things that need clearing out, so thought I'd pop over to eBay and get things listed.

Before spending time taking pictures etc, (thank god I did) I thought I'd look at the charges for selling. Their fees are ridiculous - 13.4% including paypal fees!!!

Is this recent? I knew their fees were high but looking at it, it looks like its had a repackage revamp (supermarket style, 500g to 400g with same price) and they've increased the fees dramatically.

Can anyone recommend any alternatives similar? 13.4% is ridiculous I think, plus its 35p per item after the 20th! :eek:
 

Full of chancers, timewasters and people who want to haggle. But to answer your question OP, there is no alternative to Ebay. No other site even comes close to the amount of traffic it gets and obviously they know this. You'll be getting similar fees on Amazon but depending on what your selling, buyers won't come and search for it on there.

Fees are how they make their money so its expected for them to be quite high if there is no competition about.
 
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It's high, but people usually put a reserve or start at a higher price to cover the costs. Often you will get more selling on ebay, and when the fees are taken off, you get about the same as selling on a forum or gumtree.
 
its been sat at 10% eBay fees up to a maximum of £40 for around 2-3 years, nothing new - if you get paid via PayPal then yeah another 3.4% on top ... I usually shift household stuff on local "for sale/swap in xxxx" facebook groups
 
Yeah, if you want to actually sell some stuff, ebay is right up there.

Local facebay groups can be good, failing that, gumtree is sometimes worth it, but a lot of time wasters on there too. That said, I have sold just about everything I have put up on gumtree, so it's not a bad place to start. If you can live with not understanding a single word of who calls you (my goods appear to be very popular with foreigners).
 
its been sat at 10% eBay fees up to a maximum of £40 for around 2-3 years, nothing new - if you get paid via PayPal then yeah another 3.4% on top ... I usually shift household stuff on local "for sale/swap in xxxx" facebook groups

iirc they put the maximum upto £75
 
The fees are so high it's not really worth selling on ebay, the % they take is so large you get more selling anywhere else.
 
Don't forget the 10% fee on postal charges as well. How the hell they can get away with that is beyond me. It's not as if they provide the service.
 
Ebay fee - 10% - Ebay also takes 10% cut on your delivery charge

Paypal fee - 3.4% + 20p per transaction

Private sellers can now have :

20 free listings per month - No insertion fees for auction or fixed price listings at any start price.

20 free Schedule listings per month for free.

So you can have 40 free listings per month now but the fee is still very high.
 
I thought it was actually 15% so I've been making a (small amount) more than I thought.

It's the same rate on postage isn't it?
 
That's just mental, I wonder how they've worked that one out then?

I know that's ridiculous but there is a good reason for it, its to stop seller listing the item for 99p with insane postage like £50 or up to the value the seller wants and thus avoiding ebay fee.

Too slow beaten to it.
 
It's for the business seller rates, they get really low charges as they have business accounts, less fess, can dell cheaper etc
 
Do they still do the free listing weekends? Frankly i've never sold anything on ebay, but i do seem to remember constantly getting spammed by them to advertise their free listing weekends.
 
Do they still do the free listing weekends? Frankly i've never sold anything on ebay, but i do seem to remember constantly getting spammed by them to advertise their free listing weekends.

A listing used to cost about 30p,you now get 30 free listings a month and the rest cost a bit more. The main cost is still the final value fee on the item. (eg 20p is nothing compared to 10% of a 90quid sale)
 
I'd imagine that's to combat all the people who use to set 99p items then ramp the postage up.

I assumed as much, however it still makes little sense as now everyone has to pay more. If they really wanted to curb that practice they would have just limited how much you can charge for postage depending on the item and category it was in. Which I think they did to some extent at one point.

So I personally don't buy that's actually why they did it.
 
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