I'm struggling to understand why eBay and PayPal take a cut of the seller's postage costs?

[nguyen.mischa]

I'm struggling to understand why eBay and PayPal take a cut of the seller's postage costs?

Sellers are encouraged to list items with an “actual” cost. If the postage cost is an accurate amount but eBay take 9.9% of it, then the seller is losing out on postage every time and paying with their own money, making it an out of pocket expense.

EBay and PayPal both take a cut on the item plus the shipping. I just cannot see how this could possibly be fair to the seller. It’s actually doubling up on the fee too because eBay fees are charged monthly, which means that PayPal charges their fees on the entire item sale price plus shipping costs when the funds are paid through PayPal.

Example: an item is $30 + $10 shipping. Ebay fees would be $3.96 and if this was charged immediately, only $36.04 would go to PayPal for their fees to be applied. The payment is not filtered and does not account for the seller paying extra. Though still wrong because included in these funds is the shipping cost. On that $10 shipping, the seller is paying 9.9% and 2.6% plus 0.30c – for this example, $1.55 has been taken by eBay and PayPal for the shipping alone.

Sometimes you get to the post office and the packaging and postage costs are more than what you expected and quoted! So even more so you are out of pocket.

Another example is that I have a bulk of 5 dresses is listed at 99c starting bid. If this listing sells at 99c, with postage listed accurately at $14.80 express, then I lose the 5 dresses, spent time and effort in listing and posting the items and end up paying eBay out of pocket because of the fees.

Total paid by buyer = $15.79

Ebay fees = $1.56

PayPal fees = 0.71c
Postage for 3kg express satchel = $14.80

Total expense for the seller = $1.28

So even if I was happy for my listing to go at 99c and for the buyer to get a great bargain, why should I then have to put in all my efforts in listing and heading to the post office etc and still have to pay $1.28 out of pocket?

I understand that fees need to be paid for selling items on eBay and for utilizing PayPal which offers buyer and seller protection for all eBay transactions, but cutting into the postage amount when we have been encouraged to list an accurate and exact amount is blasphemy. I’m really concerned with the fact that even when making no money on a sale, you still need to pay eBay and PayPal money out of your own pocket because some of the postage funds were taken from you, which you needed to send the item and what the buyer pays for. No buyer would accept paying for the full postage amount plus paying eBay and PayPal an extra fee, so why should the seller?

Please help me understand.

Regards,

nguyen.mischa

[lingeranddie]

Do you really think eBay give a toss what sellers think or even want?  if you do - you are delusional!

[thecatspjs]

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@phorum_junkie* wrote:

As well as what Dave said you could perhaps blame all the sellers who came to the boards for years complaining that it wasn't fair that US sellers paid less for some things and had other advantages and they wanted the same treatment. Well now they have got it as UK and US sellers have been paying fvfs on postage for a very long time now.

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Why would anyone blame other sellers for changes that eBay introduce ?  or even post about it ?

The introduction of FVF fees was not accompanied by any of the benefits that US sellers had at that time?

Weird perspective IMO.

[feliz_da_kat]

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@harley_babes_hoard wrote:

Yeah I'm struggling to understand also...............why would anyone start their auction at 99 cents and wonder why they are not making a profit. Start your auctions at a price you are happy to sell at.

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I almost always start mine at .99 and always make more than I expected or what people offer me as a 'buy it now' price.

[8966lorraine]

The only thing to do is what a lot of other sellers including myself are doing. That is to work out the postage cost, then add some more  on top to cover the fees. Then if you are buying boxes from AP, you add that on top as well. I generally recycle boxes which saves a bit. You may need to add a few cents to cover bubblewrap etc. Sellers lose enough with all the stupid policies, we certainly shouldn't be losing on postage.

[lane-ends]

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@8966lorraine wrote:

The only thing to do is what a lot of other sellers including myself are doing. That is to work out the postage cost, then add some more  on top to cover the fees. Then if you are buying boxes from AP, you add that on top as well. I generally recycle boxes which saves a bit. You may need to add a few cents to cover bubblewrap etc. Sellers lose enough with all the stupid policies, we certainly shouldn't be losing on postage.

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You can add all you want but ultimately buyers will determine total they wil pay so they will either bid less as a result, if an auction, or pass on it if BIN..In short you can't garnish any more money from buyers simply because you want to pass a cost on. If you could get more for your item you would be anyway.. so ultimately your profit takes a hit.

Another reason they add fvf to postage is because they want to push free post. One of the hurdles to free post is that it includes fvf whereas postage seperate didn't. so it removed this hurdle.

[grannytakesatrip17]

I can see that this topic is very old. But I have recently noticed that so many sellers are just charging the basic postage cost. I do increase mine to cover the ebay and PayPal fees, plus a small amount for packaging, but this makes my postage look far more expensive than others. This is worrying me. These people are losing money on postage and I do not wish to do this of course. How do others feel about this situation please.

[k1ooo-slr-sales]

@grannytakesatrip17

there has been some good advice posted many years ago on this thread 😉

I see you have Buy-It-Now items listed.  For these, I would build the fees into the item price and not the postage.  Either that, or have a price that includes the postage and don't charge a postage amount.

Either way, the advice of a previous post to not give a breakdown of your charges is very good advice (even if I say so myself).

[kh-jean]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.