Today, the eBay UK Seller Release is out and this time around there’s a packed agenda of news to digest. As normal, we’ve broken it down into bite sized chunks so that you can get straight to the parts that will impact your business the most.
Before we get into the eBay UK Seller Release proper, there’s a promotion you may be interested in. Up to 50% off eBay fees, capped at £300, for listings that you add new sales promotions to. If you already use eBay promotions then make sure you opt in to grab the discounts. If you don’t use eBay promotions then this is an idea time to trial them so don’t miss out.
There are a ton of updates to various tools as varied as a new ‘Time Away‘ to replace ‘Holiday Settings, changes to email visibility with the introduction of aliases for buyers and sellers to communicate, improvements to the performance tab reports and to Terapeak Research. There are also new item specifics requirements to note and new tools to manage your item specifics on eBay.
For eBay Promoted Listings you’ll find new guidance as to which listings stand the best chance of benefiting from increased sales by being promoted. In another change, any sellers that fall below standard will discover they’re barred from promoting their listings.
As one of eBay’s biggest ever projects, naturally the eBay UK Seller Release includes updates to how you manage your payments.
For those selling more expensive items, there are changes to the requirements for signature on delivery confirmation for eBay Money Back Guarantee.
Finally, there changes to VAT import regulations for the UK (coming into effect on the 1st of January 2021) and the EU (July 2021). This will impact all sellers as eBay will be requiring you to not only list your gross selling price but also specify the VAT rate for each product.
15 Responses
I’m a bit confused by the VAT regulations. I sell from the EU, and have quite a bit of custom in the UK, although not 10,000 euros worth gross a year. I am not VAT registered as I am well below the threshold, so am usually exempt. I also use auctions that vary in value, and are in a category where the VAT rate is different to some other products. Will eBay allow sellers to add VAT as a percentage of the overall cost, that they will then pass on?
Hi Chris, that’s what I understood, but I wasn’t sure how they would go about it? If we’re listing at gross value as eBay say we must do, to include VAT, and it’s an auction that starts at a low value and goes up significantly, then how might that work? The only way I could see it working is if it is entered as a percentage, which in my case would be 5% rather than the usual 20%. And presumably UK buyers would see a value inclusive of VAT, that may not be the same amount as other buyers viewing from within the EU for example?
Email visibility is going to be a pain in the arse for couriers emailing tracking updates 🙁
“for listings that you add new sales promotions to”
Does the promotion need to be new as well as the listing?
Can I add a new listing to an existing promo such as a multi-buy and still receive the discount?
Thanks eBay for not announcing these changes BEFORE releasing them. I’ve been getting some issues since they were released without any announcement, and having to work out that eBay had changed things and having to tell customers, before finally seeing announcements from eBay.
We’ve been inundated with invoice requests that now need manually sorting out as we used to have Linnworks automatically send invoice PDF attachments by email when orders are dispatched. Now those invoices are removed from the email.
When customers now ask for an invoice, we have no way of sending them as we have no means to send the PDF, so we now have to download the generated invoice, and upload it to a PDF to PNG image converter site so that we can then manually send the invoice to the customer!
They say this will not change anything for us, but it clearly is taking up a lot of time with these issues.
I also have had several customers ask for refunds as eBay Managed Payments is making them wary on how it is working and they think it is a scam! Or they complain that they are being asked for a PayPal payment when they have already paid via eBay Managed Payments, and we had not contacted them up to that point, so there seems to be something wrong with eBay Managed Payments from what the customer sees.
We also find that eBay Managed Payments does not show orders paid for straight away so we sometimes get customers asking about orders that they have just paid for and we simply cannot find them, until maybe 15 minutes later.
How will Ebay collect VAT from Chinese Ebay sellers who item location is in the UK
Hi Darren
Yes it appears that both the Final Value Fee AND the 30p order fee are both refunded in full.
let’s see if it makes any differnce (i hope it does) as of today, thouands of office chairs and other items being sold by chinese sellers, who are not paying vat, and must simply be sending form a UK warehouse.. (non of these are up to UK Fire standards but eBay doesn’t really care and niether do they) . Fair competition is almost impossible 🙁