EBAY - is this an error or wot?

Hi all,

I recently went on ebay to try & sell a couple of cheap items. Having entered one for sale, I looked up the listing & didn't like what they had done. I put the item on for £1.00 + postage but when I looked it was listed for £1.79 for the opening bid. This was due to ebay adding in a thing called “buyer protection” . I have not looked into it but I think the buyer would get this back when the package arrives safely.

The trouble with doing this is that I think it will price items out of range. Seeing the first bid needed so high will stop bids being made and

therefore … LESS BIDS … LESS ITEMS SOLD … LESS PROFIT

When I last tried to sell banknotes on eBay, Russia invaded Ukraine & nobody could find my listings. You can imagine how that turned out. I found the platform very difficult to navigate. I can't even imagine what it must be like now (since I can rarely get a long established Power Seller, with a store front, to combine shipping or sort out an issue).

I later sought advice, tips for selling on eBay, from the collectors who inhabit the PMF. Turns out, the best thing you can do is pay for the store front (become a "Power Seller" in order to get exposure/many perks). Otherwise it will be quite difficult for the average buyer to find your listing.  I like the tips that was generated by that thread.

As an occasional seller, you must post links to your listings to help generate some bids (& awareness of your items).  I did this 3 years ago & still managed to lose $ (or break even) due to the high listing fees (plus the fact that your listing will rarely pop up for the average buyer). Once I posted my listings & I shared my links with others, I had a few bids but my items had little exposure & were difficult to find (I was told by others who tried to find them).

I have since offered banknotes on various forums BST (Buy, Sell, Trade) sections or on my own site. 

Good luck!

Merv

Hi all,

I recently went on ebay to try & sell a couple of cheap items. Having entered one for sale, I looked up the listing & didn't like what they had done. I put the item on for £1.00 + postage but when I looked it was listed for £1.79 for the opening bid. This was due to ebay adding in a thing called “buyer protection” . I have not looked into it but I think the buyer would get this back when the package arrives safely.

The trouble with doing this is that I think it will price items out of range. Seeing the first bid needed so high will stop bids being made and

therefore … LESS BIDS … LESS ITEMS SOLD … LESS PROFIT

The buyer should not get the buyer protection back when it arrives,  as this is just ebay switching who pays the fees (the buyer now pays the fees instead of the seller) which is a welcome move (at first) for sellers, but in the end it's a terrible idea for both sides. 

If you think you should receive the buyer protection back simply replace the word protection with insurance and you'll see why you don't get it back.

So does that mean that it is another part of their profit making their cut bigger? They changed the way that they pay out a few months ago.

Instead of paying into you bank account after a couple of days , they keep hold of it & pay out in a lump sum every 3 months. They must make a hell of a lot of interest on that.

Saying that, If you want the payment you can have it paid by asking for it to be transfered everytime after you have sold something.

eBay (and other online platforms) has implemented buyer protection (for purchases from private individuals - if I remember correctly) as an insurance paid for by the buyer. In case the purchased items are not received, the buyer gets compensation for their losses via this insurance.

Good thing is that it encourages the buyer to “only” report items that are actually not received, as opposed to previously where (unscrupulous) buyers could make any numbers of claims via PayPal without any restraint. With an insurance in place, there is a financial incentive to keep the cases of claims down to a minimum. Which means that buyers with an excessive claims statistics will be scrutinized.

Seen from a seller's perspective, who wants to sell to buyer's with an excessive claims statistics?

It is unfortunate that we do rely on eBay for our collection. I have been buying on eBay since 2004, and some years ago I started selling some notes on eBay.com.au so that I can get 10+ good ratings before they allow me to list my items on the USA eBay side.

I used to get free listings then. I believe since then, the fees have gone up a lot and you see the listed price has gone up too. To beat this is to buy directly from the sellers. You will find some of those power sellers now maintain their own website and you can buy directly from them.

In addition to eBay, there is eBid but their choice of coins/banknotes are limited. The traffic there is much lower than eBay, of course. They are just not as popular as eBay, and I believe their selling fee is much lower. Some years ago, I bought a few Haiti Tyvek notes from this site at a very cheap price too.

According to the new world order, the fee increase by eBay is a kind of the new world order - Tariff. It's just another tax to pay and it is not paid by the seller, like one 'Great' President keeps insisting. It's paid by the buyer.

A few months ago I sold something and was told that it didn't arrive, I gave a full refund of the money including the postage. This left me with the value of the item & the postage out of pocket. If I wanted to get back my losses I would have to claim from the Post Office.

Will ebay now cover the losses or will I still have to give refunds & be out of pocket?

Based on my experience, the moment you lodge a claim against the seller, they would have 48 hours to respond. After that, eBay will just do the refund on your behalf, which means that you have no time to lodge a trace with your Post Office if the mail was registered. 
 

In this country, the compensation for documents was A$200 and later it was reduced to $100. The condition is that they will not compensate valuables like coins, banknotes or jewelry. I have once tried and they told me that they cannot provide insurance for coins. This is also depending on which country you are trying to send to. For high risk countries, there is no way they will not accept insurance cover.

In your case and if the letter was registered, you will have to find out from the Royal Mail's policy for compensation.

Good luck

Merv

So does that mean that it is another part of their profit making their cut bigger? They changed the way that they pay out a few months ago.

Instead of paying into you bank account after a couple of days , they keep hold of it & pay out in a lump sum every 3 months. They must make a hell of a lot of interest on that.

Saying that, If you want the payment you can have it paid by asking for it to be transfered everytime after you have sold something.

Sort of? Private sellers no longer pay fees, the buyer pays the fees in the form of “buyer protection” instead. But yes they now make money on the interest by holding the money from you which is terrible for sellers since for untracked items (small items not worth paying tracked postage on) you have to wait about 15 days or more before you can withdraw the money for that item. And for tracked items you only are able to withdraw the money 2 days after it's been delivered, it's terrible! 

I remember some years back that for eBay sellers, eBay demanded access to the sellers bank account enabling them to both deposit money and withdraw fees or refunds if they so wished, if you did not grant them access you were unable to sell on their platform as a private seller! I refused to be bullied and that was the last time I sold anything on eBay, I have been buying less and less from them as their so called customer service is atrocious and there is very little enforcement of their so called selling regulations especially when it comes to coins. 
I was lucky that I had a long list of trusted sellers that I had saved, but finding new and reasonably priced ones has become harder and harder, why because eBay would rather push an „error €2 coin“ priced at €1200 to the top of their list than a actual honest €1 starter bid coin, because if the bs €1200 coin sells they make more money!

ebay stinks, I had bad experiences with them as a seller and as a buyer, they look after themselves first!

Merv

This was due to ebay adding in a thing called “buyer protection” 

'Buyer protection' is a new fee charged by ebay to the buyer. The buyer does not receive the fee back when it is charged.

google it and you will find a full explanation of what it is, when introduced, and the rates charged.

Merv

Hi all,

I recently went on ebay to try & sell a couple of cheap items. Having entered one for sale, I looked up the listing & didn't like what they had done. I put the item on for £1.00 + postage but when I looked it was listed for £1.79 for the opening bid. This was due to ebay adding in a thing called “buyer protection” . I have not looked into it but I think the buyer would get this back when the package arrives safely.

The trouble with doing this is that I think it will price items out of range. Seeing the first bid needed so high will stop bids being made and

therefore … LESS BIDS … LESS ITEMS SOLD … LESS PROFIT

I've had listing there for over a year. They want you to do the “boost it” thing to list them “up top” in the listing. Boosting can cost you 22% of the sale

It's been a couple of weeks since this post was started & I have only had a bid (and sold) one of my items. Before the buyer protection I was getting half a dozen a week.

Since my coins offered are low value, the extra put on by ebay nearly doubles the asking price and therefore people are not bidding because the first bid price is too high & they are frightened off. 

It now looks as if ebay have changed the set-up again, new listings now have to send by EVRI courier or Royal Mail . The new cost for the cheapest rate & smallest item is £2.70 which put my coins up to "silly money" so I am getting no views or bids.

I think that my time on ebay is coming to an end.

I think that my time on ebay is coming to an end.

Merv, I upgraded my Canadian banknote collection about 5 years after eBay started (around 2000).  This was my 2nd phase as a collector & I got rid of all my higher denominations, regular circulated signature varieties to buy higher quality (AU to UNC) signature change-overs, replacements & tougher notes.  My 3rd phase as a collector occurred 3 years later after a monster garage sale & I started going to the banks & picking up UNC radars & swapping (in person) with fellow collectors. I often got “doubles” in order to foster future trades.

When I replied to this thread on March 1st about my final time on eBay (February 2022), I offered some of my  UNC radars & tough change-over notes ("lost prefixes") from Canada's original Journey series.  I started all my auctions at $0.99 (with low shipping) & most of my tough TENS or FIVES didn't even reach Face Value until the day before the auctions ended.  The stock market was rocked by the Russian 2nd invasion of Ukraine. I remember feeling pretty terrible in the last few days before ‘bidding ended’ as I realized I was going to “take a bath.”  A 1937 $1.00 (like below) had a minor "bidding war" & its sale made up for some of my losses on the Journey FIVES & TENS:

At the end of the day, I felt lucky that my losses weren't even worse (after paying eBay's & Paypal fees).  Most of the final bids barely covered the cost of most of my toughest notes I had listed.  I suspect that by sending out links to collector friends & publicizing my listings I mitigated what could have been even worse losses.  I also had to pay Paypal a $10.00 USD inactive fee just to use my money to buy some World notes I wanted from these poor/substandard sales. Once I understood how eBay's platform is actually set up (to push "Power Sellers' items at the expense of the little guys, like myself), I realized it wasn't going to work for me.

I've just been on ebay and deleted all of the items that I had listed, no more sales for me unless I get something that is worth more than the cost of the postage.

Paypal want to charge me for my inactive account so I will have to close that some time. The trouble is I only have a few pence in there & this is not enough for them to close it. I will have to make a deposit so that they can close it & GRAB A FEE for their troubles. 

All I need now is my bank to stop letting me have coins out & that really would be the icing on the cake.

PayPal charges you for an inactive account? 
Are you are saying that you can’t just close your account? Whenever you want? 
 

 About a year ago PayPal said that they would fine people for “hate speech“ which has two major problems. 

1. who gets to define “hate speech”

2. this is not  proper for a bank to enforce

 PayPal revealed their agenda for political control.

I  immediately drained my PayPal balance and set up a Zelle account… 

 I am opposed to PayPal. Since that time I have heard multiple stories of people having big problems with PayPal. They like to push people around.

 If you have a bunch of low value coins, you can swap them as a single lot, just post them on the swap forum. 

I think that you can close your account anytime but here in the UK you have to have some funds in it . I have only got a few pence in mine so I will have to make a deposit into my account then get them to close my account & deposit what is left into my bank account.