eBay UK Drops Selling Fees For Private Sellers Across All Categories Except Motors
UPDATE 10-1-24
While eBay is trumpeting "good news for sellers" in massive media push, the bad news for buyers was quietly buried in the company's 8-k filed with the SEC today - buyer fees are coming to the UK in early 2025!
Liz Morton
UPDATE: eBay apparently decided to go ahead and make it official since the news was already out - announcing that it has removed fees for private UK sellers across all categories, except motors (Cars, Motorcycles & Vehicles listings).
eBay UK today announces that it has removed fees for private sellers across all categories, except motors (Cars, Motorcycles & Vehicles listings). This means that private sellers will no longer pay final value fees or regulatory operating fees when they sell on eBay.
eBay UK introduced free selling in fashion earlier this year and is now evolving the experience even further to foster a more streamlined and safe selling platform. These new features include:
- Simplified Selling: Sellers can list items across categories within minutes using guidance about the best pricing and shipping options, alongside AI-generated descriptions and photo-enhancing tools.
- Simple Delivery: This service, currently being rolled out across categories, offers sellers a tracked and fully covered delivery at competitive rates, prepaid by the buyer, for a simple and secure shipping experience.
- Local: eBay Local lets shoppers find nearby items available for in-person collection, all protected by eBay’s Money Back Guarantee. Sellers’ listings will have increased visibility with local buyers, along with an easy and secure payment process.
- eBay Balance: Starting from mid-October, this new feature gives sellers the flexibility to use their earnings to shop on eBay, promote their listings, purchase delivery labels or withdraw available funds.
Fees for private sellers residing outside of the UK who list on the UK site will be 12.8% of the total amount of the sale (which includes the item price, postage, and any applicable taxes), plus a fixed charge of 30p per order.
If the total amount of the sale is over £5,000 for a single item, you'll pay 3% for the portion of the sale price above £5,000.
The mention of eBay Local is not surprising, given recent updates to enhance the Local experience in the UK, and we now have more information about the Simple Delivery program that was revealed in a user agreement update in May.
Liz Morton
Also as predicted, eBay is planning to expand their Spendable Funds program to the UK to allow sellers to use sales proceeds to pay for shipping labels, shop for new items on the platform, starting October 16th.
Liz Morton
Importantly, this change will get rid of scheduled payouts completely for private sellers - once funds are processed, they will simply automatically sit in your eBay Balance until/unless you request to withdraw them.
Defaulting to leaving funds on account is a shrewd move for eBay, since they earn interest on those funds, but requiring sellers to manually request transfers seems like a giant step backwards in convenience and user experience.
There is nothing I have found on any of these updated policy pages to indicate any additional fees for Promoted Listings (beyond the existing ad rate percentage or cost per click), so it would appear the This Is Money article may have gotten this part wrong - possibly mistaking the 35p insertion fee for listings over the monthly free allotment for "promoted listings".
UPDATE: MSN appears to have syndicated the original This Is Money article and the syndicated version is still live, confirming private sellers will have no Final Value or Regulatory Fees across all categories except Motors.
It also sounds like eBay may be planning to expand their Spendable Funds program to the UK to allow sellers to use sales proceeds to pay for shipping labels, shop for new items on the platform and pay selling fees and that a flat fee for using Promoted Listings ads may be in the works as well.
eBay appears to be expanding fee free selling in the UK to all categories (except Motors), as competition for consumer to consumer sellers heats up.
Rumors began swirling last week that eBay might be getting ready to bring fee-free selling to the US when sellers saw a strange message saying "it's now free to sell" popped up in Seller Hub.
Liz Morton
While those rumors ultimately did not pan out, it still left open the possibility for expansion of the program in the UK, where it is currently limited only to clothing categories.
Sellers were frustrated when their efforts to get clarification about the message were stymied by eBay Community staff who were presumably under orders to stay mum on the subject.
community-teamebay
Hello. Can you tell us anything about the "It's free to sell" (with no details) pop ups that many people have received in past 24 hours?
Dave@eBay responded:
At the moment, I don't have additional information on this. As soon as there are any updates, we will get them posted.
Then Kat@eBay also responded:
Currently, we do not have additional information on this . Rest assured, should there be any updates,we will inform all of our users.
UK sellers have also been frustrated because eBay put a hold on the regular 70-80% off Final Value Fees promo that privates sellers usually receive fortnightly.
Liz Morton
Some who contacted support were told that eBay was "re-evaluating" those promos but that something big would be coming soon on that front, fueling even more speculation about fee-free selling expanding to more categories.
eBay is also reducing the monthly allotment of free listings (items that can be listed without paying an insertion fee) from 1,000 to 300 for private sellers effective October 1st as part of larger efforts to crack down on businesses who are incorrectly registered as private sellers.
Liz Morton
Given the suspension of FVF discount promos and timing of the free listing allotment changes, it would definitely make sense for eBay to plan to announce a fee-free selling expansion on October 1st as well.
After eBay jumped the gun on displaying the messaging in Seller Hub, it now appears This Is Money may have let the cat out of the bag early as well, hitting publish early on an article revealing the new fee structure.
The article has since been taken down, with the link simply redirecting to the This Is Money homepage, - that could indicate the story was under embargo, which is when information is provided to news outlets in advance under the agreement it will not be published until a certain time or when certain conditions are met.
Editor's note: eBay press relations has not responded to requests for comment about the apparent expansion of fee-free selling in the UK market, nor has Value Added Resource been provided any information about it under embargo.
Unfortunately for eBay, once information is out on the internet, it never really goes away - some savvy sellers saw the same story on the Daily Mail UK site and posted about it in the UK community forum.
rare_treat
DM article mentions :
"Ebay has scrapped fees for sellers as it battles increased competition from the likes of Vinted and Depop.
From today, buying and selling on the auction site will be free across all categories except motor listings.
It means that private sellers will no longer pay final value fees or regulatory operating fees when selling, saving them the usual 13.22 per cent fee."
Another seller confirmed the This Is Money article included a quote from eBay UK GM Kirsty Keoghan, which would also bolster the idea an advanced press release and access to relevant executives was given to some outlets on condition of embargo.
I just read an article on my MSM news feed, the source was the This is Money web site.
It quoted Kirsty Keoghan, General Manager of ebay.uk as saying that (basically) ebay.uk is removing FVF for private sellers in all categories apart from Motors.
It wasn't quite as straightforward as that, there were additional details about other fees, but it seemed to me to that the "Free to Sell" message was basically correct.
eBay has made similar moves in Germany, announcing fee-free private selling across all categories in 2023 and introducing fee free private clothing sales to the UK in April 2024.
Liz Morton
Several eBay competitors have also recently ditched selling fees - but unlike eBay's efforts so far, those competitors have shifted most or all of the fee burden to buyers instead.
Etsy-owned Depop initially shifted fees in the UK before expanding the new fee structure to the US in July.
Liz Morton
And Mercari similarly shook up their fee structure in March - though so far results have been mixed with US CEO John Lagerling having to admit the new fee structure had not resulted in the GMV performance they had hoped when internally announcing a layoff of ~45% of US staff in June.
Liz Morton
The expansion of fee-free selling in the UK makes sense as eBay has specifically targeted boosting consumer to consumer selling activity in that market with a dedicated team working to implement what eBay internally has been calling the "fix the fundamental aspect of UK Win back plan."
Liz Morton
That plan is part of eBay's larger global strategy pivot since Chief Business Strategy Officer Stefanie Jay resigned earlier this year, putting more emphasis on the non-new in season C2C side of the marketplace that historically has been the "foundation" of the platform.
Liz Morton
Additional requests for comment have been sent to eBay press relations with no response as of time of publishing - stay tuned for updates in this developing story!
