eBay Australia Shocks Sellers With Sudden Bills For Old Fees, Shipping Due To Technical Issue

Liz Morton
Liz Morton


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Some sellers in Australia are getting an unhappy holiday surprise, receiving email notices that they owe eBay hundreds of dollars in shipping and fees that were previously unpaid due to a technical issue that dates back to July 2024.

Affected sellers have taken to the eBay Australia community to find out if the notice is real and has been received by others - with some posting screenshots of the email, which read in part:

We identified a technical error on our platform which meant that some eBay fees and selling costs — including charges for postage and return labels since July 2024 — were not applied to sellers' accounts.

Normally, these would be charged at the time of the transaction, or the label being generated. We sincerely apologize for any confusion or inconvenience this may have caused.

To correct this error, postage label costs of xxx.xx which were not yet charged to you will be applied to your account on Tuesday 3rd December.

Missed charges for eBay fees, return labels, and other selling costs will be applied separately, in early 2025. We'll be in touch again before this happens.

Postage correction letter
Has anyone else received an email from ebay today advising of a technical error regarding postage charges not correctly being deducted from their accounts ?

Has anyone else received an email from ebay today advising of a technical error regarding postage charges not correctly being deducted from their accounts ?

I came here to see if I was the only one, got an extra $125.00 bill...thanks ebay, merry xmas...

I’ve woken up this morning to a message from eBay telling me they haven’t charged fees and postage correctly and I owe $204. How do I find out why?

Others posted the notice they received on Reddit, with some reportedly as high as $700 just for the past amounts and no indication of what further additional charges may be added on next year.

Source: Reddit

Aside from the $444.97 for shipping labels apparently next year (early 2025) they will be slogging me more for missed charges for eBay fees, return labels and other selling costs…. Like what even was this technical error they don’t go into any detail at all, just “We stuffed up, here’s the bill, pay up”…

Wont be surprised if i get slugged with a 13% fee for the $444.97 🙄

If you haven’t received one of these already brace yourselves

I get that it’s for costs that you should’ve been charged in the first place, but man that really sucks. Since it’s their error to begin with, they should be handling it a lot better than just an email saying hey sorry but now you owe us all this money. At the very least they should allow payment plans or something, that’s just wild.

Source: Reddit

So I have sold a few things over eBay, a lot over the last month or two. Today I opened my account to negative $700 - no explanation. Attempting to deduct my bank account.

So I contacted eBay, apparently there was a glitch through November that meant when sellers generated a postage label that the postage amount was not charged correctly by eBay. They are now out to get sellers to pay the additional amount that EBay accidentally did not charge at point of sale.

Anyone else experiencing this? It was a bit of a shock!

So far the issue appears to be limited to eBay Australia, but I'll be keeping an eye out for similar reports across other markets too.

Stay tuned for updates and let us know in the comments below if you received this notice!

eBayFees & Payments

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Liz Morton is a 17 year ecommerce pro turned indie investigative journalist providing ad-free deep dives on eBay, Amazon, Etsy & more, championing sellers & advocating for corporate accountability.


Recent Comments
Avatar PlaceholderOngoing issue2 hours ago
Should we all form a letter of demand with a class action lawsuit. This issue has been ongoing for many years without resolution till this day in 2025. We as sellers pay for our listings with a fee, if they are not shown in a listing, this is auction manipulation where buyers get it at a cheaper price. Those who can view the listings are on your saved sellers list only.
Avatar Placeholderterry55Yesterday
Sales down 40% from last year, this is gonna be a small business killer
Avatar PlaceholderJaeLynn3 days ago
I've had this happen a few times, and it confused me. One seller alleged that they had to use Amazon's services to make sure I got my item in time. I recently bought something simple, and the seller made a mistake. They'd sent me 3 different messages, one of them too early, telling me they hoped my item arrived in perfect condition. The next day, the item was marked as shipped, and I got an official Ebay shipping email. The seller was using direct messages to give me item updates. If I wanted Amazon, I'd have used them myself! lol