"I am writing to complain about the recent changes that eBay.co.uk has made
to their fee structure regarding postage costs.
They have recently added a new " final value fee" of 10% for every p&p
cost a seller has on their items. Postage and packing is both a service (not
provided by eBay) and an expense incurred by the seller for shipping costs and
packaging materials. Bearing this in mind, surely eBay are not legally allowed
to incur a fee against this cost.Hopefully you are already aware of this new fee implementation and Trading Standards are working towards eradicating this malpractice and resolving the issue"
Definitely can't be true i thought, so i looked at my seller fees for last month. Not wrong, so how come i hadn't been made aware of it ? I suppose it came in one of those "amendments to your eBay seller agreement" emails we are always getting, must be the one that told us "The Seller" will hereinafter be called "The Exploited".
So i sell a theoretical cylinder head for £200 via eBay, they take £20 (10%), fair enough, they provide the website and advertising and present my sales to millions of viewers. My buyer is in Australia so shipping is £100 but now they are taking £10 of that, why ? WTF has the shipping costs (paid by the buyer to whatever shipping company we use) got to do with them. Surely they have no right to do this, its just not fair. Of course sellers will now add to the shipping costs to cover it, the buyers will complain and give us a shitty star rating for postage costs and maybe bad feedback, we will complain to eBay and, as always, they will ignore our complaint. BASTARDS.
I'm not sure if this applies to other countries or whether its just eBay UK but check your fees, write to Watchdog, Rip off Britain, The Monopolies Commission and your MP or better still find their address and send them a shit in a box with a little flag in it saying "here is your 10%", yes sounds amusing but just imagine if we all did that ?.
3 comments:
Couldn't you get the shipping paid separately?
they seem to have dropped my listing fees ..but put this on which works out more in the end ..but if you don't charge for post ie free you don't get charged ..I have had a word with them they advise sending items for free ?? WTF yep I think its all to do with the very big concerns who send out only new items ..e bay seem to have strayed away from the small seller and now only want to deal with the very big ie.. you can now buy and pay for an item from Argos through e bay and then collect from the shop !!?? I thought that's what you did anyway ..
well e bay have nailed me of late ..so its time to fight back
maessage is contact the seller and do a deal out side ...it happens all the time at proper auctions with real people !!
Yes its possible Jim but all hassle we dont need and the point is i dont think they can charge commission on someone else's postage, we will see, there are a lot of people fighting it.
Absolutely Jon. I got a note saying i could get all sorts of deals from eBay but only if i list as free postage, with heavy bike parts that's never going to be a goer. All my sales include details of my personal email address and phone number and i would always prefer to give a discount to the seller rather than pay the commission.
If there was a viable way of running my business without using them i would but for now i recon were stuck with it.
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