As eBay UK Buyer Fees & Simple Delivery Rollout, Users Share Tips To Circumvent New Policies
eBay began rolling out Buyer Protection Fees on items purchase from private sellers in the UK this week, but it didn't take long for savvy buyers to start finding and sharing workarounds to circumvent the new policy.
After a last minute change to a phased rollout approach and an embarrassing failure to launch on February 4th, buyers began to see the new protection fee reflected in item prices for listings from private sellers in Electronics categories on February 6th.
Liz Morton
Just two days into the change, some have figured out how to avoid paying the new fee by exploiting a quirk of how eBay propagates listings to show across their various country specific websites.
For example, we can see this item when viewed on the eBay.co.uk site shows a Buyer Protection Fee inclusive price of £83.26.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/306094174138
At checkout, using an address in West Sussex shows £3.75 for postage for a fee inclusive total of £87.01.
However, if one were to copy the item number and simply change the rest of that URL to view the same item on the US eBay.com site - the listing shows a price of GBP 79.99, which clearly does not include the buyer fee.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/306094174138
And at checkout, using the same address, the total comes to GBP 83.74
Since the seller is in the UK and so is the ship to address in this scenario, presumably there would be no additional costs (taxes, duties, etc.) to the buyer and no significant difference in shipping time or any other aspect of the transaction.
I've yet to see any details from anyone who has completed a transaction this way, so can't say for sure that there are no possible downsides to the buyer - but it's telling that eBay UK community forum moderators are scrubbing any posts which mention this "tip" and giving the "offending" users warnings about violating rules prohibiting encouraging other members to circumvent eBay policies.
It's also not clear how transactions using this workaround may impact the private seller.
If the original listing was created on the eBay.co.uk site and the seller resides in the UK, they would be expecting no Final Value Fees would apply to a sale from a UK-based buyer under the fee-free selling policies eBay implemented in October.
However, the policy page says "If you list an item on another eBay site (for example, eBay.com or eBay.com.au), the fees for that site will apply".
At face value, that would seem to indicate that section should only apply to items the seller intentionally lists/creates while logged in to another site, but it's possible eBay may try to stretch that to include any sales through a different site, even if the original listing was created on the UK site - especially if UK buyers start using this workaround en masse to try to avoid the fees.
The policy also provides that there may be a currency conversion fee applied for listings created or sold on other eBay sites.
Testing this theory with a variety of UK items shown on the US site indicates either foreign transaction fees may be charged to the buyer from their card issuer if they stick with GPB or they can opt for USD instead, in which case the private seller could possibly be charged a currency conversion fee.
At best it would seem that eBay would simply not make any fee revenue on the transaction at all in this scenario, at worst it could potentially cause sellers to incur fees they hadn't planned or priced for because they believed eBay's claims of "fee free selling."
Either way, it's a confusing mess and doesn't bode well for eBay that buyers are already looking for ways to avoid paying this new fee.
If this apparent loophole does eventually get closed, it's not too difficult to imagine fee averse buyers will simply find somewhere other than eBay to shop going forward - which is exactly what happened with Mercari and Poshmark's failed attempts to institute buyer fees in the US.
And the desirte to workaround recent policy updates isn't limited to buyers - sellers have also been sharing ideas for how they may be able to avoid being forced to use Simple Delivery managed shipping as eBay CEO Jamie Iannone has said it will become mandatory for "eligible items" from private sellers sometime in Q1 2025.
Liz Morton
That has caused those sellers to look to the current Simple Delivery criteria for potentially creative ways to avoid the service once it becomes mandatory by making their items appear ineligible, like entering weights and dimensions above the threshold.
Of course that would not be recommended as it could cause other problems including showing inflated shipping costs to buyers (unless the sellers uses free or flat rate shipping) and may also put the seller's account at risk for attempting to circumvent policies.
But again it doesn't bode well for eBay that some users are so averse to their recent changes that they would even be contemplating these types of workarounds.
eBay's success ultimately rests on being a trusted marketplace that both buyers and sellers have a positive experience using - and that delicate relationship could be irretrievably broken if the company insists on pushing forward policies which users do not want while playing whack a mole trying to squash communications and natural user behavior looking for ways to make existing systems work to their advantage.
Have you tried purchasing UK items through eBay.com to avoid the new Buyer Protection Fee? Let us know in the comments below if it works and if you're a private seller who receives such an order, do selling or currency conversion fees apply?
