eBay are to make some fee changes for consumer sellers – it won’t impact businesses but might look like good news for them! eBay Private Seller accounts will have fewer free listings, a fixed international fee and lose cash on pick up. This should mean businesses running a private account will have more incentive to correctly declare themselves as a business seller.
eBay Private Seller Listing Allowances
Currently eBay Private Sellers can list up to 1,000 items for free. From the 1st of October this will be reduced to 300 free listings per month. After they have used their allocation of 300 free listings, further items will be charged at 35p per listing.
Frankly, there are very few circumstances where a genuine private seller will have 300 items to sell. Sure, if you are downsizing or there’s a death in the family you might have a lot to sell on a one off basis, but no consumer can genuinely have 1,000 items to sell every month on an ongoing basis. This might upset some pseudo businesses trading as a private seller and for them this move might prompt them to declare themselves as a business to get more attractive fee rates. This will then force them to offer business services such as returns etc and be more honest to consumer customers.
eBay Private Seller International Fee
If your registered address is in the UK, eBay charge an International Fee that varies by region. From the 1st of October this will change to a fixed rate of 3% across all shipping regions. As with most eBay Fees, this will be levied on the final value of the item, plus shipping and handling costs and any applicable taxes.
Local Listing Cash on Collection
eBay will remove the cash on collection option mandating that all payments be made through the eBay Platform from the 1st of October. eBay say that they will offer a simple digital confirmation on collection to ensure that you get paid securely and promptly by buyers.
