Arrgghh!!! Hate PayPal like me? You can't sell on eBay!!!!

[Jonny]

About the 5% too, could you not mark up your price by 5% so really you get the money you want, but as well as paying the 5% without losing desirability? Or could it not be included in delivery price maybe?

[Oli]

About the 5% too, could you not mark up your price by 5% so really you get the money you want, but as well as paying the 5% without losing desirability? Or could it not be included in delivery price maybe?

That 5% can really do sellers over though- I recently sold my Laney, and i originally put it up for £400, and it didn't sell, i actually got a few emails telling me that it was a far too high price (it was a 7 day auction). A couple of weeks later, i put it up for 375 (about 5% less), and it sold within 12 hours of putting it up. But then after fees, i end up with about 360, which is 10% less than i originally had hoped for.

Fortunately there isn't much that i need to put up on ebay, so after these few bits kicking around here, i won't be selling anymore.

[Jonny]

It may lead to P2P transactions, away from the whole online marketplace and could even be worse.

However there's Gumtree and all that so hopefully it'll suffice.

[Philly Q]

People have a tendency to talk about eBay charges as if they're something you get hit with unexpectedly - "the dirty buggers, they took 5%.... FIVE PER CENT!!!  "

But you know that when you place the ad, so you factor it in to your asking price.  I wouldn't recommend trying to build it into the shipping charges (except to some extent on smaller items) because people know they're being ripped off if you charge them £50 to ship a guitar or amp.

If you end up with less than you hoped for, it's because there wasn't a buyer prepared to pay that much.  It's not eBay's fault.

If you sold it on commission through a shop, for example, they'd take 15-20%.

[FELINEGUITARS]

The computer ID checking is to deal with both hacked accounts and also to cut down on shil bidding where you have a second dummy account and bid on your own stuff to bump the price up when others are bidding on your auction.

I had a stupid ex-girlfriend who did that sort of nonsense, and eventually got banned from ebay (and nearly got me banned because of the IP number thing - she used my computer a couple of times)

Ebay's shareholders were in a tailspin earlier this year as turnover was down 5% - hence some of the moneygrabbing now

[Elliot]

I won't buy on ebay unless I can use paypal - the rather draconian dispute resolution system is great security for buyers.  If sellers have to pay for that, well that just a cost they have to factor in.  Like people who charge £5 postage to send out a VHS tape and send it in a non padded envelope so the tape is smashed when it gets to you.  

Quite frankly there are few bargains in ebay - and if you score a bargain the seller often doesnt  bother to contact you, so i'm not too bothered about sellers and the hike in cost.

[Scotty477]

The 5% listing fee is all very well but now that you must give paypal as an option to pay, sellers are faced with the prospect of an additional 3.4% for the privilege of using paypal.

That means if for example you sell a high end guitar, like a Les Paul Custom on ebay, which sells for about £1,200, you'll be paying £100+ on combined fees.

I've seen a lot of listings stating that if buyers want to pay by paypal, they must contact the seller prior to bidding - particularly on higher price listings. This is obviously the sellers wanting to pass on the papypal fees to the buyer.

It's a good idea but it's also against ebay rules and if reported by a prospective buyer the seller will almost certainly get banned.

Ebay have put the sellers in a no win situation here. The only course of action is to bump up postage fees, which can put buyers off.

IMHO the changes are detrimental to the whole process. If buyers pull out - as they are apparently - ebay will go bust.

It's as simple as that.

Yes you need both buyers and sellers to make an auction work but if there's nothing worth buying then buyers will look elsewhere.

I have 660 odd transactions, with more than half being as a seller. I will not be breaking my neck to put any listings on ebay now. I'll try the snips, Gumtree and other online auctions first and only if I cant sell it through those means will I go to ebay - and then only maybe.

For my money ebay are commiting economical suicide here and they deserve all they get when they inevitably do collapse.

[dave_mc]

That is rather sneaky. But fits in with the whole recent increase in ebay fees too.
  rather depressing to be honest.

  I expect ebay, as a company, will now slowly squeeze as much as it can get away with. And after a while, some other company's website will come along, capturing people's imagination and offering a much better deal. Then everyone will start selling through this new website. After a while the new website will start squeezing the punters for what it can get. etc, etc.

  It's the nature of capitalism and greed. And I'm afraid by just accepting to live in our culture, we are all forced to try and work alongside these companies, whether we agree with their policies or not.  :(

+1

I won't buy on ebay unless I can use paypal - the rather draconian dispute resolution system is great security for buyers.

also +1

[mikeluke]

Another way they hit you is with exchange rates when you pay via PayPal - bought a guitar from the USA recently and got a really cr@ppy exchange rate via PayPal - about 5% (funny how this keeps cropping up) below what I was expecting.

If you try to add PayPal fees to the final price they will strike your listing - so that makes it tougher - I am tending to sell a lot less (mind you, most of my stuff has gone anyway) and use it more for buying - saves me driving to the shops!!

[Scotty477]

I've noticed a dip in the number of sellers who are selling their own privately owned guitars recently. I was browsing for aN H/S/S Superstrat of some type and I'm certain that there are fewer private sellers punting their guitars.

There seemed to be a shedload of cheap knockoffs - even more than there normally is.

The argument keeps coming around. If ebay hit sellers hard (increased listing fees, a requirement to offer paypal, paypal fees etc) then sellers will go elsewhere. Then there's a lot less to buy and buyers go elsewhere.

It may just be the 10-15% (estimated) of sellers that didn't take paypal that are missing - but if that's worldwide ........ Ebay are in trouble.

[HairyChris]

Ebay's still pretty good if you're a buyer (I use it to order stuff from overseas, mainly)... however I'm not sure how long that'll last after the changes in how ratings works gets going. Can't neg sellers? Hmmm.

Never been much of a seller. Did a few guitars last year and yeah, you have to be aware of the hit from ebay & paypal. Gumtree's more attractive IMO.

[Will]

Would ebay cancel the listing if you accepted paypal, but had to check with the seller, then through private Q and A's the seller informed the buyer of this extra fee needed for paypal?

[Philly Q]

Would ebay cancel the listing if you accepted paypal, but had to check with the seller, then through private Q and A's the seller informed the buyer of this extra fee needed for paypal?

I don't think they'd cancel the listing unless they somehow became aware of what you're doing, but why would a buyer want to pay extra for using PayPal?

I don't want to be the champion of eBay here, but they're not some kind of evil organisation, they're providing a service and taking a fee for it.  And as a seller you know what those fees are going to be.  If you want an absolute bare minimum of £360 in your pocket, then put £400 as the starting price and if it sells you've got your £360.  If it doesn't sell, then maybe your expectations were unrealistic.

As I said before, even with listing fees, selling fees and PayPal fees, they're still less than your friendly neighbourhood guitar shop would take for selling it on commission.

I go back to the days when the only way I could sell a guitar was through the classifieds at the back of Guitarist.  You'd phone up and then wait TWO MONTHS for the listing to appear, then if it didn't sell you'd have another two month wait to re-list, before one person came to look at it (and talked you down on the price).  Now I can sell a guitar within a week - and still get a better price than I got with those Guitarist ads.

[Scotty477]

Would ebay cancel the listing if you accepted paypal, but had to check with the seller, then through private Q and A's the seller informed the buyer of this extra fee needed for paypal?

It would only take one person - being told by a seller that they were expected to pay the paypal fees - to inform ebay .... who would very probably cancel your listing and/or warn you/suspend your account/ ban you.

I agree with you Philly, that ebay is light years ahead of the way it used to be sell something. My gripe is the fact that you are required to list paypal as an option now.

I can live with increased selling/final value fees but with higher price items I prefer not to use paypal to avoid the 3.4% cut that they take. Now I can't, and if I try to I'll get the ebay police on my case.

The ebay system has become imbalanced in the favour of the buyer basically .... and don't get me started on not being able to leave negative feedback as a seller, if a buyer fails to pay. That's utter nonsense. Whoever came up with that one clearly has no idea how the system works or simply doesn't care.

It was meant to get around the practise of some sellers leaving retaliatory feedback. Now it's going to allow the buyer to do anything they want, safe in the knowledge that they can't be given a negative.

I spend a lot of time trawling ebay and I also pop over to the community forum there. Take a look. There's a lot of resentment from sellers at the moment - many of whom are saying they will be cutting back on selling.

I've seen a drop in private guitar listings recently and I suspect this will only get worse.

If ebay fail to address these issues it will be the end of them. If they do, then fair play to them if they can sort it out.

Finally I have to say I love selling and buying on ebay and everything I've said in this thread is purely out of concern for the new system that is clearly not right.

[Philly Q]

The ebay system has become imbalanced in the favour of the buyer basically .... and don't get me started on not being able to leave negative feedback as a seller, if a buyer fails to pay. That's utter nonsense. Whoever came up with that one clearly has no idea how the system works or simply doesn't care.

....................

Finally I have to say I love selling and buying on ebay and everything I've said in this thread is purely out of concern for the new system that is clearly not right.

Totally agree with you there.  

I'm not at all happy about the new favour-the-buyer changes either, but eBay is fundamentally an excellent place.  Not so much for real bargains any more, perhaps, but I've been able to get hold of so many out-of-print DVDs and CDs that a few years ago would have been impossible to obtain.