Sold a watch on eBay for $202.50. Insured S&H was $14.99. Total to me should have been $217.49 minus eBay's fee (and S&H used to be exempt from eBay's final value fee). I remember when Paypal charged 4% and eBay charged 3-6%. Now it's 15%. If that's not bad enough, the buyer was in California. Now eBay charged the buyer CA sales tax in the amount of $20.76 then charged me their 15% fee on the sales tax. WTF? How is this legal? Here's the breakdown from eBay's invoice:

Item price: $202.50
S&H: $14.99
Sales tax: $20.76

Fees based on: $238.25

Final value fee: $35.74

Final value fee: $0.30

Total Fees: $36.04

So for an item that sold for $202.50 I ended up getting $166.45 after paying for insured shipping.... roughly 83% of the sale price meaning my net payout to eBay was 17%.

This isn't even borderline criminal, it's way over the line criminal.

Unfortunately, all of the online used item marketplaces (eBay, Mercari, Poshmark, etc.) seem to have similar fee structures of around 13-15% nowadays.

Selling on forums or other social media is generally a much more profitable route. But you then run a higher risk of being scammed, especially on the less well-moderated sites.

I used to sell on eBay all the time. Didn't worry about the fees all that much as I had good margins and eBay brought in the bidders.

I cleared over $60,000 in three years...

Enter: The American Rescue Plan. Thanks to that little nugget, I was paying fees and fees and taxes and now extra taxes.

Began to wonder who I was selling the stuff for.

Expect to see prices rising across the board on nearly all websites, whether membership fees, commission fees, nickle-and-dime feature access fees, etc.

Web companies got fat for years on hefty ad/marketing revenue, explosive market growth, and ultra low interest rate funding for their deficit spending. All of those factors that have allowed them to artificially avoid economic Darwinism have since gone the way of the dodo. These businesses are now having to adopt actual business practices to work at earning more money than they are spending in order to remain afloat, necessarily resulting in raising of prices and cutting of costs. Many of them are being forced to switch from offering their websites as a free/cheap platform to treating it more like selling their websites as a product/service.

It's evident all around, not just at Ebay. Just look at what's going on with the efforts of Twitter or Reddit to monetize their platforms in order to remain (or become) profitable, not to mention the rising costs at all the streaming services, the rapid increase in paywalled news websites, etc.

The "good old days" of popular websites being free/cheap are coming to an end. The internet as a whole is going to get a lot more expensive, and a lot more gated-off with memberships, access fees, and paywalls.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RogueJSK,

Still sketchy, but Craigslist is still a cheap, albeit local, option. I think there's a small listing fee for vehicles, cars & motorcycles, but I think most esle is still free to list.
That's where I bought my Seiko SNK while waiting on my Monster, and where I bought my Midget.

Good luck suing over something that you agreed to .

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
Good luck suing over something that you agreed to .

I never agreed to it. The last terms and conditions email must have gone into my spam box and was deleted so I never read or agreed to this. Just because it says (paraphrasing): "we're changing the terms, if you use the service you automatically agree to it" doesn't mean I agree to it.


eBay used to charge a final value fee and a payment processing fee. I can rationalize charging a payment processing fee on the grand total of the transaction because there's a cost to process the payment in full. What I don't understand is how eBay thinks it's legal to charge a final value fee on shipping and sales tax because both of those costs are in addition to the final value, not a part of it. A $200 item is not worth $240 all of a sudden just because of shipping and sales tax. Shipping costs are for convenience (vs local pickup) and sales tax is required/collected for the state. Neither of those costs add to my bottom line yet I'm out of pocket an extra 15% on both. It's gouging, plain and simple.

quote:

I never agreed to it. The last terms and conditions email must have gone into my spam box and was deleted so I never read or agreed to this.

As they say in the legal world: 'Tough titty'. The fact that you either chose or your email filter allowed their communication adjusting their ToS to go into your spam folder does not negate the legality of the change. But, knock yourself out.

So if I email you terms and conditions, you don't read/agree to it but you do something that I stipulated in those terms and conditions do I get to enforce the rest of it because "tough titties?"

You're saying you knowingly listed something for sale via eBay's service without bothering to understand or even attempt to read about how their service's fee structure works.

That's not eBay's fault, and certainly not grounds for a lawsuit...

If you had stuck with "eBay's fees are too damn high", you would have had a leg to stand on.

But "I didn't know, or bother to check, and therefore eBay should get sued" is ludicrous.

quote:

Originally posted by Hildur:
eBay used to charge a final value fee and a payment processing fee. I can rationalize charging a payment processing fee on the grand total of the transaction because there's a cost to process the payment in full. What I don't understand is how eBay thinks it's legal to charge a final value fee on shipping and sales tax because both of those costs are in addition to the final value, not a part of it.

No, the final value is the entire total amount of the sale, inclusive of shipping, tax, and any other fees.

Again, it's laid out in black and white in eBay's selling fee structure. The information is readily accessible on their website in various places, not hidden in the fine print of an email that got stuck in a spam filter.

https://www.ebay.com/help/sell...selling-fees?id=4822

quote:

We charge one final value fee when your item sells, and you don't have to worry about third-party payment processing fees. This fee is calculated as a percentage of the total amount of the sale, plus $0.30 per order.

The total amount of the sale includes the item price, any handling charges, the shipping service the buyer selects, sales tax, and any other applicable fees.

Jewelry & Watches > Watches, Parts & Accessories
Final value fee % + $0.30 per order:
*15% on total amount of the sale up to $1,000 calculated per item
*6.5% on the portion of the sale over $1,000 up to $7,500 calculated per item
*3% on the portion of the sale over $7,500

It happens all the time. Back in 2005 when diesel fuel prices shot up quickly, freight rates often included a fuel surcharge. The surcharge was there to adjust for the fuel price relative to when the freight rate was negotiated. Freight brokers would (and still do) withhold their 20% of the gross pay, notwithstanding that the fuel charge is the exact amount of the fuel increase, leaving the trucker to makeup the difference out of pocket. It could leave you operating at a loss if you aren’t careful.

quote:

Originally posted by Hildur:
So if I email you terms and conditions, you don't read/agree to it but you do something that I stipulated in those terms and conditions do I get to enforce the rest of it because "tough titties?"

If I use your services, it is indeed 'tough titties'.

You go out to dinner at a nice restaurant. The prices are listed on the menu. You look over the menu, make your selection, then place your order. You eat the food when it arrives. When the check comes at the end, you claim "I didn't bother to read the prices on the menu, therefore you can't expect me to pay this!"

See? That makes no sense.

You used eBay's service. Information about the fees were available to you, and you chose to utilize that service without understanding the fees. That doesn't invalidate that you entered an agreement to pay those fees by using their service.

Beyond that, while it's been years since I listed something on eBay, I can almost guarantee that at some point while creating that listing, there was a specific screen that said something like "By creating this for sale listing, I agree to follow eBay's terms and conditions and fee structure", requiring you to click a button to acknowledge it and post the listing. Usually accompanied by a link to the rules and fees themselves.

That was you explicitly agreeing to the fees, and giving you the opportunity to learn and understand them before agreeing to them. They're not just relying on you hopefully having read some email they sent out years ago, and then trying to hold you to it whether you read that email or not.

You effectively entered a contract by creating that listing. You just didn't bother to read that contract first.

Did you include the Federal Taxes via 1099 on your sales over $600?

It never ceases to amaze me how many people rush to the defense of these billion dollar companies who fuck over everyday people in every way possible just because they have the means to do it legally.


With that logic Biden deserved to win the election because ballot harvesting is "legal." To hell with principles and ethics right? If lawyers find a loophole and exploit it, it's ok to screw people and point to the legality of it.


It's as if some of you can't tell the difference (or knowingly ignore) between what's legal and what's right because they are mutually exclusive.


I'm not suing eBay over a few bucks. But those few bucks times hundreds of millions of items add up which is why eBay does it. That's why I said I'd support a class action lawsuit against eBay. I don't care about making anything from it. But it's downright unethical to charge 15% on fixed costs that don't goto the seller, period.

quote:

Originally posted by Hildur:
But it's downright unethical to charge 15% on fixed costs that don't goto the seller, period.

You should stick to that.

Because your further leaps of "I never agreed to it and they can't hold me to it because I didn't read their email!!!" don't hold water, and detract from what would otherwise be a valid gripe about eBay's overly high fees.

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
Did you include the Federal Taxes via 1099 on your sales over $600?

Why would I? It's under $600 and a loss.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by Hildur:
But it's downright unethical to charge 15% on fixed costs that don't goto the seller, period.

You should stick to that.

Because your further leaps of "They can't hold me to it because I didn't read their email!!!" doesn't hold water, and detracts from what would otherwise be a valid gripe about eBay's overly high fees.

True story.

.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by Hildur:
But it's downright unethical to charge 15% on fixed costs that don't goto the seller, period.

You should stick to that.

Because your further leaps of "I never agreed to it and they can't hold me to it because I didn't read their email!!!" don't hold water, and detract from what would otherwise be a valid gripe about eBay's overly high fees.

There's definitely an argument that shipping and sales tax are not part of an item's "final value" and therefore aren't subject to a 15% "final value fee." Look at the housing market. If a house sells for $500k does the realtor say "Hold on! The sale price was $500k but the closing costs were another $10,000 so my 6% commission is based on $510k, not $500k!" Does the buyer get to turn around and tell people that his house is worth $510k when in fact the seller grossed $500k?" The answer is no. Costs associated with the transaction don't add to the value.

quote:

Originally posted by Hildur:
If a house sells for $500k does the realtor say "Hold on! The sale price was $500k but the closing costs were another $10,000 so my 6% commission is based on $510k, not $500k!"

The answer is no.

They do if that's included in the contract that both parties agree to follow. So hopefully that seller reads the real estate contract before signing and selling their house, to know whether the realtor's commission is calculated before or after closing costs.

The bottom line here, for that particular aspect, is that you dropped the ball. That's your fault, not eBay's. You failed to do your due diligence, and got surprised by the large bite taken out of your sale that you had agreed to.

Since you are clearly outraged at eBay's hefty fee structure, if you had bothered to read up on them at the start then you would have known about it on the front end, and then you likely would have found a less expensive route to take when selling your watch.

Yes, eBay's fees are high. But they didn't force you to use eBay. And they didn't hide their fees from you. Doing your homework would have saved you what is clearly quite a bit of consternation.