Last week we discovered some of the changes coming to , today we’ve got the full shebang and there’s so much good stuff compared to the small fees snippet revealed last week.
eBay are preparing for the Christmas season and their stated aim is to make it your best ever peak trading season. How do they aim to do this? With more free listings, more free cross border listings, more cross border trade help and by guiding sellers to give buyers what they want.
Yes there are fee changes and yes you’ll be paying fees on postage from September but to balance this some of the other fee changes are massively in seller’s favour. Here’s a list of what you need to know:
UK Fee Changes
Massive fee changes to all eBay shop subscriptions and for auction insertion fees
International Listings
You really want to read this and re-evaluate which eBay shop subscription is best for you. There’s free listings for featured shops, a new program with free assistance to get you started selling overseas and more free international site visibility
Picture Standards
12 free gallery images from the 1st of August but picture standards roll out 2 months later
New Returns Policy and New Managed Returns Process
eBay have a new returns policy which all business sellers will have to comply with. There’s also a new managed returns flow for less admin and easier final value fee refunds
Top Rated Seller Updates
Don’t forget the new Top Rated Seller qualification is mainly on the listing, not the account. We reveal one listing option that bypasses most of the new TRS requirements and another listing feature which will get your item banned from participation as a Top Rated listing.
Minor Updates
Buy It Now Immediate Payment tests
Category and Item Specific changes
New Feedback Protection
New Billing Agreement
7 Responses
What I’m slightly confused about is this:
if you have a featured or basic shop and you offer international postage for an item, do you now have to pay a listing fee for each one of the international sites?
Or does it apply only if you actually list directly on one of the international sites?
Overall pretty fair for my business model. I will say that charging on postage is now exceeding that which Amazon do. This is now making ebay a level playing field with Amazon. I have to say that the time taken to list on ebay, with the constant crashes that I experience on Turbo Lister, I now list all my new inventory first on Amazon, and then if I have time onto ebay. This is a fundamental change to what I was doing a few years back. Amazon sales are steady and predictable, and ebay is sporadic. Food for thought.
Whether or not these changes are a ‘pro’ or a ‘con’ seems to pretty much depend on the size of your shop/business. In some aspects it seems like a swings and roundabouts system. I’m pretty sure (for me) that the bill at the end of the month will just even out as what I save at one end I may lose off my postage.
Also the cynic in me wonders if eBay will continue to cap what postage we can charge now that they can take a bite out of that cherry too?
the only issue I have here is how/when do they charge postage
I sell with a combined postage deal of £1.95 for one to 10 items
if a customer purchases 10 items
do I get charge 20p for the £1.95 they pay
or £1.95 for the 10 lots of £1.95
which wipes out my postage charge??
at present we pay fvf on an item if its paid for or not – so how will they apply this postage fvf fee ??
and I cant go free postage as loads of items priced at £0.99 will go up to £2.99 and if a customer buys 10 they pay nearly £30 instead of neary £12!!!!!
I’m currently a small business, on course to be a gold powerseller and top rated seller by next month. All in all I’m pretty chuffed with these changes, but time will tell.