I found out via another forum that Ebay is now charging a fee to end an auction early this is likely to be equal the final value fee had the auction run it's course. Details here. http://pages.ebay.ca/sellerinformation/news/fallupdate2012b/earlyendingauctions.html I used to be a prolific seller on the bay and occasionally cancelled an auction for one reason or another so this on top of all the other sneaky fees like the postage one makes me even more sure that I very rarely now sell on the bay. Still a useful site for buying the bits and pieces I would not know where else to get. But selling not for me.
i very rarely use ebay unless im looking for something obscure. Rather put the money into the pockets of small business' rather than the bays.
It's also ebay Canada, and I'm sure ebay have different policies depending what country listing and trading takes place.
I only use ebay to buy stuff, not to sell any more, I disagree with having them take a cut of what it costs me to post something.
Do they really? Buggers. I presumed they took a cut of the sale price only and postage was exempt, for common sense reasons... I occasionally sell the odd thing on ebay but maybe i won't now
And once they've fleeced you with ebay fees you can then look forward to the fun that is paypal for sellers
They definitely take 10% of the total paid including P&P these days - postage used to be exempt but there were too many jokers selling items at 99p with all the value in the postage for that to continue. Ruined it for everybody else. As standard, if an item sells for £90 plus £10 P&P, PayPal will munch £3.60, and eBay will take £10 (plus any insertion fees/listing upgrades applicable). So the very most you'll get in your account before paying for postage is £86.40. If P&P actually cost £10 then you'd have lost a quarter of the value of the sale by the time the dust had settled.
EDITED - Yes they do! I've just looked at my account and for a HDD I sold recently it states clear as day in the seller account section they take 10% off my postage cost of £4
Yeah - I now add 10-15% to what I know postage costs will be so that I'm actually left with what it'll cost to post an item... As for charging to end an item early - I ended an item early not that long ago and was greeted with a warning message of sorts saying that if I was to do this too often (i.e. taking offers and then conducting the sale privately outside of ebay to avoid paying the fees) then they would charge me the final value fee to end the item then and there...
I never even realised. I was also stung recently by their 'maximum fee in category' postage limits - I sold a set of Hunter wellington boot things for my Mum -- cost us £14 or so to post, and yet the maximum ebay allowed me to charge was £11!
eBay are screwing us over at work as well, they're currently "looking at" upping the fee's attached to Commercial Selling. "Looking at" usually means they are putting them up and they're denying it until the last minute.
It'll do some good to have some real competition in this market space to rival ebay! PayPal as well for that matter.
Definitely. You can't not use PayPal if you're selling on eBay... For private sellers they seem to make a deal of saying that (unless you fancy up your listings particularly) that you'll only pay 10% fees without making it really clear that the 99% of the time you're paid by PayPal you'll lose another ~4%...
And unless you sell with some frequency paypal also reserves the right to impound your money for a period that can last up to several months to make it easier to live up to their policy of always siding with the buyer.
Never understood why Google never took them on when they banned google checkout. There is a massive demand for a site like ebay was when it started out.
