eBay gone to pot?

The_Arbiter

The_Arbiter

The_Arbiter

Soldato
Joined
2 Jul 2019
Posts
2,699
There was quite a bit of noise about ebay charging buyers to buy, and now unfortunately ebay has forced Simple Delivery on people. So just seeing if anyone has found this to be a complete nuisance, and another step into ****************? I imagine many moved on years ago, but what's the general consensus?

I listed some items recently and have had to contact customer services 4 times for 3 items, all low value. The app is not giving notifications, one of my buyers had this issue. Ebay hides the address of your buyer sometimes, so you can't post manually. When a label is generated, you can't then arrange a collection via Royal Mail whilst still having them bring the label. Requests for RM to collect from a safe place don't appear to work. The 2D barcodes you are given to produce a label, mostly only appear to work at Royal Mail depots which nationally are only open 8-10am Mon-Fri, Sat 8-12. It feels far too difficult to sell low value items irregularly, or maybe that's point, they only want marketplace sellers.
 
As a buyer I find it as good as it always has been, I really rate eBay generally, and I think for low value items it's far better than using Amazon.

I wouldn't buy anything worth more than maybe £200 depending what it is, you have to be a bit savvy checking out the seller.

I heard as a seller it isn't great these days though...
 
The forced simple delivery is vile, it does not give you any options for special delivery or Signed delivery. Its always tracked 48, no signature.
 
The changes have been fantastic for private sellers imo. Did take a few months this year to enable all functionality as roll out phased.

Simple delivery is amazing, I have sold a fair number of my collectables (lego/action figures etc) since the changes and the time saved has been invaluable. Just select royal mail and exclude evri as an option. Buyer pays £3.60 - £4.80 for tracked 48/24 and insured which is way cheaper than normal retail pricing. You can select own courier too, just select exclude due to size.

Take qr code to any post office counter and job done.

Package well and happy buyers. The tracking notifications to buyers is all automated.

All insured regardless of value as part of buyer protection fee dealt with by ebay, managed payments often land in my acount late same day or early next and withdrawing to bank is instantaneous.

No more worry of PayPal charge backs, messing around with exporting to shipping chanel then uploading tracking etc.



Ref this can't select own option, it absolutely does now, even as private sellers you can select your own, unless you are a new seller/poor rating.

Simply exclude from simple delivery due to size weight during listing then add your own.
dave28 said:
The forced simple delivery is vile, it does not give you any options for special delivery or Signed delivery. Its always tracked 48, no signature.
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BUDFORCE said:
Yup **** PayPal.
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Those curve ball paypal charge backs etc were a real pain.

Also, no more having to wait for discount seller fee offers or paypal fee free weekends and messing around with having to time auctions to save the 10-20% fees.

Fee free for sellers in most categories and buyer protection fees scale well so not a ridiculous %.
 
It's been on a steady decline for a while, but some of the changes they've implemented recently have been pretty decent for private sellers.

Well it was until earlier this year when the government "side gig" regulations kicked in and eBay now need your National Insurance number to continue selling.
 
i haven't sold anything in a while but buy a fair bit from it, all low value items though.
when selling the customer is now charged a 'buyer protection fee', but this also means you can list for free and no final fee charges iirc?
haven't had experience of the simple delivery. it looks convenient on paper but will need to sell something to have an opinion
 
I still like eBay a lot. I sold a couple of things on there recently. However, the Simple Postage is ****. One of the items I sold, they arranged a DHL collection for with a 12 hour collection window. I organised my own postage separately, through work, and therefore couldn't get a receipt. So, my customer had his postage refunded and I'm out of pocket instead.

The rest of the experience is good though.
 
I dunno. I gave up selling on ebay about 20 years ago. I buy some things now and again. There's sometimes just what you need for a good price. But often it's very hard to find actual stuff and not just hoardes of automated bot listing from china. or America yes I'll buy this item for £40 and pay £276.00 import and shipping sure thing
 
As a buyer, no issue, but as a seller, I don't like the Simple Delivery as others have said here. Printed the label and waited for DHL to pick up the parcel. They made numerous failed attempts even though I was in every day. I was obviously letting my buyer down, so I bypassed the DHL process and ordered a ParcelForce shipping label (at my cost) and they came the following day no probs to pick it up. The next issue however is that I was able to add the ParcelForce tracking number but I wasn't able to amend or delete the DHL tracking number, so the eBay order now had 2 tracking numbers attached to it.
 
I was sceptical to begin with, but sold an item earlier this month, which wasn't delivered after 2 weeks. Buyer opened a case, but because I used simple shipping, Ebay handled it all, refunded them out of their own pocket within an hour, and I didn't have to mess around chasing RM for compensation. The postage was also a lot cheaper than had I bought it myself (bulky heavy item, would have been about £15, but only cost me £8 via eBay).
 
As a buyer I use ebay a fair amount for low value items. But I have an issue with couriers in my area. There are two very similar road names close to each other. So often my packages will get delivered to the wrong address and just left outside their door. So I wouldn't use ebay simple delivery as a buyer for anything over about £20. The risk is too high.
 
The_Arbiter said:
There was quite a bit of noise about ebay charging buyers to buy, and now unfortunately ebay has forced Simple Delivery on people. So just seeing if anyone has found this to be a complete nuisance, and another step into ****************? I imagine many moved on years ago, but what's the general consensus?
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Interesting you post this - I've also had some issues recently, from the seller point of view mostly.

I sell some very low value items on ebay, mostly under £4 - some a little higher. I wasn't aware that they had made Simple Delivery changes in September to be enforced across all Private Sellers, regardless of categories (apart from a few). Originally thought anything under £10 was excluded. Well I had this wrong, and about a week ago I found out Ebay was taken money for labels (Royal Mail) which I had never used (nor did I know money as taken).

To put this into perspective, item sold for £3.50 (with free postage) I would then go buy shipping via the RM integration (2nd class normal size post) £0.85p, all linked back to ebay so I can mark it as shipped on RM website. However, Ebay was also taking postage label costs, at a default size (as they don't let you change the dimensions) at a cost of £2.70 - the cheapest tracked. All in all, I was actually losing money sending the item.


Now I appreciate I should probably change to business account as I'm a reseller, however my profit is well below the £1k thresholds set elsewhere. I will likely make this change shortly, but what a royal pain. I have been promised the money back for the labels, total cost c£80 - let's see if it appears (mixed messages from support).
 
They’ve started pushing ads for Klarna to phone screens just in time for Xmas. Scumbags.

Between that and the incessant ‘Live Now!!1!1!’ notifications, I’m very close to uninstalling the app and just using the website from now on.
 
I (used to) buy lots of 2nd hand books from the US. Not any more- Ebay shipping prices are ridiculous from the US now.

I contacted a seller to see if I could reduce the £27 shipping cost for 2 books, to be told that's the ebay shipping scheme.edit: combined price of the two books was £11.
 
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