Ebay no longer charging private sellers

[DCLane]

An announcement I've just received is that eBay's 'Simple Delivery' is the only postage option from 15th April . It'll be via Royal Mail or Evri and the exceptions are for low-price / bulky / collection items only.

 

[welsh dragon]

An announcement I've just received is that eBay's 'Simple Delivery' is the only postage option from 15th April . It'll be via Royal Mail or Evri and the exceptions are for low-price / bulky / collection items only.

Isn't that just for private sellers, at least that's what I thought

 

[wiggydiggy]

An announcement I've just received is that eBay's 'Simple Delivery' is the only postage option from 15th April . It'll be via Royal Mail or Evri and the exceptions are for low-price / bulky / collection items only.

Same. Not a fan from what I've first read. For the £10-£15 I get from ebay sales a month this might be more hassle than its worth and I'll just bung my old stuff down the charity shops.

 

[MontyVeda]

I've noticed if I buy the label through ebay, it marks the item as dispatched. This is really annoying as I might have bought the label, but I haven't been to the PO yet.

that explains why, when i buy something on a Sunday and within minutes the item is 'dispatched'.

 

[a.twiddler]

It's awkward for people who prefer to collect a item, eg a bike. It looks like you have to pay beforehand now, and pass on a code to the seller as proof of collection so they can claim their money from ebay. Perhaps there's a way to manage the seller's fee if you want to see the item first before paying cash on collection but it's not obvious how that works, if it's even an option any more. Buying or selling smaller items which are posted is not so much of an issue, but larger non postable items (which I don't buy or sell very often) seem to have some rule change or other every time I've done it.

Come to think of it, when buying my most recent bikes I've not used ebay, and paid cash. It's about a year since I sold the Sinner Trike on ebay, and I don't recall any requirements to scan anything or ask the buyer for a code. I was able to transfer the money (after waiting a decent interval for positive feedback) without any issues. Yet I sold a motorcycle trailer a month or two ago and I wasn't able to transfer any money until I'd contacted the buyer to ask for the code (which neither he or I had remembered about at the time of collection) so I could enter it so ebay would release his payment to me.

It seems to be an increasing trend of control freakery on ebay's part.

 

[sevenfourate]

^^^^^Ebay protecting their income unsurprisingly. I’d managed to unknowingly circumnavigate paying any fees on ‘Collection only’ sales more than once. So I’m not surprised they’ve tightened up. Here and in many (?) other areas.

Me ? I’ll take my non fee-paying business elsewhere now 🤣🤣

 

[a.twiddler]

Curiously enough, when selling the Grasshopper I'd listed it at the full price, or offers, and the buyer seems to have caused the system to have a brain fart by making an offer for the full price rather than clicking "buy it now". It recognised that I'd accepted an offer but kept it listed, and wouldn't acknowledge that there'd been a payment. The seller told me that nothing had been taken from his account. In the end, we arranged that he'd come and see it, and sort it out on the day. Ebay didn't contact him, and my queries to ebay weren't answered. He made a bank transfer to my account, and ebay never contacted myself or the buyer for any fees. I had to terminate the listing myself, or it would probably still be listed today. First time I've ever had anything free from ebay, even by accident.

 

[rogerzilla]

eBay is hopeless at estimating size and weight of items, so proceed carefully to avoid selling at a loss. It thinks lots of items are under 2kg when they are over 5kg.

 

[chris-suffolk]

eBay is hopeless at estimating size and weight of items, so proceed carefully to avoid selling at a loss. It thinks lots of items are under 2kg when they are over 5kg.

It's also got the sizes of 2kg parcels wrong, thinking they are 61x46x46 cm when in fact the limit is 45x35x16

 

[Profpointy]

Another very annoying thing they've done recently is to hobble their previously excellent phone app so it no longer works on older phones. The web interface on the phone is piss-poor in comparison, and it's significantly more faff to transfer pics to a PC for someone casually selling stuff to get rid of it, or recover a bit of dosh from lower value stuff. As a buyer the web interface on the phone is awkward too.

I never minded paying their fee as a seller, but the adding on a buyer's fee just makes it all more complex.

 

[a.twiddler]

The online experience recently hasn't encouraged me to conduct ebay business via phone despite their constant adverts encouraging users to do so. Will ebay eventually become an app -only platform? I certainly hope not.

 

[DCLane]

I've previously sold a lot of non-cycling items on Amazon but it's dwindled to almost nothing. The shop I've got on there will be shut at Easter and items transferred elsewhere. eBay was going to be the preferred 'home' but their changes are making things more complex.

The pre-sizing is the biggest issue for me: I currently store items away and only pack them when sold. This means I'll have to pre-box/bag items to work out the individual size and weight for the not-so-Simple Delivery system creating a storage issue.

In the past I used Yahoo Auctions (remember them?) which were great but they closed in 2002 when the Australian site was bought by eBay.

 

[Jenkins]

I've only purchased purchased postage through Ebay using their suggested size & weight (I don't have scales at home) twice. The first I ended up having to pay the Post Office release fee for the buyer as it was over the weight limit and the second was picked up by the Post Office counter lady as being oversized for the level selected so paid the extra there.

I now don't mind paying a little extra for the certainty of going to the local Post Office and having the parcel correctly weighed & measured at the counter for the few sales I do.