eBay are making a number of fee changes including for Shop Subscriptions, category fees, and surcharges for under-performing sellers. The fee changes will take effect from the 1st of April 2018.
We have covered the surcharges for below standard sellers in a separate post.
eBay UK Fee Changes for Business Sellers
- The final value fee in the Vaporizers and E Cigarettes, Vapes & Accessories categories will be 11%.
- The final value fee in the Video Games & Consoles category will be 8% with the exception of the Video Games Consoles category which will remain at 5% with a £20 maximum.
- For items that have been listed in two categories, the higher of the two final value fees will be charged. For example, if you’ve listed an item in both the Music category (which has an 8% fee) and the Musical Instruments category (which has a 9% final value fee), when it sells you will be charged the higher 9% final value fee.
See also our post on eBay Premium Service which could impact your fees.
Additional eBay UK Fee Changes for business sellers without an eBay Shop subscription
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Final value fee category caps
For example, if you have a listing in the Headphones category, it will continue to have a 5% final value fee, but will no longer benefit from the £20 maximum cap and will be charged 5% on the full item price.If you want to retain the benefit of final value fee category caps consider subscribing to an eBay Basic Shop.
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Selling Manager Pro
From 1 June 2018, access to Selling Manager Pro will only be available to eBay Shop Subscribers.
Sellers without a shop will no longer benefit from final value fee caps.
Additional changes for business sellers with an Anchor Shop subscription
- The monthly subscription charge will increase to £399 (was £269)
- Anchor Shop subscribers are invited to join eBay’s Concierge Service
eBay Concierge
eBay Concierge is a free enhanced level of service to select UK registered customers and is subject to availability and ongoing seller performance. Sellers with access to eBay Concierge can access: Direct access to a dedicated team of experts with minimal wait times and a choice of contact options; Support from top team members empowered to take responsibility for issues and concerns; and Tailored support on selling issues.
eBay Concierge is invitation only and available for sellers with a UK registration address only. It is subject to ongoing seller performance evaluation and subject to availability if eBay have a significant increase in demand. It may take up to 14 days for Concierge to activate on your account.
Anchor shop subscribers who already have eBay Concierge may rightfully feel aggrieved that they’ll be paying £130 a month extra with no additional benefit. Those without eBay Concierge may well feel that the extra fee is well worth paying for judging by the feedback we’ve heard from those who already have access (and still cheap compared to other marketplace support offerings!)
Whilst any increase in fees is unwelcome, if your business justifies the cost of an Anchor store subscription then in reality the increase in costs will be minuscule when compared with your total monthly eBay invoice. If you can’t justify an Anchor store based on the new fees then you should downgrade to a Featured or Basic eBay shop subscription before the 1st of April.
eBay Shop Subscription Features
(was £269) |
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eBay fee changes for Private Sellers
From the 1st of April eBay fees for private sellers with an eBay shop will rise from 8% to 10%, the same that private sellers without an eBay shop would sell. The cost of a shop for private sellers is £19.99 per month with 100 free listings. Additional listings cost 35p each.
eBay told private sellers “You may also want to consider upgrading to a business seller account to access more Shop options.” This suggests that there may be many businesses masquerading as private sellers, in which case hopefully the fee increase will encourage them to register as businesses and perhaps start paying their taxes as well if they don’t already do so.
31 Responses
If Ebay Concierge is so good, it should be sold as an extra subscription. It’s not fair that Anchor Shop subscribers have to pay nearly £1900 extra a year for something they would probably never use.
I was considering upgrading from my Featured shop but the increase makes it not worthwhile.
we wonder if little use may be part of the criteria why concierge is offered
we have 2 concierge enabled accounts,
but we doubt if we have contacted ebay concierge more than 3 times in the last year and not more than 6 or 7 in the last few years
we learned long ago that it was easier and less complicated to take it on the chin ,or deal with it ourselves
Tamebay,
This states we get unlimited auctions, Seems eBay don’t agree.
Just another money grabbing move by eBay here. Customer support is crap full stop. If you have a problem you take it on the chin and move on, it’s much easier than trying to sort it with a member of staff.
We where literally going to upgrade our store tomorrow, but now will we hell.
Next year it will go up another £50 just wait.
eBay only want the massive sellers now, the smaller new / used goods guys, are being pushed out. And this new edition just clarifys this problem. Idiots
How can they justify a 50% price hike in Anchor Shops? i’m am so angry!! , its a real kick in the teeth as far as I’m concerned,
We are continually having to absorb this increase that increase. Why would I want Concierge Service? I only call Ebay 3 or 4 times a year.
Chris ….. £1560.00 extra a year is not a miniscule amount of money in my eyes, its a significant sum of money, indeed, its more than my business Insurance, more than the cost of Auto Enrolment for my Staff, more than my fees to M2E pro. I have called them and expressed my views I politely suggest all other Anchor Shop users do the same.
I remember a Matt cartoon a while back, showing a man going through an airport scanner.
The caption reads: Not security, it’s to see if you have any more money we could take!
Remind you of anyone?
Ebay “growth” is not being financed by growing sales, but by taking more off sellers.
This is just eBay creeping more and more towards being a big brand only site. They’re constantly and consistently squeezing everyone harder and harder, the smaller sellers unable to keep up with fees and ever harder TRS standards are already falling away, medium to large sellers will eventually be mostly squeezed out, leaving the massive companies that are able to cope with eBay’s demands. They might take a hit on sales who knows, but they’ll also lose the hassle of shoddy small sellers or smaller sellers without the customer services clout of the big boys. It adds up to fewer annoyed buyers, just a more professional service across the site that’s easier to handle with a smaller number of sellers selling in massive volume instead of a large number of sellers selling smaller volume.
I think any business that relies on eBay and aren’t a household brand name needs to worry and plan for a non eBay future. I was keeping up and growing nicely as a relatively new business but I’m finding it harder and harder with every update, eventually it’ll be completely beyond my reach, I can’t keep up with Argos etc. I just don’t deal in the right (massive) volumes yet and eBay are becoming less and less interested in that.
biggestlittleshoponline , why absorb the cost increase?
Does your business absorb all the other cost increases you get in a year, that you get year on year? If so then great.
Normal in business that as costs go up the costs get passed on to buyers.
I do not know about your business but mine has no money of its own. Either I pass on business costs to buyers or business becomes insolvent and shuts.
Or if the increase is simply too much for your business then refuse to pay it. Drop down a level or two in shops.
Unless of course the shop value is such that you do want to pay the fee?
This price hike is simply outrageous I am a sole trader what are they trying to do close me down? I will definitely have to put my prices up and I am going to contact ebay and complain. I am also considering closing down my account and moving my business to Amazon
The anchor shop fee increase from £269 to £399 that is outrageous. I guess it will stop all those Amazon dropshoppers listing 100K of Amazons catalogue and raking in big profits, at lease this shop increase will affect them, plus a lot of them are from outside of the UK and are not even paying any VAT. Ebay RIP – it was really good for me from 1998 – 2007 but not now
Many people say that they are hurting the smaller sellers but they have not put up prices for the smaller shops.
@Mac – Sometimes you have to absorb costs, if you put your prices up you can lose sales.
On the plus side, often the products being sold will have risen in RRP price as well, so you are usually ok putting up your prices
@Andy I do agree, the increase is outrageous, are you not already selling on Amazon?
@Will I really do not think that this cost increase will bother the drop shippers, you mean like hotdeals2008 with 94,236 listings and a feedback of 1,510 in the last month making £5-10,000 a month from doing very little. I am guessing that the system they use is probably very much automated and would not be surprised if they run 2-3 or more shops on eBay
tyler – at some point either you pass cost increases onto buyers or else you subsidise your sales yourself from other income.
Your choice.
My business bills tend to increase over time, everything is paid for by buyers. My business has no other income besides its sales so must cover its costs from the only income sources.
If you and all your competitors are subsidising the buyers which one of you will crack first and start reaching for a profit again?
This is ridiculous, specially because money greedy eBay wants to make it sound like they care for their business sellers by improving our selling experience, what a lot of ****
The time when small sellers could earn some money on ebay is history
Shame on you eBay! 🙁
Please Google open an auction site and you wouldn’t even need to work hard to have all eBay’s unhappy sellers flocking happily to you
As a sole trader I gave up selling on eBay over a year ago and now sell my stuff successfuly on other platforms, but I still buy on eBay – for now, but I can see this is about change. The reason I buy from eBay sellers is because they sell a lot of things I need cheaper than getting it from a shop, or places like Amazon. Yesterday I bought a pack of 10 electrical socket screws for £1.89 inc postage. The seller obviously relies on sellers like me buying his stuff. But eBay’s greedy attitude is going to either force him to put up prices, or force him off the platform. Either way he will lose my custom and I will shop elsewhere. recently we had a new kitchen and we needed new cookware for the induction hob. We didn’t get any of it from eBay, all of it we got from Amazon, £200 worth of pans from different sellers, but none of it from eBay. We really did try to find an eBay seller but they just didnt match up to those on Amazon, the sellers didn’t offer anything to entice us to buy. This I suspect was because of eBay’s policies and rules towards sellers. Six months ago it would have been different, ebay was my first port of call, but now when I want something the first place I go to is Amazon.
Ebay are trying to force off the small traders and second hand sellers and turn the platform into some sort of up-market brand shopping centre. But what they dont realise is that it is the cheap sole traders and second hand sellers that made ebay unique and popular. Ebay wiil eventually become something that is nothing different than shopping online at John Lewis or Debenhams.
But nature abhors a vacuum and something else will rise to take ebay’s place. I think we are seeing ebay turn into another Yellow Pages.
My Anchor shop subscription will be cancelled tomorrow due to the hike in price.
I have 2500 items listed and it’s now just too expensive until I get to 6000 listings to make it viable. I have also taken all the 2nd cat’s from all my listings, as again its not worth it, plus I would be paying the higher FVF on all items which to me is a double Whammie.
Where is the incentive to build your business from eBay??
The carrot & Stick has been replaced with a baseball bat!!
We left ebay and our anchor store last year, poured the money into Facebook ads and google retargeting, our sales and profits are up massively
Will this effect the casual sellers – i.e those people just selling unneeded items / clothes / DVDs etc?
I currently pay no extra costs – just a flat 10% per item sold (and a PayPal fee).
I’m above standard, and get up to 100 insertion free auctions a day.
@ ALAN PATERSON.
Ebay themselves have provided the following growth figures to the stock market
2015 -2%
2016 +5%
2017 +7%
(compared to Amazon +20%, +21%, +27%)
If you take account of the fee rises brought in by Ebay in 2016 and 2017, these wipe out the growth in revenue, which means that actual sales are not growing.
It’s simple mathematics.
Rather than your Yah-boo remarks, why don’t you bother to check these facts out for yourself if you don’t believe them. They’re in the public domain and have to be published by corporations in their public accounts.
If sales on Ebay were actually growing (as opposed to the ups and downs experienced by all sellers), there would be fewer complaints from sellers.
As it is, the facts are clear, Ebay’s revenue growth IS being funded by fee rises and NOT by sales growth. Unlike Amazon.
So, Mr Paterson, you can take your doughnut and your hole and make of that what you like.
You could sell on https://www.forthelittleguys.com, free listings with an 8% final value fee which is automatically dedeucted during each sale, which is the way I think eBay should do it. Small platform with limited catergory but getting there. I have a basic eBay shop as well but spread my products across many platforms to try get the best results for my business.