Kopes, that was nothing more than BS propagated by eBay in a blatant attempt to justify their greedy cash grab on the postage component of our sales. A few naive people believed it but the vast majority saw it exactly for what it was; legalised theft by Donahoe and his cohorts before he was booted over to Paypal to do the same bloody thing there.

Ebay online postage labels give 10% discount on postage for commonly used satchels and some AP boxes.

So if sellers are increasing prices and using the ebay postage labels then they have no reason at all to complain, do they?

Those that have a legitimate gripe with fvf on postage are those that post overseas.  They need to charge postage that will cover them for eBay and PayPal protection and then they get slugged 9.9% on top of that.  They add the fee amount to their postage charge and their buyers give them low DSRs for postage because it costs so much and they cop a defect.

 

eBay, put a nominal cap on the fvf on postage for international postage e.g. max fee payable on international postage is $2 which means if you pay anything over about $20 your do not get charged additional fees on the postage.

---

@gtx305 wrote:

Ive had my account for 15 years. Back in the day, sellers would sell something for $5, and charge $25 in postage (domestic!). Literally.

They did it to get around Ebay fees. This was the normal thing to do.

 

And your evidence for this?

 

Basic maths tells you that Ebay would have gone under with this happening as frequently as it did. 

They introduced postage fees to stop this from happening and create a stable business plan.

 

I beg to disagree. It was a money grab by ebay pure and simple.

 

If your business plan is not going well with these fees (which in total, are average in the market - I know because up until recently, I wrote business plans and did financial analysis  and contracts for retail / tourism and corporate industries), then you need to change your business plan - that isnt Ebays fault.

 

If youre not really into the *selling* aspect of all this, and dont really understand business plans, or tracking everything in an excel sheet seems too much work, then Ebay may not be the place for you (often the ones who say, but im just a hobby seller!). Yes, these type of sellers will struggle.

 

This is irrelevant to paying fees on postage.

 

Ebay isnt geared towards these sellers. Thats why they have Gumtree. Different business plans for different dynamics. Maybe theres another marketplace out there somewhere that would suit what you do better. The biggest and boldest isnt always the right one.

 

Gumtree is useless. Full of tyre-kickers, people who say they will come and collect and never show up, people who offer peanuts instead of a reasonable offer

---

 

---

@lyndal1838 wrote:

And I don't understand why sellers are getting so upset about it.

Any seller who is not covering their costs by increasing their prices deserves to lose money.

Once the prices are increased it is the buyer who is paying the ebay/paypal fees.  There have not been too many buyers starting threads about it.

---

If only it was that simple. Because if (small) sellers have to raise their prices to cover the fees, then their items are less likely to sell. Stuck between a rock and a hard place.