Change at eBay as they ditch PayPal

[Leon Pendraken]

The Managed Payments rollout has been an absolute disaster for us, I've spent hours on the phone to them so far about it but no luck.

Firstly we've always used the PayPal payment email as our 'order' for putting into the system, as it had the customer name, address, items ordered and total paid on it. eBay provide no similar sheet, just a 'Your Item has Sold' email each time an item is bought. This contains the address, but if someone buys 10 items, we have to print 10 pages. And the 'total paid' on these is incorrect and doesn't show the right amounts. eBay's response was to download a csv report from my Sales page and then reconfigure that to show the information I need, every day. Yeah, that's a lot quicker than printing an email...

Second there's no customer email addresses anymore, which we used to get from the PayPal payment. So when we book packages with couriers, I can't give them a contact email for the customer, only an eBay internal one. eBay's response was basically 'tough'.

Occasionally they will now send me a 'Your item has sold' email but the buyer hasn't actually paid for it. This email is identical to the 'Your item has sold' + they have paid email, so we're getting a lot of duplicates in the system that aren't actually orders. Their response was 'If you read the small text the two emails are different'.

On the fees themselves, we're actually paying more in fees now than we were with PayPal. eBay are 12.8% I think, plus a 30p payment fee. PayPal had standardised all business accounts on 2.9% + 30p but we had an older rate of 2.2% on our account, so this is costing us money as well now.

As a final note, eBay are also screwing up the VAT and seem to have no idea how it should work. They're charging non-EU Buyers a sales tax based on their own location, but also still charging the UK VAT on our items. So a customer in the US will pay 20% UK VAT on top of their own local state taxes. I've asked eBay multiple times why they are not removing the UK VAT from the sales, but every time they plead ignorance and claim that they don't understand what I mean, even after I've sent them links to the HMRC website. Removing the VAT isn't a legal requirement but it is generally accepted as the norm. Funnily enough, if they leave the VAT on and keep the sale price higher, they make more in fees...

[Count Belisarius]

That all sounds a huge improvement. Progress and all. It's the future. Doesn't matter if it's shit...

[vexillia]

The Managed Payments rollout has been an absolute disaster for us, I've spent hours on the phone to them so far about it but no luck.

That is some tale of woe Leon. My commiserations. I'm glad I'm retiring in April.

Are you re-considering your decision to run an eBay shop/account?

[Leon Pendraken]

That is some tale of woe Leon. My commiserations. I'm glad I'm retiring in April.

Are you re-considering your decision to run an eBay shop/account?

Definitely considering it but it's a tough call, the fees are high but the exposure we get through there hits a market that we don't normally get. I think I might have to put a small price hike on the eBay listings to cover the extra fees and see how that affects sales.

[tim.w]

I'd guess ebay will eventually drive away buyers as well as sellers as many are both. Plus if they are forcing traders to put prices up people will ditch the convinience and just go to the websites.