Did everyone here give up on ebay?

[paredown]

Originally Posted by Bob Ross

Having not sold anything on ebay in probably half a dozen years, I'm totally out of the loop: Can someone summarize these "new payment terms" that everyone's all riled up about?

tl;dr For sellers--no more PayPal, and all payments to sellers are handled by eBay through direct deposits to your bank account (which you are required to link to your eBay account).

As a buyer, you can still use Paypal, but also credit cards or Google Pay to purchase--and you are paying directly to eBay inc.

Shipping: Although I am reluctant to defend eBay--it is worth saying that commission on shipping started when people were gaming the system by selling for really low prices on their items, and making their coin on shipping.

If you are doing it right--the seller pays the eBay 'list' price for shipping, and you as seller buy shipping at an eBay discounted price, so the commission is a wash, assuming that you have calculated correctly. If you try to make money on the shipping--the commission will kick in. It's not a perfect solution by any means, but better than the old system that allowed sellers to game it. The large anomaly though is FEDEX--who don't submit eBay charges in real time, but calculate shipping based on some mystical system known only to them (and which individual sellers have no visibility into)--so that your actual FEDEX shipping charge for a particular item may vary wildly from what you charged to the buyer of the item and you be screwed.

OTOH, commission on sales tax is an abomination--pure and simple.

[alexihnen]

I’m down to just 4 items listed on eBay. I’ve sold a ton of stuff there and have really had no real problems. But the fees are high.

If I understand it correctly (and that’s a 50/50 proposition), I sold the item for $105, the total transaction cost to the buyer was $126, fee is $16, I net $100, but also pay shipping of ~$8. So I keep $92 on an item listed at $105. So could I have sold these on this site for $90+shipping? Maybe. I’m more inclined to list here first, but if something doesn’t sell in 12hrs, it gets buried and forgotten. These levers sat on eBay for a couple months and I didn’t have to do anything to refresh the listing.

[Ozz]

Originally Posted by 9tubes

Let's compare to credit cards. Someone lifts your wallet and uses the bank card at a store. Or steals your checks and presents a check to a store. The bank cannot say...tough luck, it's your liability for the charges "because you didn't have a secure system." The checking and cc systems for decades have put the burden on the banks to have systems to prevent fraud because they are in far better position to do so.

The banks would like a financial system that trends away from their prior duties because the duties are costly. They are getting there a step at a time.

bold above is the key point in determining fraud liability....who was in the best position to prevent it.

However, the protections consumers enjoy with checks and CC were put there by statute, not the banking industry. ACH and wire transfer is used mostly by businesses, who do not enjoy the same consumer protections...tey are supposed to "know better" I suppose.

For all practical purposes, banks are in a terrible position to prevent check fraud, but the way the consumer protection laws are written, they tend to eat most of it. Once the dollars get up to six figures, then lawyers start talking and negotiating the extent of liability. If a company has employee fraud, or fail to secure check stock, or don't reconcile timely....good luck recovering all (if any)of your funds. For commercial accounts, there are fraud prevention services offered.

For credit cards, banks make enough $$ on those they can absorb more losses....it is all reflected in the interchange rates and interest on balances. More fraud, means everyone pays so banks make their earnings.

Luckily, ACH fraud is pretty uncommon. Most is caused by lack of system security (hackers, password compromise), or flawed internal controls at company (business email compromise, not validating vendor payment instruction changes, etc) cause most of it. You can lump wire transfer fraud into this as well.

Sorry for the thread drift...but it might be relevant that a lot of the fees and shenanigans going with with ebay are probably cuz they have to deal with a lot of fraudsters...."Corporate" want to hit their numbers after all....

[unterhausen]

Originally Posted by Ozz

Sorry for the thread drift...but it might be relevant that a lot of the fees and shenanigans going with with ebay are probably cuz they have to deal with a lot of fraudsters...."Corporate" want to hit their numbers after all....

I'm a little less worried about fraudsters having access to my bank account through ebay now though.

[prototoast]

Everything else equal, I'd rather sell here than eBay, but some items just don't sell here. I had a K-Force WE mini group that had 0 interest here, and then sold on eBay for 60% more than I had it listed for here. I've had similar experiences with some other items.

Pace line is great for selling Campagnolo Record and King Cages, but for other items you need to reach a broader audience, and that's where ebay really earns the fees it collects.

[Monsieur Toast]

Originally Posted by prototoast

Everything else equal, I'd rather sell here than eBay, but some items just don't sell here. I had a K-Force WE mini group that had 0 interest here, and then sold on eBay for 60% more than I had it listed for here. I've had similar experiences with some other items.

Pace line is great for selling Campagnolo Record and King Cages, but for other items you need to reach a broader audience, and that's where ebay really earns the fees it collects.

I just sold a few items that were irrelevant here, and had no traction on local Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. Threw ’em on eBay and in less than a week I've got a happy buyer in the Pacific Northwest and another in Asia. Done and done, and on to the next project.

Hate to sound like I'm an advocate for the eBay Evil Empire, but from my keyboard I've got two options – link my bank account, pay the fees, and get it gone ... or sit around with a bunch of stuff I don't want.

[Monsieur Toast]

Anyone else get the email from Venmo last night about their "new and upcoming" changes?

95% of my Venmo transactions over the years have been with friends, so maybe this is all old news. I was unaware of a Purchase Protection Program with Venmo, and now a 1.9% seller transaction fee, until this email though. I thought it was always money sent straight through, no take backs, no fees.

2) Effective July 20, 2021, the Venmo Purchase Protection Program will expand eligibility for payments received into a user’s business profile or that are identified as for goods and services. To be eligible for the expanded Purchase Protection Program, sellers will need to meet additional requirements described in our User Agreement.

3) Effective July 20, 2021, users who receive payments that are identified by senders as for goods and services will be charged a seller transaction fee of 1.9% + $0.10.

[Clean39T]

Originally Posted by prototoast

Everything else equal, I'd rather sell here than eBay, but some items just don't sell here. I had a K-Force WE mini group that had 0 interest here, and then sold on eBay for 60% more than I had it listed for here. I've had similar experiences with some other items.

Pace line is great for selling Campagnolo Record and King Cages, but for other items you need to reach a broader audience, and that's where ebay really earns the fees it collects.

Yep. Canyon integrated handlebars sold in 12hrs. Payment came through to my account a day or so later. Done and done.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[NHAero]

An update FWIW:

The ebay CS rep must have done what she said, and my address issue went away. I was able to link a bank account, and I didn't have to give them my login and password (as was reported in one of these ebay threads about Managed Payments) and I did have to give the last four digits of my SS# (which I think is because of the Feds.)
I opened a new bank account just for ebay, and deposited $100 in it. Ebay made the microdeposits to confirm it was my account. Then I linked that account also to my Paypal account. Once it was confirmed to Paypal, I removed from Paypal the previous account I had linked, which is an account I use regularly and has more money in it.

So now I have both companies linked to a bank account that I expect will maintain a small balance so if they are hacked my exposure is small.

FWIW, I put up a few more small bike parts for which I couldn't get any interest on here, and three sold the first 24 hours.

[Big Dan]

They asked me to sign in to my bank account and input my password.
You can go around it and enter the bank information yourself.

[oldpotatoe]

One thing I discovered(along with YUGE fees, it seems) is that if somebody bids, wins and then disappears(doesn't pay), the ONLY recourse is cancel the sale and try again. Used to be you could throw a negative feedback on them..no more..I've had 2 items recently sold, then the buyer(s) went radio silent..frustrating..

[jr59]

Originally Posted by tbike4

I rarely sell on ebay lately but I did link my bank so I could move some items that languished locally. To see if it can be done I looked at account settings and there is NO way to remove your bank account once it is tied to ebay. You would have to close your account or do what others have done, set up another bank account only for ebay and link that one.

It looks like Facebook wants to be the other ebay as they want you to accept payment through them for marketplace sales. Not sure how that works and I won't find out. I would not be surprised if soon they will demand you get paid through them with a fee. Yep, I will do that when pigs fly.

Just sold a complete bike without ebay and was paid with Venmo. Nice.

Hate to tell you this, but Venmo is PayPal. Same company

[NHAero]

The best way to minimize this risk is do Buy It Now at a high price, then Best Offer. You get to check the buyer's feedback.

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

One thing I discovered(along with YUGE fees, it seems) is that if somebody bids, wins and then disappears(doesn't pay), the ONLY recourse is cancel the sale and try again. Used to be you could throw a negative feedback on them..no more..I've had 2 items recently sold, then the buyer(s) went radio silent..frustrating..

[tbike4]

Originally Posted by NHAero

The best way to minimize this risk is do Buy It Now at a high price, then Best Offer. You get to check the buyer's feedback.

Yep. I have had potential buyers contact me and say, "I want to buy your item but the system won't let me". I check the buyers feedback and find he has 2 unpaid item strikes in a short period of time. That is what filters are for. Onto the blocked buyer list for that person.

[paredown]

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

One thing I discovered(along with YUGE fees, it seems) is that if somebody bids, wins and then disappears(doesn't pay), the ONLY recourse is cancel the sale and try again. Used to be you could throw a negative feedback on them..no more..I've had 2 items recently sold, then the buyer(s) went radio silent..frustrating..

This was a policy change a few years back--they claimed too many sellers were waiting to see what feedback they got from buyers, and then if it was negative, doing a tit-for-tat negative back on the seller.

Since it is eBay, rather than going after individual sellers who were doing this, they made the wholesale change that sellers can no longer offer feedback on buyers--UNLESS IT IS POSITIVE. So bad buyers are now getting away with serial offenses...

So yeah, bad-egg buyers/no show buyers and crooks get a pass. So far though I have not had any real problems, but the horror stories are legion--scammers that claim they didn't receive goods, that the goods were broken when received etc etc etc--and eBay will side with the buyer every darned time.

Edit: forgot about the 'unpaid item' strike, so that is covered--but it still should show as negative feedback IMO