Originally Posted by
thegunslinger41
Howdy fellas. I'm sure many of you are fed up with EBay's double dipping practices. I know they have changed for the worst over the past few years and as always, it's the sellers who suffer.
One thing that I noticed a while back when I was looking at eBay's itemized bill was that they were charging me an identical commission fee (~10%) for what I was charging for shipping. So...for $4 medial mail shipping charges, I saw a 40 cent fee from ebay. Now why should they even do that??? Ugh...now 40 cents isn't really a big deal but about a year ago I sold a set of books that I shipped to Sweden. Shipping cost me about $56 (of course, they buyer agreed to this shipping charge). Anyhow...ebay took their $5.60 (10%) cut from that.
Oh..and i'm sure all of you have dealt with their fixed $4 shipping fee...and how it can't be more or anything. So f**CKED up IMO.
I've gotten 2 warnings/disclaimers before "Ending an Item Early" from ebay recently...saying that they may STILL have to charge me a final auction value fee. I guess people are ending auctions early because they already sold their item.
I have found a way around this last issue. Recently I sold a Joe Hill S/L book to someone here on dt.org. However, at the same time, I had it listed on ebay. I went to end the auction and "BLEEP, BLEEP"...I received my warning from ebay. So...I didn't end the auction early. Solution: I Edited the auction and changed the BIN from $220 to $1000. Problem solved. Auction didn't sell of course.
-G
I don't understand the hate. Ebay is a great service as far as getting your items/products views (buyers) from all over the world. If you don't like the fees, no one is forcing you to use it. Make your own website and sell that way. No fees that way, right?
Ebay began taking a cut of the shipping price long ago. They did this to keep people from selling stuff for an extremely low sell price and moving the cost over to shipping ( i.e. DVDs for .99 but she shipping is $20).
The $4 max only applies to Media Mail, and only for single/lightweight books. If you are selling a heavy book or a set/lot of books, all you have to due is enter the weight and then select the option to calculate shipping by weight.
This is actually a good thing, imo as it prevents people from gouging for shipping--an act I despised for years as I am honest and do not gouge and never would even if I could.
I like how you fail to mention that insertion fees and final value fees have dropped quite a bit over the years. And sellers can also get discounted USPS shipping which is nice.
You'll get no shoulder to cry on here. If you don't like paying for the service that allows lots of traffic to your listings then hey, don't use it. Then you won't have to whine about it.