Ebay Fees Are Insane

@cwb8539

Yes, the exposure is good, but sometimes it seems like a flea market with 10,000,000 tables and 10,000,000 customers.

Don't have exact figures, but final value fees have gone up considerably in the last decade. And the new change of charging fees on the shipping really bugs me. I know that a lot of people abused the system by making their items nearly free with huge shipping charges, but the main issue was that ebay charged too much for anyone to make money. Apparently ebay doesn't see it that way.

Senex is right with a max of 250 being charged. The fee is a little high on lower priced items as they seem to have gotten rid of the fee scale by price.

The shipping one does bother me more though since you lose money every time if you charge actual shipping costs. I'm happy they did implement the new shipping pricer though. Before that if you sold DVDs or video games you couldnt charge more than 3 dollars even if you used tracking so youd be out a buck or 2 everytime. doesn't seem like itd be that hard to have a program that gets rid of BIN items for .01 penny and then 30 dollar shipping which is what got them to start charging shipping fees too, or to just not charge shipping fees on items were a specific shipping method is selected

I'm still wrapping my mind around the concept of looking at shipping cost as income. Granted that is exactly what some people did. But legally? When I worked for a major retail company we did a lot of things we knew were illegal. The culture of the time was that we would do it until it cost us more to stop. In other words; until we lost a Court case. And sometimes not even then.

A really silly example. When we opened a new store in California there were some Oak trees on the development site. Now in Ca you can't just cut down a tree, and especially not in Marin county. EACH tree needed its separate assessment statement which typically cost $25,000 EACH. The fine to just cut them down? $250.........

We also settled out of Court a lot. Because if you go to Court and lose...well that's not too bad. But it sets a precedence and if you...heaven forbid...lose a second court battle; the cost can become exponential.

Plus the legal fees can be more than the settlement.

But I agree shipping shouldnt be treated as income when a legitimate shipping method is selected and its not a type youre own flat rate

Quote: "And for higher-dollar items, they still aren't at the size of the hit you'd be taking from any other major auction house."

I used Stacks Bowers on a higher end item and I was very happy with the 5% that they took. Good for a seller but not so great for the buyer (i.e.: buyers premium)So for a change the seller gets a break, unlike at ebay.
And also do not forget the 9% that they charge you also
on the shipping cost. So figure in that 9% to your own ship
charges.

Where did you pull that number from, you have no clue what my profits are unless you're peeking at my books. If you are referring to fees, they are no where near that, your just making stuff up. (unless you're selling very low dollar items which is just not business smart.)




There are some, but to claim "pretty much everything" is yet another ludicrous statement.

I was on ebay almost the year ut started and sold a lot there. ebay became the giant it was by catering to the desire for people to have the "world's Largest Garage Sale." The prices to list were minimal (like a quarter total). The fees taken on the profit were also a lot lower. You also could contact the second highest (third etc) bidders if you had another of the same object for sale and sell it to them without ebay interfering.

THEN they decided to abandon the model that made them so large and became GREEDbay. In the old ebay model, their acquisition of Paypal would been touted as a reason for people to use ebay even more and been a free service. But not nowadays - no - Greedbay now gets you double whammy by charging Paypal fees also.

I get a kick out of people who were not around when ebay was a GREAT service standing up for ebay's current greedy and selfish mindset. Just because they lowered their standards to the level of other systems does not mean criticism is not justified when comparing the now Greedbay with the great place ebay was. My personal experience with ebay (for all these years) makes me praise of ebay seem akin to someone telling a victim that everything is just great b/c a thief only took half of the victim's silver and not all of it.

The underlying point here is that they ebay COULD (and DID) operate in a much more user friendly way without trying to milk the users for everything they could/can get. I wonder where they would now be had they kept up with the model they had that made them so big. I honestly believe their profits would be even better for them.