why does Ebay take a fee on postage?

[lauren.skye001-7]

Why does Ebay charge a fee on postage costs? We do not profit from this. I charge the exact fee it costs to send an item domestically, this is to be fair to the buyer. And this is also automated by Ebay as it makes uploading process easier. Ive just discovered that on the final postage fee of $8.50 (for example) Ebay take 93 cents? What purpose does this serve other than ripping off the seller? With both paypal and ebay fees on top of this i am out of pocket. Its already a struggle to sell on ebay. Literally ill sell my items somwhere else. 

[nurseedward2020]

He is NOT wrong! There ARE three fees! The final value on sale price, the final value on SHIPPING price.. AND the paypal fee. If you look on the ebay invoice, there is a separate fee for the final value of item and of shipping.... then the paypal fee when people pay that way. It IS greed - why should ebay charge a fee on what I am paying the post office!!!!???????

[lyndal1838]

The ebay FVF is on the total transaction.....item cost and postage....one fee.  Maybe they do break it down on the invoice so sellers can see what they pay on each section but it is one fee.

[love_of_cars]

@nurseedward2020:

eBay charges a fee which incorporates the postage amount because people used to list items like this example:

99 cent item

$15 shipping fee

Back then (many years ago) eBay didn't take a fee from the shipping amount so people got around the system by having a large shipping fee and a small item price.  The only way to stop people from doing this was to put a fee on both amounts as a total.  It quickly stopped the issue but penalised all of us unfortunately.

I've written to eBay I think twice over time asking them to put a system in place to allow honest sellers to not have to pay a fee on shipping if we agree to cap our shipping amounts at Australia Post's rates for like 12 months at a time (unless AP raise rates of course) but it fell on deaf ears.  I know there's a lot of factors in working this out but I thought it was a good idea to save a few dollars for buyers (especially international) and help encourage more sales.

[ak_tools]

Suggestion to eBay (as if they ever listen).

if we choose to print postage label off eBay system, then they should not be charging fee on the postage. They can get commissions off Australia Post (like Post Office Agent).

That way seller can not cheat by marking up on postage cost, it is fair for all parties involved (Seller/Buyer/eBay).

Given postage is flat rate, I sell something for $30, postage is $10, (30% of the total value), I get charged a fee on postage of 30% of final value due. This needs to be looked at by ACCC. NOT FAIR!

[sandypebbles]

eBay do not read here

It has already been

[repentatleisure1952]

[digital*ghost]

Etsy also charges FVF on postage, and forces sellers to pay an extra 12.5% FVF on sales arising through their offsite advertising - for the lifetime of their shop - if they ever make USD$10k in a 12 month period (quite easy to do, when you're running a business, and it doesn't matter if, in subsequent years, they don't get anywhere near that $10k again). 

Consumer boycotts don't tend to work too often, especially if they are just occasionally being called for from the fringes - there's always heaps of outrage on Twitter over Amazon, and a significant number of people (apparently) participating in boycotts on them, particularly on / around Prime day; most of the time they report more and more successful events, though. 

It is easy for people to express outrage, not quite so easy to be intentionally inconvenienced, even less so if it means they're financially affected. 

That outrage keeps the "boycottee" in the public consciousness, too, and two hours later, when people have got something new to pay attention to, they've got "eBay" fresh in their minds, but not very much anger. 

[gutterpunkz05]

I hope you don,t own much.  That way bankruptcy won't hurt so much.

You really need to research your legal responsibility.

[tickford-t3]

it was to do with postage being free of fees 10 or 15 years ago but sellers abused the system example you had a item for $500.00 plus $20 post - what they did was advertised the item say for $100.00 and had $420.00 in postage box Fees were applied to $100.00 and not the $420.00, but in saying this i'm with u they should be able to now drop that fee from the postage as they are all up to speed with postage costs - but they won't.......

[purveyor_of_tat]

Don't forget, that fee on postage does earn eBay a fair whack in revenue....