Effin E Bay and PayPal Fees

[e600]

Just sold a car part on e bay, unknown to me the winning bidder is in Australia. The item sold for £425 plus £18 pp. The total cost of fees?............£68. PayPal have 3 charges, standard 3.4% plus cross border charge of 0.5% plus another "commercial charge of 1.2% then E Bays standard 10%. I don't think I will be doing this again.

[Evolved]

Classified ad only for motors and no longer bother selling anything else on there now. They changed their business model a while back as they're catering for businesses now.

[anonymous-user]

If you don't want to sell to an overseas buyer then set your selling preferences to prevent it.

[anonymous-user]

Maybe you'd have had more success putting a card in the newsagent's window?

[Venturist]

e600 said:

Just sold a car part on e bay, unknown to me the winning bidder is in Australia. The item sold for £425 plus £18 pp. The total cost of fees?............£68. PayPal have 3 charges, standard 3.4% plus cross border charge of 0.5% plus another "commercial charge of 1.2% then E Bays standard 10%. I don't think I will be doing this again.

Profit £357
Presumably it was a bit you had lying around doing nothing anyway so selling it for anything is a boon.

If you don't want to post international then limit to U.K. users only
If you needed it to sell for more then next time set a reserve price or use Buy It Now instead of auction
What's the problem?

Complaining about the fees is a bit like complaining that your 36k salary doesn't give you 3k a month take-home pay. No it's not ideal but it's just the nature of the game and it's not a secret. You are free to sell stuff in other ways. Try gumtree, that's still free for now.

Edited by Venturist on Monday 6th February 23:02

[e600]

280E said:

Maybe you'd have had more success putting a card in the newsagent's window?

As the parts were quite niche perhaps a specialist publication or marque specific spares day will be more appropriate, but thanks for the recommendation.

[Toaster Pilot]

Fees are nothing compared with the very real possibility of them breaking it or sending you back their faulty one and getting an automatic refund from eBay.

[anonymous-user]

Most of the irritation with Ebay/PayPal fees stems from petty jealousy that you weren't able to start such a business too. A business that requires no stockholding or manufacturing, and which seems to have no viable competition either!

It's certainly the case for me

[SlimJim16v]

You obviously have no idea how to use the internet.

[InitialDave]

While the fees are a little annoying, I don't begrudge them their money. The information on what they'll hit me for is easily available, and you get a hell of a large marketplace to sell to.

For UK sales, I use http://finalfeecalc.co.uk/ to check what my net income will be from sales.

[996TT02]

e600 said:

280E said:

Maybe you'd have had more success putting a card in the newsagent's window?

As the parts were quite niche perhaps a specialist publication or marque specific spares day will be more appropriate, but thanks for the recommendation.

In short, hard to find a buyer for. Yes it would have been nice to not have had to pay the fees but the way I see it - you possibly got the absolute top value for the item, whereas had you not sold through Ebay you may not have got anywhere near your net figure.

[towser44]

Toaster Pilot said:

Fees are nothing compared with the very real possibility of them breaking it or sending you back their faulty one and getting an automatic refund from eBay.

Yep, I've just closed my eBay account for this reason. Sold a brand new Air Purifier 3 weeks ago with no returns accepted. The buyer asked for a return as soon as she received it, saying it didn't work (this was because despite the pictures and description being clear and accurate she thought it was a De-Humidifier). Of course, as she said it didn't work I had to accept the return. I got it back, plugged it in, et voila, working perfectly. eBay immediately refunded her without question and then sent me an email asking me to put the funds in my Paypal account so they could recover it from me. They had no desire to understand that the buyer had lied to get me to accept a return. It's all in the Buyers favour nowadays and I am not prepared to risk getting a nutty buyer again.