eBay fees

BintyTwanger77

Just a quickie...

Did I read somewhere that eBay had cut their seller fees on guitars, amps and effects recently? Possibly in response to Reverb seller fees being a lot lower?

John_P

BintyTwanger77 said:

Just a quickie...

Did I read somewhere that eBay had cut their seller fees on guitars, amps and effects recently? Possibly in response to Reverb seller fees being a lot lower?

Not to my knowledge.     But I regularly get an invite to various discounts in the fees from 50% to sell for £1.     Haven't seen any sign of a reduction though - be nice if they did.

RiftAmps

http://www.ebay.com/rpp/sell-guitars

https://tamebay.com/2017/05/ebay-com-slash-fees-for-guitars-amps-and-accessories.html

ICBM

The fees are only one of the problems with Ebay - and not the most serious. Don't get suckered into thinking it's any better now.

andrewaward

I'm pretty sure the price slash is for US guys only, not UK/EU customers..............I sold a guitar item last week @ £800 and ebay took nearly £80 selling fee...............I am registered as a business, not sure if personal account holders pay less.

Bygone_Tones

If ebay really want to draw people back again they need to ditch the seller fees altogether in my opinion. Hiking them up to 15% is the exact opposite of what they need to be doing. They need to seriously think about how they can make profit some other way.

Secondly, make it a fair marketplace for sellers and buyers. Fix all the loopholes that buyers exploit etc.

Thats the only way they are going to grow again, otherwise people will just leave in favour of social media and other free marketplaces.

Reverb.com is still a much better website for selling gear, even if ebay are matching their fees now.

DJH83004

andrewaward said:

I'm pretty sure the price slash is for US guys only, not UK/EU customers..............I sold a guitar item last week @ £800 and ebay took nearly £80 selling fee...............I am registered as a business, not sure if personal account holders pay less.

That was also my understanding, Ebay.com US sellers, rather than EBay.co.uk, but may have got that wrong.  

RiftAmps

I stand corrected - the eBay UK fee calculator quotes approx £85 on a £1000 guitar sale.

Bygone_Tones

Depends on your listing style. I get £92.35 with international visibility. For a £1000 guitar

Dont forget theres an extra 3.5% for paypal too (about £35.70 depending on your postage cost). So altogether you would really be paying around £128.05 in fees. So you are only getting £872 for the £1000 guitar.

Legionreturns

I paid 10% on a recent bass, amp and pedal. It's only state side that have cut fees. Reverb hasn't really done enough volume here to be a threat yet. 8/10 items on reverb are in the USA

prowla

Well, ebay provide the mechanism by which to sell things to a larger audience, so their fees are what they are...

Things like FB groups and online fora can easily undercut them though.

Fortheloveofguitar

Fuck eBay!

That is all 

Arktik83

I only sell on eBay now when they do their "seller fee's no more than £1" or something like that, the 10% they charge on the final value as well as the 3.5% PayPal fee is just silly now if you could sell it on Reverb etc for cheaper.  

The only real benefit of eBay is that you have access to the biggest buyer market and chances are it'll sell.  

Bygone_Tones

Arktik83 said:

The only real benefit of eBay is that you have access to the biggest buyer market and chances are it'll sell.  

My opinion is Ebay should be your last resort whenever you try to sell anything. If you want traffic then put the work in and advertise it on every alternative site you can, and then promote the crap out of it as much as possible on social media or wherever you can to drive traffic to it. "Bung it on ebay and wait for people to come" is the most lazy way to sell anything, and the most expensive.

Also fwiw  I dont believe Ebay traffic is anywhere near as good as it was say ten years ago.

Dont get me wrong I do still use ebay, but only for low value stuff thesedays like books and CD's. Anything gear related or valuable I will try and shift it elsewhere first.

Chalky

Not a fan of Ebay but it makes me laugh that people complain about fees, yet ignore the fact that when stuff sells on here it is often after lots of price drops and for less than what the seller would get on Ebay after fees!

Its a buyer's market.

Neil

Arktik83 said:

I only sell on eBay now when they do their "seller fee's no more than £1" or something like that, the 10% they charge on the final value as well as the 3.5% PayPal fee is just silly now if you could sell it on Reverb etc for cheaper.  

The only real benefit of eBay is that you have access to the biggest buyer market and chances are it'll sell.  

In reality that's the cruncher when it comes to selling  anything.

You can wait months or try other avenues but in real terms you will probably save that 13.5% by selling in a week and getting the best price.

Of course there are other caveats but when it comes to pure ease of selling and best price I doubt you can beat ebay.

OilCityPickups

As a trade seller I dropped e bay for my products when they removed the ability to give negative feedback about rogue buyers. This tilted the playing field so badly that it made it pointless unless you are a super high volume seller of tat ... exactly what e bay is full of now in fact!
Fees have never been my issue with the system, more the erosion of 'seller's rights' to try and seem more attractive to buyers.

crunchman

TheGuitarWeasel said:

As a trade seller I dropped e bay for my products when they removed the ability to give negative feedback about rogue buyers. This tilted the playing field so badly that it made it pointless unless you are a super high volume seller of tat ... exactly what e bay is full of now in fact!
Fees have never been my issue with the system, more the erosion of 'seller's rights' to try and seem more attractive to buyers.

This.

I also think that @Bygone_Tones is right that there isn't as much traffic on Feebay as there used to be - me for one.  I use to be on it all the time, but now I hardly ever go on there.  I don't think I'm the only one.

ICBM

TheGuitarWeasel said:

As a trade seller I dropped e bay for my products when they removed the ability to give negative feedback about rogue buyers. This tilted the playing field so badly that it made it pointless unless you are a super high volume seller of tat ... exactly what e bay is full of now in fact!
Fees have never been my issue with the system, more the erosion of 'seller's rights' to try and seem more attractive to buyers.

This.

And as a private seller, the potential for things to go massively wrong after the sale - up to months afterwards, with the current rules - causing you at best a huge amount of hassle, and at worst losing your money and your goods. If Ebay protected you against this, the fees would actually be worth it.

For high-volume business sellers the occasional rogue buyer is just part of the cost of doing business - and they are relatively rare. For a private seller, if you're unlucky and your sale is in the few percent that go wrong then you could be seriously out of pocket.