eBay fees a mess for you too?

[invisible]

I've been trying to make sense of eBay's fees but I find them too confusing.

On one hand, eBay lists their fees here: Standard selling fees

On the other hand, eBay offers this neat fee calculator: eBay.ca : Fee Calculator

So let's make believe that we want to sell an electronic item for $900, fixed price. Let's say shipping will be $20. Following the first link above, here's my calculation of the fees:
$0.50 Insertion fee
$47 ($3.50 for the first $50, plus $43.50 [5% of the other $850+$20 of the shipping])
TOTAL: $47.50

However, using the fee calculator of the second link, the total is $58.20.

Am I doing something wrong, or eBay is a flipping mess?

 

[Majeed Badizadegan]

Welcome to FeeBay. Enjoy your fees.

 

[sm4him]

I came up with $47.50 both ways.

But it DOES get kinda confusing, when you factor in whether you want a subtitle, or a Gallery Plus listing, or bolded or...

 

[invisible]

I came up with $47.50 both ways.

I've just realized that I should've chosen the "Technology" category in the fee calculator. Now I get $47.50 both ways.

But it DOES get kinda confusing, when you factor in whether you want a subtitle, or a Gallery Plus listing, or bolded or...

They even charge you if you want the auction to start at a specific time. It's like Majeed said above: FeeBay.

All things considered, it looks like their fees – combined with the PayPal fees – add up to approximately 12-15% depending on the type of sale and the expected sale price. If we Canadians follow eBay's strong recommendation to list our item in USD, then the cost of selling ends up being even higher (because eBay/PayPal kill us with the currency conversion).

Neat little game.

 

[bratkinson]

I've been an irregular seller on ebay of this and that for over 10 years. But their fees are really getting bad. A year ago, I sold my then 2-month old 24-70 f2.8L for a bit more than I paid for it. I thought I was ahead. Then, SIX WEEKS LATER (yes, 6 WEEKS!), my bank account goes into overdraft for the bloomin' $146 charge from Paypal for ebay fees for that lens! Thank you, ebay, for screwing me when I wasn't looking!

So now, in the past 30 days, I've sold 5 photography related items for a grand total of $406 and they're hitting me for $49 in fees! This is BEYOND ridiculous! And that $406 was with free shipping on each!

 

[HughGuessWho]

Ebay no longer caters to the small guy like they did when they first started out (you know, us folks that put ebay on the map). Now days they cater to the "Super Sellers" and the like, who, by the way, gets a much better rate than you do.

 

[2WheelPhoto]

Craigslist and others are killing 'em

 

[Steve5D]

I haven't sold a thing on eBay in years. I've purchased a few things, but I just can't bring myself to sell anything there anymore. Just about every forum I'm on (photography, guitars, watches, etc) has a "FOR SALE" section, so eBay has become unnecessary...

 

[invisible]

Ebay no longer caters to the small guy like they did when they first started out (you know, us folks that put ebay on the map). Now days they cater to the "Super Sellers" and the like, who, by the way, gets a much better rate than you do.

This "catering to the Super Sellers" thing might be about to change. In a couple weeks eBay will overhauling their fee structure, moving towards a fixed 10% fee (instead of a floating fee rate that currently depends on the final value of the sale). There will be many other changes, some of the most drastic affecting the bigger guys more, because it will also change the cost of having a store – it looks like the big guys will have to commit to yearly "contracts", and if they decide to leave early they will get penalized badly – you know, a mechanism similar to the one that beloved cell phone companies use. If you can access the eBay seller forums, you'll learn that the power sellers are not happy, at all.

So now, in the past 30 days, I've sold 5 photography related items for a grand total of $406 and they're hitting me for $49 in fees! This is BEYOND ridiculous! And that $406 was with free shipping on each!

Good timing! With the new fee structure, you would be hit for $52 instead of $49.

Interestingly enough, the email that eBay sent their sellers had this subject line: "Spring Seller Update: Free fixed price listings and lower fees for you!". The "lower fees" part is not even deceptive advertising – it's a blatant lie, one that could result in huge fines if the FCC learns about it.

Craigslist and others are killing 'em

I don't think that's true at all. However, this new fee structure might be the tipping point that would make sellers want to leave eBay for greener pastures. This is the time for eBay's competitors to pounce, much like Google+ did when Facebook started abusing its users with unacceptable privacy-policy blunders. We'll see.

 

[Overread]

Ebay is slowly shifting from a formal online garage sale site into a proper full fledged shopping mall. I think that some of their new policies, such as protecting and honouring all sales on their service are costing them and as such increased fees are going to be part of paying for that added protection.

I also think that they are seeing a lot of power-sellers who are basically online shops running through their site and they want a slightly bigger slice of that pie. The backlash is many of those power-sellers might well have just enough reputation of their own by now to actually move off-ebay and run their own shop website (indeed I've seen several run joint shop setups so that they still benefit from ebays vast advertising and market presence, whilst also having their own shop external to ebay)