Selling on eBay, so naive!

[The Watcher]

Have not sold anything on eBay since 2006!

So, went to list a Buy-It-Now item, and quickly calculated costs etc...

To sell an item for £25 with p/p cost of £3.50, total £28.50, eBay take £3.25 (0.40p list fee, plus 10% of total sale), paypal take £1.17 (3.4%), p/p cost is £3.50, so I would be left with £20.58!!!!

When did eBay start taking a slice out of the the p/p?

Shocked, but not surprised!

[Roger Theloger]

When people started selling items for 1p with £40 p&p.

[The Watcher]

So eBay hit everyone!

Might as well sell as p/p free, and raise item price to £30

(quick Royal mail p/p calc of £3.70 second class signed for)

[Roger Theloger]

Yep couldn't stop high postage. Don't even look at books IIRC there is a fixed maximum p&p charge no matter how big the book is. (or is that amazon?)

[Cosmotiger]

Yep, there is a set maximum postage on books, regardless of what it would actually cost. Not really worth it to clean out the closet and put the stuff on eBay anymore.

[Hermit]

The charge on postage was just another cash-grab by ebay and has pissed-off all sellers. The restrictions on postage prices was more than enough to deal with those who tried to avoid ebay fees by hiking up postage.

Ebay really is getting to be a shit place to sell things, which is why I tend to always seriously consider off-ebay offers from buyers. More than I used to do, in fact. Fuck 'em, I say!

Ebay just appears to be in the early stages of decline. I can see that getting worse in the next 5 years. It wouldn't surprise me if they sold it off to concentrate on the paypal side of the business (which originally grew on the back of ebay). I hope they do and someone who knows what they're doing can put ebay back on track. Then I hope paypal falls on it's arse as everyone on ebay abandons it.

[Doremi Fasol Latido]

How much is it to list an item with a BIN option these days? Last time I sold stuff it cost a mere 5p extra for the BIN but I'm sure when I checked a couple of years ago it had gone up to something daft like 50p. I didn't bother listing the models worth £3.

[mcfonz]

Would I be right in saying that if you were self employed you could claim back some of the costs as expenses?

In which case it's really targeting people selling their tat off isn't it?

[Hermit]

Yes, and yes.

Ebay's more interested in their business sellers these days. But even they're dropping off becauase of the restrictions ebay imposes. The casual seller barely gets a look in, yet they were the ones that made ebay. Mainly because they'd sell their various tat and with the money they made on it they would buy from other sellers. That money cycle brought in constant revenue for ebay and it grew because of it.