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@the_pooze wrote:

 

 

Most mortifying though is the absolutely INSANE fee structure!

What used to be a not unreasonable 2.5-3.5% PayPal/eBay combo fee structure, reasonable for the value of the service one is taking advantage of, has become an utterly mind bending 14.25%, more in some instances based on my reading.

 

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PayPal alone has been 2.6% for as long as I've been using it (around 12 years). 

Back circa 2010 eBay fees were around 9%, and you paid to list items as well as for some basic features - I was still adding extra images to the description so I didn't have to pay to upload photos to the gallery. Add PayPal into the mix and combined it averaged 11.6%, not including any other fees. 

3 major changes have made the fee difference a bit more drastic than just the numbers, though - first one being FVF being applied to postage. For some sellers, this made no difference at all, for others it more than doubled their fees (anyone whose postage costs were in the ballpark of their item prices would have seen them double, at any rate).

Second one was eBay having to add GST to their fees, this would have seen 2010's combined total at 12.5% - nothing eBay could have done about that. (Side-note, GST has never been applicable to PayPal's fees, if they were, the combined total would have been 12.76%)

Another difference is the FVF cap - when ebay first raised the FVF to 9% and got rid of the sliding scale (amounts over $100 used to be charged at a lower fee, and it went down again for amounts over $1000), they brought in the $50 cap, so that was the most you'd ever pay no matter what your item sold for. Then that got raised to $250, then $400, and now there's no cap, but they re-introduced the scale (generously lowering the fee to only 2.5% for amounts over $4000, lol). 

What this basically comes down to, is fees haven't changed all that much at all for anyone selling items up to $100 with free post or minimal postage added separately - everyone else,  yeah, there has been a pretty big difference over the years.

With a website, or B&M, your costs are pretty fixed except for payment processing - by which I mean, once you pay for all your rent, or or site set up, it doesn't cost you any (or much) more to sell $50k of goods than it does to sell $25k of goods whereas on sites like eBay, selling more costs more, so it's a bit harder for pricing to be flexible here, even though if you compare to other third party websites, they are (or can be) cheaper.