@love_of_cars wrote:
That sounds okay except that it sounds like your bank statement is going to become messier with withdrawals at time of each sale, rather than one big withdrawal for a monthly invoice like before. Is that right?
Sale fees are automatically deducted from a buyer's payment, much like PayPal's fees were.
eBay's wording is not 100% clear to me with regards to how (or, more specifically when) they'll debit for other fees, though. They do say "In late March, eBay will begin the process of phasing out completely the billing of selling fees and expenses via your payment instrument on file. Instead, eBay will collect fees and other expenses, such as those resulting from refunds, claims or disputes directly from your earnings. If your funds are not sufficient to cover these amounts, we will charge your payment method on file (debit or credit card, and/or linked bank account)."
That does sound like fees are automatically charged / debited either from funds or the card on file as soon as they are generated, but I can't see that as being a particularly efficient way to do it (not that ebay is an exemplar of efficiency, lol), but either way if that's how they are proposing it will work, I can see a lot of declined debit requests in eBay's future.
If instead they follow Etsy's model, which still has a monthly billing cycle, if you accrue more fees than you generate in sales (through advertising and listing fees etc), then your account goes in the red and the outstanding fees will be deducted from buyer's payments until you go back into credit - this happens as soon as new funds are received. If instead you still owe fees at the end of the billing cycle, they'll then bill for the outstanding amount. (eg Say you don't get a sale for a week, and accrue listing fees of $10, they won't charge or debit you, your account will be in $10 debit, but then you make a $50 sale, so all the appropriate sale fees plus the oustanding $10 is debited from that $50).
They don't have a direct debit agreement in place though - not like eBay's, anyway. If I refund a buyer and there's not enough in my Etsy payments account, my bank is automatically debited (same as what happens with ebay now), but if I owe fees at the end of the billing cycle, they have to be paid manually, they can't debit me for that for whatever reason (it's optional in the US, AFAIK, so might just be something do do with international banking...stuff).
