EBay arghh!! ##$&&

[Monitor]

I'm curious about something; Now that eBay cut all ties with PayPal, it typically takes 3 days! for the funds to clear into your checking account so I was just wondering, do you ship the item immediately upon eBay's notification that the buyer has issued a payment - or - do you wait for the money to appear on your bank account?

 

[bn1966]

I'm curious about something; Now that eBay cut all ties with PayPal, it typically takes 3 days! for the funds to clear into your checking account so I was just wondering, do you ship the item immediately upon eBay's notification that the buyer has issued a payment - or - do you wait for the money to appear on your bank account?

I ship immediately, all has been well so far…

 

[Leigh H]

Ship once payment has been made, then eBay pay you shortly after. Just make sure it’s tracked to cover yourself.

 

[Monitor]

Ship once payment has been made, then eBay pay you shortly after. Just make sure it’s tracked to cover yourself.

But shortly after is around 3-4 days for me, or more if the payment is made just before the weekend. Which is why I'm reluctant to ship the item immediately but I guess you're right, it's not like they can reverse the payment mid-way since it's already in the banking system. . .

 

[Bebop]

I ship within 24 hrs. after eBay notifying me of payment. At first I wanted to wait until the money hit the bank but then realized that when dealing with eBay, you just have to go with their flow...... up to a point.

As a U.S. seller that sells high end watches, jackets and musical instruments, the new taxation system for online money exchanges for goods and services that starts Jan. 1st. is going to make me give up selling. Ebay has always been a pain and now it's going to get worse. I suppose we're going to go back to "cash is king".

 

[NYDRH]

But shortly after is around 3-4 days for me, or more if the payment is made just before the weekend. Which is why I'm reluctant to ship the item immediately but I guess you're right, it's not like they can reverse the payment mid-way since it's already in the banking system. . .

My experience is once the barcode is scanned and received by the shipper usually in my case USPS eBay releases the money to your bank within a few minutes and then it's however long it takes to clear.

 

[NYDRH]

the new taxation system for online money exchanges for goods and services that starts Jan. 1st.

I had not heard of this, what's happening?

 

[Bebop]

From what I understand the IRS is going to make it obligatory to report any sales that involve PayPal, Venmo and other online money exchange systems over $600. They claim there are too many people not reporting their online earnings. If you occasionally sell something it shouldn't affect you but if you sell many items worth thousands of dollars it will make eBay impossible considering what they already charge to sell anything.

 

[NYDRH]

From what I understand the IRS is going to make it obligatory to report any sales that involve PayPal, Venmo and other online money exchange systems over $600. They claim there are too many people not reporting their online earnings. If you occasionally sell something it shouldn't affect you but if you sell many items worth thousands of dollars it will make eBay impossible considering what they already charge to sell anything.

Got it. Yeah they've squeezed people on both sides to the point where it's often not worth the effort. It's particularly unbelievable to me that collecting taxes on used clothing is deemed legitimate. I have definitely slowed my buying and selling considerably.

 

[Monitor]

eBay keeps on giving.

Day before yesterday I shipped both jackets even though eBay did not transfer my funds to my bank account yet. Figured they would. Today, though, I notice there's a message sitting in my notification list, informing me that my payments are on hold because my bank account info isn't valid.

My bank account info is valid because they've issued 3 or 4 payments to that same account in the past couple of months.

So now the jackets are gone and my 900 USD is God knows where and I'm waiting for another problem to arise.

While I was reluctant to continue using the service once they discontinued using PayPal for payments, at the time, I was stuck with some stuff that I could sell only over eBay but now that I've gotten rid of pretty much everything I needed to, I'm closing my account for good the moment this current situation gets resolved. I don't need this kind of aggro while having a first coffee of the day.

 

[Edward]

It must be a good decade now since ebay's internal memo about wanting to change direction and be more like aliexpress, favouring high volume, unit-shifters over second hand goods was leaked. It seems ever since they've been rapidly driving in the direction of making it harder to be a seller unless you're an active, full-time business. I haven't sold on eBay for a long time; I have a few things that need to go, but I'm giving serious consideration into just putting them on etsy and taking the potential hit in terms of the smaller market owing to their frankly quite rubbish search facility. Ebay have just gotten too grabby for my liking, not to mention that while their buyer protection is good, it does seem to have largely been achieved by often unfairly leaving the seller open to being shafted.

Oddly enough, I have always found paypal very good when it comes to complaints, so perhaps that's the advantage of eBay not being so intertwined with them...

Some play at a partial refund from you?

Sounds most likely. Dancing around, waiting for you to offer it rather than face a complaint - which they presumably know they can't win.

This isn't the first time - I had a week long ordeal with a buyer claiming the jacket I sent them stunk of perfume. Luckily for me, they realized the jacket smells some two plus weeks after receiving it so eBay had no choice but to close the case in my favor. The jacket was a Vanson with a faint leather smell, like any other jacket, used or new but it certainly did not smell of perfume.

Clever. Dirt or damage can be seen by an eBay mediator; smell can't be dismissed with a photo...

From what I understand the IRS is going to make it obligatory to report any sales that involve PayPal, Venmo and other online money exchange systems over $600. They claim there are too many people not reporting their online earnings. If you occasionally sell something it shouldn't affect you but if you sell many items worth thousands of dollars it will make eBay impossible considering what they already charge to sell anything.

The old story: everything gets harder for everybody because of the few who refuse to do the right thing....

 

[Guppy]

I just got hit for an "international fee" for selling a jacket to a buyer who had registered their ebay account with an address in Australia. My listing didn't offer international shipping, and is in fact going to an address in Portland, Oregon.

Per eBay policy, they assess a 1.65% international fee for transactions to buyers who registered their accounts from addresses in foreign countries regardless of the delivery address.

There seems to be no way to avoid this, as I confirmed with ebay customer service. Even if I only ship to domestic addresses, they will still assess the fee, and will not block an international buyer who has a domestic shipping address. According to the customer service rep I talked to, if the buyer even has an IP address in a foreign country, they will assess this fee, although this is not currently mentioned in ebay's seller fee schedule. Some people use VPNs to appear to be in foreign countries, so this can potentially hit you with a completely unavoidable extra fee for a purely domestic transaction.

Before ebay changed their fee structure, it used to be 10% of the final value, plus paypal transaction fees amounting to $0.30 + 3% of the transaction amount, so roughly 13%. After eBay removed paypal and started to take direct payments, they upped their final value fees to 12.55%, and with the 1.65% international fee that may be applied, this brings the total fees charged by ebay up to 14.2%.

 

[NYDRH]

I just got hit for an "international fee" for selling a jacket to a buyer who had registered their ebay account with an address in Australia. My listing didn't offer international shipping, and is in fact going to an address in Portland, Oregon.

Per eBay policy, they assess a 1.65% international fee for transactions to buyers who registered their accounts from addresses in foreign countries regardless of the delivery address.

There seems to be no way to avoid this, as I confirmed with ebay customer service. Even if I only ship to domestic addresses, they will still assess the fee, and will not block an international buyer who has a domestic shipping address. According to the customer service rep I talked to, if the buyer even has an IP address in a foreign country, they will assess this fee, although this is not currently mentioned in ebay's seller fee schedule. Some people use VPNs to appear to be in foreign countries, so this can potentially hit you with a completely unavoidable extra fee for a purely domestic transaction.

Before ebay changed their fee structure, it used to be 10% of the final value, plus paypal transaction fees amounting to $0.30 + 3% of the transaction amount, so roughly 13%. After eBay removed paypal and started to take direct payments, they upped their final value fees to 12.55%, and with the 1.65% international fee that may be applied, this brings the total fees charged by ebay up to 14.2%.

That's just brutal. Pretty soon they'll just start taking money out of our accounts for existing lol. Their greed is gonna be there demise

 

[Guppy]

That's just brutal. Pretty soon they'll just start taking money out of our accounts for existing lol. Their greed is gonna be there demise

I'm sure it happens very rarely, but it was quite a surprise, so I figured it would be good to know about.

 

[Monitor]

Thank you for posting this, @Guppy. I love it how every single new thing we learn about eBay seems almost intentionally horrible.

Couldn't you theoretically sue them for deducting the 1.65% fee as, since you clearly did not ship your package internationally thus used whatever service they may be providing that the fee would (normally) cover, your money had nowhere and nothing to go to??

It is mega annoying is how the dumb-ass rep even told you that they are perfectly capable of checking buyers IP & assessing the fee accordingly, but in your case, this equally relevant information that proves you have not engaged in an international transaction, suddenly no longer has any relevancy.

That's just brutal. Pretty soon they'll just start taking money out of our accounts for existing lol. Their greed is gonna be there demise

I think they actually already are. And it is.

Looking at the specific jacket maker search results, two years ago you would get twice as many listings by US/EU sellers. The difference doesn't appear as drastic at the first glance but with all the Japanese resellers spamming the results with multiple listings, it's clear private sellers are giving up on eBay.

They've always been crap but before it was kind of cute; You knew what you were getting into and you could, to an extent, control it, but now it's just appalling.

Massive, undisclosed fees, lack of customer service & the worst part, IMO, platform that looks like it belongs to 2003.

 

[Guppy]

Thank you for posting this, @Guppy. I love it how every single new thing we learn about eBay seems almost intentionally horrible.

Couldn't you theoretically sue them for deducting the 1.65% fee as, since you clearly did not ship your package internationally thus used whatever service they may be providing that the fee would (normally) cover, your money had nowhere and nothing to go to??

The fee schedule is clearly explained in their terms of service, so no. This is just one of those situations that should almost never come up, and when it does it will be surprising to anyone who hasn't read the Terms closely.

I haven't sold internationally on ebay, ever, and I've never been interested in the additional hassle of dealing with potential headaches from Global Shipping Program to customs to long delays leading to buyer protection claims to getting flat out scammed to who knows what. I've bought plenty of stuff from international sellers, and very seldom have I actually had any problems.

Ebay customer service and buyer protection has generally been very good for me. I've certainly had my problems at times, and I know I've heard a lot of horror stories from this forum thread, but it's been good to me, and I have a 20 year history with the service. But that said, they're certainly greedy with the fees going up and up. Now that we have to pay sales tax on everything on top of it, it's made ebay less and less attractive to buy things from, other than hard to find things.

There's plenty of other options now: mercari, grailed, poshmark, etc. etc.

 

[Monitor]

Ebay customer service and buyer protection has generally been very good for me.

That's 'cause you have it! Outside of US, the CA didn't exist up until recently. Contact was impossible & all you could do is browse endless help pages that explained nothing or watch others on the eBay forum that had to go through the same thing without any sort of outcome.

I think they want to get rid of private sellers altogether and just make money on motors and vendors.

And K-beauty? Seriously?

 

[Bebop]

Per eBay policy, they assess a 1.65% international fee for transactions to buyers who registered their accounts from addresses in foreign countries regardless of the delivery address.

There seems to be no way to avoid this, as I confirmed with ebay customer service. Even if I only ship to domestic addresses, they will still assess the fee, and will not block an international buyer who has a domestic shipping address. According to the customer service rep I talked to, if the buyer even has an IP address in a foreign country, they will assess this fee, although this is not currently mentioned in ebay's seller fee schedule. Some people use VPNs to appear to be in foreign countries, so this can potentially hit you with a completely unavoidable extra fee for a purely domestic transaction.

Before ebay changed their fee structure, it used to be 10% of the final value, plus paypal transaction fees amounting to $0.30 + 3% of the transaction amount, so roughly 13%. After eBay removed paypal and started to take direct payments, they upped their final value fees to 12.55%, and with the 1.65% international fee that may be applied, this brings the total fees charged by ebay up to 14.2%.[/QUOTE]


That happened to me on a saxophone sale. Shipping address was in Florida and account was in Germany. I guess I didn't read the fine print. Now I insert into every eBay sale, in BOLD letters, that if the shipping address is not a U.S. residential address, the sale will be cancelled. No third party shipping. I look up the address on Google Earth and if it's not a house or apartment I message the buyer and have them explain. Haven't had to cancel any sales yet. Ebay is definitely a buyers market more than a sellers market. It's getting to be more of a hassle than having a store on Main St.

 

[Guppy]

That happened to me on a saxophone sale. Shipping address was in Florida and account was in Germany. I guess I didn't read the fine print. Now I insert into every eBay sale, in BOLD letters, that if the shipping address is not a U.S. residential address, the sale will be cancelled. No third party shipping. I look up the address on Google Earth and if it's not a house or apartment I message the buyer and have them explain. Haven't had to cancel any sales yet. Ebay is definitely a buyers market more than a sellers market. It's getting to be more of a hassle than having a store on Main St.

This sale WAS to an address in the US, and it makes no difference in terms of eBay policy. The buyer's account is registered from Australia, so even though I'm shipping it to Oregon, eBay still considers it an international transaction. And there's no way I could have avoided it. Requiring a US Residential shipping address in no way prevents this from happening.

 

[Bebop]

This sale WAS to an address in the US, and it makes no difference in terms of eBay policy. The buyer's account is registered from Australia, so even though I'm shipping it to Oregon, eBay still considers it an international transaction. And there's no way I could have avoided it. Requiring a US Residential shipping address in no way prevents this from happening.

My sale was also to a U.S. address and ended up in Germany where the account was registered. The U.S. address was to a business address near an airport which I believe (maybe erroneously) that third party shippers are actual shipping business hired by out of country buyers. I think making sure the shipping address is an actual residential house or apt. lessens the chance of having an account in a different country. Of course a third party shipper could operate out of a residential house or apt.