Need clarification on Ebay Seller fees and other issues

[anwarazad]

Hi. I'm new to ebay and have been spending the past few days studying on the basics of selling through the help pages and community forums. My experience so far can be summarized as 'over whelmed and confusing' :_|.

I have a few point to clarify.

1. Regarding Seller Fee: I started off working on plan for setting up the business based on information I got from the help page initially. But later on as I browsed the forum posts, I see a lot of updates and re-updates. Now I do not know what the finalized structure of seller fee is as of today (22/09/2009).

I would really appreciate it, if you guys at ebay would have a have a clean and authoritative help page defining the current seller fee pricing. If you already have such a page, please point me in that direction.

2. Regarding Final Value Fee and Paisa Pay Fee: Are both the fees levied for a single transaction to the seller at the same time, or is 'Paisa Pay Fee' a new term to mean 'Final Value Fee' in the Paisapay payment option?

If the former is true, then does that mean I have to pay 5%/10%/9% (depending on catagory) of the sale price for the product + Service charge + CES charges, when ever I make a sale?? ( If so, don't you feel it a bit of a rip off on your part ?:|)

3. Regading Safety: Going through the community forum, has in a sense been pretty terrifying :O. The listing of all the horror stories of sellers (not being insensitive to any ebay seller or buyers) has raised a lot of questions regarding ebay and its safety for sellers.

I do understand that there are risks involved in any endeavor in trade, whether online or offline.

I also understand that ebay, is nothing more than a medium to trade online, and is not party to any trade done through it(most of the cases).

I also understand that the 3000 and more odd complaint threads and post regarding these horror transactions I see in the forums, might probably not mount to more than 1% of the total transaction that happens on ebay, which is almost never mentioned in the forum. Thereby spotlighting and painting a impression on newbies minds (like mine) that these horror transaction are a regular happening on ebay. I wish to be assured that ebay is safe, at least in majority (95-99 would be nice % :-D) of the transactions.

I had learnt that the community is supposed to be a place where sellers (and buyers too) can get together and support each other. But to me, it looks more like a place where people come to whine and cry (Again, not being insensitive to the buyers and sellers).

I would really appreciate if there was a seperate section or catagory in the board for such issues (which is definitely to be addresses and helped by the community just as it is happening now).

Also would help if all the old, irrelevant and closed cases/issue threads were archived, rather than available in the current thread listing.

I hope I have not come across as being overbearing in any manner, and apologize for such a long post. Thank you for your time, patience and your answers to my questions.

With lots of Thanks and Warm Regards 😄
Anwar

PS: I have seen that many of the newbies are offered some kind of training on selling on ebay upon request. Would really appreciate if I could receive something similar.

[anwarazad]

Hi.. Can anyone help me with this please?:-x

[buynowindia]

Welcome to eBay.........

Final Value Fee: this fee is charged only when your item sells and not otherwise (fee charged will depend on the item category the item comes under, eg. electronics, mobiles, jewelery, home appliances etc.)

Paisa Pay Fee: this is the charge which is passed on to the seller when the item sells and the buyer makes payment using Paisapay gateway (online bank transfer or credit card) it is charged @ 4%

Besides this there is also listing fees which is charged to you for listing your item on eBay website irrespective of whether your item sells or not.

Yes the Govt. also takes its pound of flesh by way of service tax @ 10.33%.

Happy selling on eBay...........

----------------------------
Shell Infotech

[anwarazad]

Thanks shellinfotec for the reply... 🙂

[madascene99]

I had no idea there were this many fees. I just sold my first item on ebay and incurred a massive loss. Ebay took a listing fee which also included additional fee for putting a frame across the listing. Then I had to pay 5% as paisa pay fees after the item sold.

Then of course the courier charged in excess of Rs.100 just to ship a small lightweight product. I had no idea it was that much when I listed the item with free shipping. So 30% of the product cost went into shipping.

I thought I was done and dusted with it when ebay hit me with another invoice which included final value fees, listing fee and service tax and education cess and what not. So it seems I ended up getting only 40% of the purchase price after selling it.

I know its a typical first time seller's mistake. But how can anyone sell at competitive prices with so many fees and then huge shipping costs to deal with? We can't ship with the economical Speed Post or Registered mail because ebay dictates that the item must reach buyer within 7 days.