Changes to eBay payment system

I agree with you and @Innocent_Bystander on the id issue, covert non tax paying dealers need to be chased up. However, I suspect still the real reason for change is that they want to trouser the fees that PP used to get.
The killer point for me though remains, I will not hand over details of my current account to a third party who seem to think its legitimate to remove money, as they may think fit, from my account.
All this is a great pity for both me and eBay - we do actually need each other, but the heavy handed approach by eBay has just created two losers. :disappointed:

Totally agree, I’m in the same boat. What would be the alternative for us though?

I think that is the tough question we are all facing. eBay, love them or hate them, does have super coverage when it comes to selling our bits and pieces of tech etc. At the moment I have no answer to this question, and I suspect eBay know this and that is why they saw fit to steamroller their new payment method on sellers.

PayPal still getting their fees. As far as I can tell, if somebody buys an item from me on ebay and pays with PayPal, ebay are taking the payment and paying the PayPal fees. The total fee payable is slightly more than the previous system.

With regards to giving credit card details to ebay. I don’t see a difference to giving credit card details to PayPal, who can debit the card if a buyer starts a dispute claim.

It’s just a direct debit (in the UK anyway) with the usual DD guarantee protection.

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During the setup process for Managed Payments ebay will ask you to authorise a direct debit for the nominated bank account to allow for refunds. However, ebay will accept the bank details for a savings account that doesn’t allow direct debits so this means that they can’t take money out of the account.

PayPal may be a great service for buyers but they were terrible for sellers. They changed their t&c’s last year so that they kept the 2.9% PayPal fee when a seller refunded a buyer and they did this in the UK during the height the coronavirus pandemic last year in my opinion to bury the bad news. I’m not ebay’s biggest fan but at least with Managed Payments ebay will now refund the fees again if a buyer changes their mind and asks to cancel a sale. These fees can run into the hundreds of pounds for high value items.

Can you still use PayPal after May 31st? I’m selling elsewhere if not.

That’s interesting. Never used that system - does it only apply to ebay purchases? I’ve never used it as I didn’t like their T&Cs years ago -have probably missed out.

ebay are migrating all sellers over to Managed Payments throughout this year - the deadline for each ebay account will vary and you should be notified by ebay.

I was sceptical about the change but having seller fees reimbursed for refunds as mentioned before is one reason to consider using the new system.

Indeed, and as a seller I was caught like that once, and lost out as a consequence. And for clarity, despite what they say eBay does NOT investigate disputes, they simply make a decision which is to believe the buyer - I had plenty of good evidence when it happened to me as a seller, but they weren’t even interested.

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I agree, they even don’t investigate. The Buyer is really the king. It nearly happened to me recently. The buyer said my cable was damaged. I suspect he have wrongly manipulated it and broke the plastic connector on the audioquest vodka cable.
He wanted a return. I finally had to pay him 50 euros more.
Not tempted to sell on eBay more.

You may have lost 50 euro recently, but over the years, how much have you saved by buying and selling on ebay.

Last night I was looking at my ebay account and came across the information that I I’ve been a member for 27 years, with sales of £30,000.00 plus. Apart from 2 or 3 instances where buyer claimed item didn’t arrive, I’ve never had a problem.

In fact, earlier this year a buyer from Holland made a claim that item hadn’t arrived after a wait of 5 weeks. I refunded his money, (£60) then 2 weeks later he advised the item had arrived and paid for it again.

If I was scammed out of £1,000 tomorrow, it wouldn’t discourage me from buying and selling on ebay.

That’s not how ebay/paypal works.

Sellers don’t send an item until payment is cleared.

I believe Applepay is simply the relevant credit card details held on your phone and because the phone authentication is stronger than the 4 digit chip and pin, the credit card issuer allows you to pay for anything within your card’s credit limit.

I use it to buy petrol for our cars. Using an app I can pay from inside the car and Applepay authorisation is much faster than PayPal authorisation for the same transactions.

That’s right. The system works because PayPal effectively underwrites each transaction, so if you pay and the item never arrives, PayPal give you your money back. As some other posters have said, the system is weighted in favour of buyers though.

Personally I think it’s too much trouble to sell stuff on eBay. I would rather give it away to someone who wants it and can use it. This is one reason my loft is full of old hifi!

If I have no choice, I will continue on eBay. But if I can, I will advertise my components to sell in the second hand part of my dealer. It will probably take more time, but I will be able to sell at a higher price, with no risk, and without receiving all the mails of buyers trying to negotiate the price.

With 20 years on eBay my sales are probably only around 1/6th of yours - and it was on one of the two Naim items making up a good part of that that I lost out by about £500 because of a dishonest buyer.

EBay’s fees are also very high, so whilst I have made money using it, or eather recovered money through disposing of things through it, I suspect that if I was user of the hateful Facebook I may have made more using the sales sites that apparently lots of people use.

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I agree their standard fees are quite high at around 13% FVF with the new Managed Payments system. The trick with ebay is to look out for the £1 Final Value Fee promotions which they run every other week which then makes ebay quite competitive on fees.

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Clearly PP can still be used for buying items from eBay, but the crux is that as a seller you HAVE to use their managed payment scheme if you want to advertise goods after the “change date” (which varies from person to person, but I think the process will be complete by year end).
I speculate that eBay do indeed incur a charge from PP if the buyer chooses to use PP for the purchase, however, I doubt that PP receive the same amount of money from eBay as they would from private individuals or small businesses. So, one for the crystal ball gazers, will eBay drop PP as a method of paying at some point in the future…remains to be seen :wink:
In my particular case, I pay PP via my credit card (not my current account) and unless I am mistaken credit card purchases offer the buyer a bit more protection than DD from a current account (?). Additionally, if PP do make an error and charge my credit card at least it wont impact my current account and its ability to pay my regular bills (gas / electric / council tax etc) where non payment could lead to a black mark on my credit rating (I KNOW, I am a bit paranoid on this issue!!)
So in conclusion, why did eBay change a system that worked very well most of the time - was it for extra profit, or as mentioned earlier, to help the authorities track down tax fraudsters, or something completely different. We outsiders will probably never know, but it is leading to some good forum debate which is always good to have.

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Commercially, it’s not a good idea for ebay to rely so heavily on paypal; paypal will have the upper hand when it comes to negotiating services and commission rates. Paypal would be able to start charging 5 or even 10 percent commission if it wanted.
On the other hand having alterative options in place will give ebay the upper hand.

With regard to commission rates, an auction house charges about 20%. If you bid online, that adds another 3%. So ebays 13% (approx) isn’t so bad.