You probably don’t listen to eBay Investor calls or read their earnings statement, but both buyers and sellers will want to take a look at the 2024 Q3 releases, due around the first week of November. That’s because there’ll be news of a new eBay Buyer-Facing Fee coming to the UK early in 2025. You’ll also want to look out for the first eBay seller release of 2025 as it’s bound to include information on the change.
eBay have of course just introduced free selling with no listing for final value fees for consumer buyers along with changes we highly approve of such as introducing an eBay Balance letting sellers use their earnings to shop on eBay. We shouldn’t be too surprised at the introduction of an eBay Buyer-Facing Fee as it aligns the marketplace with many competitors.
Vinted for example is also free to sell but buyers pay a Buyer Protection fee (£0.30–£0.80 plus 3–8%) and Poshmark in the US now have a buyer protection fee ($1, $2, or $3 plus 5.99%), although they also charge sellers the same.
We have no visibility of the eBay Buyer-Facing Fee percentage, whether prices will be displayed net or gross (we’d prefer buyers to see they price they pay and not have additional fees tacked on at checkout!), or exactly when the fee will be introduced.
We are also planning to introduce a buyer-facing fee in the UK in early 2025 alongside a set of buyer enhancements that provide additional value. There will be more we can share on our future plans at Q3 2024 earnings and our next Global All Hands event.
– Jamie Iannone (in SEC Form 8K)
3 Responses
All I can say is depending on the size of the fee I suspect I will be buying a lot less, if anything, off ebay as soon as a buyer fee comes in. It sounds like ebay has decided they can’t squeeze any more out of the sellers so to increase their profits they are planning on taking a fee off the buyer as well.
I suspect it will backfire on them but I doubt they will ever admit it.
I can see it working to an extent, if it is just on C2C or C2B transactions. If that is the plan, then all ebay will have done then is swapped around who pays the fees. The seller can offer a lower price with zero selling fees, the buyer pays the fees instead and overall pays the same total price, and ebay gets about the same cut of the deal. Smoke and mirrors! Of course, even if they’re no worse off, the buyer may still feel miffed at having to pay a fee to buy something, a fee that they wouldn’t have to pay to buy elsewhere.
Business sellers could be excluded from buyer fees on their transactions, ie no buyer facing fees on B2B or B2C sales. I’m sure it would be do-able. If not, then sadly, the price of these products will increase from the buyer perspective. That will result in a loss sales for the business sellers, and a loss of fee revenue for ebay, as buyers go to other platforms, or direct, for a better price.
So eBay are following the likes of Vinted now?.
The site has been in decline since 2017 first everyone went to Amazon and then to sites like Vinted and off course Temu and Ali express ( even China sellers are 10x as expensive on eBay and Amazon so everyone is going direct.
The big issue and it is since 2017 is eBay is far to expensive to the eye, and you have about 2 seconds of peoples attention these days and the first thing they see if the overpriced promoted listing and they moved on ( people seem to have forgotten how to use a filter to search these days).
The Free selling thing might work to get some actual bargains on eBay but that will take time to filter through to Joe public where eBay is just not on their mind anymore.