07.09.07

eBay screwing sellers to promote paypal

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:53 am by blog

Today i had a listing cancelled on ebay, for:

“Circumvention of eBay Fees (=LS &12362 JM119848267)”

However, your listing was in breach of eBay’s Circumvention of eBay Fees policy and has been removed from eBay. All fees related to this listing have been credited to
your account. We also notified members who placed bids on the item that the listing has
been canceled.

We would like to take this opportunity to let you know what part of your listing is not permitted.

Your listing(s) contains the following information:

Payment by paypal will incur a 5 additional charge to cover fees

You may not manipulate eBay’s system in order to avoid paying certain eBay fees. This includes practices such as adding previously unspecified fees after the end of the
auction, or charging excessive postage and packaging in order to recoup your listing and Final Value Fees. Fee avoidance provides a poor buying experience and gives you
an unfair advantage over other eBay sellers.

Payment surcharges are a form of fee circumvention. eBay prohibits surcharging by sellers. Surcharging occurs when sellers pass the charges they incur for using eBay or
third party services such as payment services onto buyers.

eBay has adopted this surcharging policy to ensure that all buyers receive clear and accurate pricing information when trading on eBay.co.uk. This surcharge policy
applies only to items listed on eBay.co.uk.

For more information on Circumvention of eBay Fees copy this link into a new browser window:

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/listing-surcharges.html

What this basically boils down to is. I as a seller cannot make the buyer pay to cover the charges imposed by paypal… Thus, if a buyer pays for the item with cash, a cheque or some other method I receive all the money. If they pay using paypal, I lose a percentage of it. I don’t consider this at all unreasonable, if a buyer wants to use a method of payment that will cost more, they should foot the bill, not the seller. Ebay are doing this because making buyers pay the paypal charges discourages people from using it, so they screw the sellers instead.
Also let’s not forget that paypal take a cut from the money intended for shipping costs, so sellers have no choice but to inflate shipping costs to cover it.

So as a consequence, i will stop using paypal.

2 Comments »

  1. Dan said,

    April 25, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    There’s nothing stopping you from giving a discount for cash purchases, you just can’t have a surcharge. So increase shipping and “handling” by $5 and then make a note that a $5 off coupon is available for cash purchases only. Problem solved.

  2. Darby Crash said,

    August 22, 2008 at 1:05 am

    I agree with Dan. We’re in the 21st century now, and paying electronically is the standard, not snail mailing a check or money order. Therefore, all your sales should be priced as though they are all being paid via paypal, and give a discount to anyone who’s willing to pay via snail mail. This is better for a sellers image as well.

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