Last October, eBay UK made it free for private sellers to use their platform.
They also changed it so you wouldn’t automatically get your funds from a sale the day following an item being purchased; it would be held for 3 months and then paid out, though I believe you could ask for a payout if you wished.
Rightly or wrongly, I thought this was to encourage people to use their eBay balance to buy items on the platform rather than get your money and spend it elsewhere.
Roll forward a few months to February 2025, and a Buyer Protection Payment was introduced.
What is this, you may ask? Well!
On top of the price you list an item for, they add the following:
* A flat fee of up to £0.75 per item
* 4% of the item price up to £300
* 2% of any portion of the item price from £300 to £4,000
And what does eBay say this includes
With Buyer Protection, you benefit from:
Secure transactions: All payments are encrypted end-to-end and handled by our trusted payment partners.
24/7 customer service: Get support around the clock if you need help.
Private sellers paid after delivery: When you purchase from a private seller, payment is sent after the order has been successfully delivered.
Surely, all of the above should be a given, and calling it buyer protection could make it appear that they’ve found Private Sellers to be untrustworthy.
Now, as a private seller, when I price my items, I have to take into account what other private and business sellers are charging for the same or similar items, otherwise, a buyer is just going to bypass my listings.
So, to make my pricing attractive, I now take into account the amount someone is going to pay minus the Buyer Protection Payment – so effectively I am still paying fees to sell on eBay; I just know how much it’s going to be upfront!
Here’s an example:
I originally listed a sewing pattern for £6.50
This includes free postage, which, with recent Royal Mail price rises, will cost me £2.00 to send it by 2nd class post.
eBay has added 0.98p, so the price anyone browsing my listing will see is £7.48
But it doesn’t end there!
This morning, I got an email from eBay stating: “Starting from 15 April, Simple Delivery will be the only delivery method available for private sellers”
*(Simple Delivery won’t be required for letter-sized items that are £10 or under and weigh 100g or less.)
This means many of my items will have to be sent using a tracked method.
When your item sells, eBay will generate the shipping label for you based on the information you inserted when creating the listing. You can either print it at home or use a QR code at a collection point to print it out.
The sewing pattern I’m using in this example will now be sent via Royal Mail Tracked 48, costing £2.74 – so that’s 74p more, which, when you are selling small, low-cost items, is a lot.
The postage cost is £2.70, but I’m guessing they have added 4p for packaging costs. Who knows?
Using Royal Mail 2nd class, I have never had a package go missing. I can use the tracking number to see if it’s been delivered, and this does include compensation up to £20.
My packages are also collected from my home. The postie scans them when my item is collected, and I get an email confirmation, which is my proof of postage.
There is an option to send it via Evri – yeah, don’t all laugh at once!
Fortunately, you can currently turn this feature off, but knowing eBay, it may change in the future.
The main issue for me, aside from the fact that Evri is unreliable – packages often go missing, and their customer support is inadequate when this happens – the packages I send via them will incur a collection fee if I want it picked up from my home.
Penguin and the Bee 