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Please to everyone here. Stop selling anything on eBay. Their new payment format is a joke and they will take you to the cleaners for fees. I just sold a pretty nice 4 spd console for $550 plus shipping of $30 and got hosed for $99 in fees. Been there 22 years. I'm done with eBay. Hopefully something else comes up to sell parts on and nit get raped. Just venting
How did they arrive at the $99 fee? Can you provide some details? Did you have a reserve price? In looking at the ebay fee structure, you should have paid only $58 (10% of your total take of $580) if you did not have a reserve price, so I'm guessing you did.
You received a total of $580 from the seller and netted $481, which comes to about 87% of the $550 sale price. That's actually about par for the course for selling anything on ebay.
Avoid using a reserve price as that adds to the fees. Set your starting price at the minimum you'll take for the item and make it no-reserve. If you simply have to have a reserve price because you want to start the bidding at a low number to generate interest or "test the market" or whatever, you have to accept the fact that you'll pay more in fees.
Go to "my ebay" and there should be some tabs like Activity, Messages, Accounts. Click on the Accounts.
Then find under that you have lots of choices. Find under the header "Selling" a smaller line called "Seller Account". Click on that and that will show you fees and junk you paid as a seller. In the middle of the page there's "Total Fees and Payments" and you can see the detailed fees paid for the last cycle. You can choose a time frame to look at the details of your fees if you look to the right of all that and choose "customize view" with a max look back time of 4 months.
My bet is that your paying fees for previous sales in that as you get popped once per month on total owed fees. I've been on ebay about as long as you, and they haven't hosed me yet. At least that I caught them doing, anyway. Sometimes they're slow on catching up with the fees and shipping charges. Recall too, if you use FedEx, you pay for those shipping labels through Ebay billing, NOT via paypal like the USPS labels.
Remember too, if you're doing paypal, they have to take their chunk out of everything, too. You're going to average about 87% of whatever the gross take is, including shipping when using paypal.
My bet is that your paying fees for previous sales in that as you get popped once per month on total owed fees. [/QUOTE]
I would also venture to say that this is the case. I’ve been on eBay since ‘99, and have only sold like five items due to the fees. I understand that it is a business, but have a hard time with their double dipping practice with PayPal. I have much better dealings with this site and the local selling site. Patients is a plus.
I to sell on ebay regularly. Don.t like their tactics any more either. Wish another site would open up to sell on. But then you have craigslist aslo,,,,but you have to put up with idiots and inconsiderate people.
No selling site has the worldwide reach that ebay has. They know it and they capitalize on it, and both sellers and buyers benefit from this. It's worth the money to have this. Ebay also has built-in seller and buyer protections. These might be annoying at times, but at least they're there. With craigslist, it's totally the wild west.
Craigslist now has fees to sell a car or motorcycle, i believe its $5 for either which isnt bad all things considered. They may charge for other stuff too.
no charge for the inconsiderate people!
when i sell items that could be shipped i put i will ship in my cl ad once in a while someone will ask to have an item shipped. I asked a cl seller to ship me a bellhousing and they did w no issues.
theres also facebook market place which is like cl only with a somewhat broader reach ( and even more inconsiderate people)
ebay is always my last choice, besides the fees, shill bidders, and sometimes questionable rules i go there last if at all. My one negative feedback in 14 yrs is from a deadbeat bidder! How can a deadbeat bidder be given preference over a paying seller ill never figure out
Unfortunately, forums have been dying a slow death thanks to social media, so it leaves Facebook marketplace and eBay to sell most items. I hate the eBay fees, but mark my prices up to account for it, and only list things with "buy it now" prices.
I did not know this, thank you for the clarification. Somehow it does not make me feel better about the additional pound of flesh.
Both ebay and paypal need to make money if they're going to stay in business. Can't begrudge them that. I agree that having to pay a fee to ebay and then a second fee to the company that collects the payment is annoying. But there are protections built in that you receive by using these services. No one is required to sell on ebay, and many people don't. But, as I said earlier, you'll never reach as wide an audience as you will with ebay, and if you refuse to use ebay, that is your choice. But you want to make sure you're not cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Over here, they have an eBay site which isn't about auctioning. You simply set a fixed price and pay absolutely no fees. Despite that, there will always be someone who wants to bargain the price down, depending:
Don't forget they also include the shipping price when they calculate final value fees!
Most what i would be selling falls into this category! 10% (maximum fee $750)
I just sold an item on ebay and fell out of my chair when they sent me the bill!
Sold lots of items on Ebay over the years but it had probably been 5 years before I just sold this one item.
Yeah to much of my profit was eaten!
$300 for item
$30 to ship
= $33.00 in ebay fees!
10% this isn't an auction house where they do all the work. Used to love EBay but not anymore!
But like someone says where else are you gonna find the coverage Ebay offers?
Don't forget they also include the shipping price when they calculate final value fees!
This seems wrong, I know, but ebay had to start doing this to protect themselves. People realized that ebay was charging based only on the selling price, not the shipping fee, so people were gaming the system and charging a very low price for the item and then making it up in the shipping charges. Someone would sell an item worth, say, $100 for, say, $10 and then charge $90 in shipping fees. Ebay would get 10% of the $10 when the seller was clearly overcharging for the shipping to make up for undercharging for the item itself. By charging a fee on both item selling price and the shipping price, this problem goes away.
Well, that seems to be the way out. While looking up an item related to another subscribed thread, I landed onto a page where mostly commercial sellers are offering their products: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...=engine+hummer
Over here in Germany, selling on eBay's auction site also opens a can of worms, similar to the claims mentioned on this thread. Over here, eBay also levies a fee. That's why when I have something to sell, I simply place the ad in the Community-formatted pages. Of course, I could sell my wares quicker and possibly at a profit, when using the auction page. But, then if my target price doesen't get met on an auction, I could lose money and still be obliged to deliver the goods.
As far as shipping goes, UPS, DHL and all the rest have set prices, according to the weight and size of what's being set. When it comes to packaging, I'll discuss this with the buyer, beforehand, explaining that I have to go out and buy wrapping tape and packaging material.
Here's an example of a shipper's prices. The buyer has the option of even following the shipment itself. Therefore, there isn't an intransparency issue, involving shipping charges.
This one specifically deals with tire- and wheel shipping: https://www.myhermes.de/preise/reifen/
Last edited by Killian_Mörder; Nov 30, 2020 at 11:27 PM.
Don't forget they also include the shipping price when they calculate final value fees!
Most what i would be selling falls into this category! 10% (maximum fee $750)
I just sold an item on ebay and fell out of my chair when they sent me the bill!
Sold lots of items on Ebay over the years but it had probably been 5 years before I just sold this one item.
Yeah to much of my profit was eaten!
$300 for item
$30 to ship
= $33.00 in ebay fees!
10% this isn't an auction house where they do all the work. Used to love EBay but not anymore!
But like someone says where else are you gonna find the coverage Ebay offers?
If shipping cost 30 and you wanted 300 for the item on ebay, you KNOW you're going to have to give up something to get something selling on ebay. So place a $360 buy it now with FREE SHIPPING. Problem solved. Keep in mind, the price YOU think its worth may not be what the market thinks its worth. A lot of factors go into play here. I've seen idiots try and sell "NOS" parts on ebay while they're still available from GM that I can get for way cheaper. Can't fault them for trying, but you still need to be up to snuff on your market prices/availability.
You will pay your $30 in shipping, and pay your $36 in final price fee, so now you pocket $294 once it's sold. And probably 289 roughly if you use paypal. If you play it right, you'll have 40,000 people looking at it instead of 400. Which means there is a better chance you find that ONE GUY or more that's willing to pay $360 TODAY to have that item of yours by listing on ebay. If it's not selling, you need to find out why. Use the other formats too, but keep in mind, ebay has a lot less losers buying and selling than places like FB and CL, et al. You pay for the privilege. But if you don't want to, nobody's twisting your arm. You have to look at it as the cost of doing business. I think FB and those like them should charge for bandwidth on their platform too. Weed out a lot of crap. But they won't, because there, YOU are the commodity. So you're paying a price that you don't even see.
I don't depend on ebay to make my living, and I only do it casually. I price accordingly to pocket what I want to pocket, which means I have to raise price accordingly to get there after ebay pulls out their fees. If it don't sell, I don't care. I've made a ton of $$ over the years selling car parts I no longer wanted, but someone did. How'd I do it? Years ago, I bought tons of (now NOS) new GM Olds parts over the counter. Since I did a pretty good deal of buying, I got a wholesaler's discount from the parts manager. People thought I was crazy buying GM parts at GM prices, like $7 for a little piece of dash plastic that said "Oldsmobile". I'd get a handful here and there when I went to buy parts. When I decided to sell them on ebay, I got bids upwards of near and over $100 for that very same little piece, which netted me quite a little profit. Sold a bunch of 4th Gen NOS Camaro SS stuff (SLP) for quite a tidy sum as well. Supply and demand.
You think buying and selling on the interwebz is tough, try doing it the old Hemming's Motor News way before picture phones and interwebz. You just saw a printed ad, once a month, and you best call fast if it's a good price. And even then, you had to rely on the buyer's description of the item, and if you wanted pictures, you had to wait for them in the mail. Then MAIL a money order, then wait. And sometimes get shipped a crappy part, or plain ripped off and then you had to deal with THAT and still not have your part. It was quite a process and would probably kill the average "I want it right now" types.
Don't forget they also include the shipping price when they calculate final value fees!
Most what i would be selling falls into this category! 10% (maximum fee $750)
I just sold an item on ebay and fell out of my chair when they sent me the bill!
Sold lots of items on Ebay over the years but it had probably been 5 years before I just sold this one item.
Yeah to much of my profit was eaten!
I did the same thing a couple years ago. It had been years since I had used ebay to sell anything. I had a bunch of low priced things to get rid of and instead of taking them to the dump I figured I'd put a low reserve on them and unload each one. I started with what I figured would be the most popular, an early 70's open face alternator. I listed it at a $5 starting price.
So place a $360 buy it now with FREE SHIPPING. Problem solved.
This is exactly what I do when selling on ebay, which I do once in a while. Nothing makes potential buyers sit up and take notice more than that "Free Shipping" indication. They don't stop and think that it really isn't free shipping because the shipping cost is built into the sale price. They just see that "free shipping." Ebay loves free shipping, too, and for the same reason. It attracts buyers. Plus, ebay gives the seller who advertises free shipping an automatic "positive" in the shipping feedback category once the transaction is complete.
Like anything else, using someone else's platforms to sell your junk means you need to be aware of the fees and taxes, etc. If you feel you're getting screwed, adjust your prices accordingly. If you don't know going in what it's going to cost you on the back side and what you'll net when the dust settles, it's your fault you're getting "screwed."
If you're making coin and want to average it out, you can do a loss-leader thing in selling some of your crap if your intentions are just to move it. You cannot sell 1 or 2 items every 10 years and expect to make bank doing it through ebay. Sell several items, and if you get hit with a small profit on one, the more popular and hard to find stuff can make up the difference.
Your part is gone. You pocketed some money. Again, on ebay, you're the one that determines your profit if it sells.
You have to be true to yourself on what your goal is. If it's to make a fortune selling used car parts, then you can't do it 1 or 2 pieces per decade. If it's just to free up space and get some lunch money, it's all good.
The stuff I've got to sell is mostly ballast left from projects that'll never see any end or stuff that I found somewhere. Because these items have become rare, I mostly give them up at symbolic prices, just so that they don't land in a scrapyard. If there's real money to make on eBay, it's best to move large valuable items such as vehicles.
Here's an example of one of these items of which I'd like to connect to anyone restoring:
