Since eBay got rid of selling fees, they seemed to have changed the process for Cash on Collection sales.
A lot of hifi sales I’ve done have been cash on collection because it avoids couriers and means that scammers cannot buy your stuff and then claim it didn’t arrive or that it arrived broken, etc.
But now it seems that if you sell something as a private seller (not a business seller) the buyer has to pay before collection via eBay processes, which means you cannot stop buyers abusing the seller protections.
If this is correct, obviously that makes vetting sellers, examining their feedback records and swapping messages with them via eBay to see how they communicate is even more crucial than before.
Have I understood this change in eBay process correctly, and has anyone sold stuff since the change?
eBay also seem to have stopped automated making payouts after a sale completes.
Are they doing that quarterly now instead - unless one chooses to ask for a payment?
You can have cash on collection if part of the listing
To get payment the value of goods you sell go into your eBay account and sits there until you spend from your funds or ask for a payout to your preferred method as before.
Do you mean that at time of collection the buyer pats eBay, not the seller, and takes away the goods? I wonder how secure that is against the buyer clawing back somehow?
I haven’t tried selling since the change to no fees, and my first reaction was to be very suspicious about what’s in it for eBay without charging any fees. In the past I’ve always taken payment via PayPal (I’ve never sold by COD, though I have always offered as an option)… One issue I have found is that eBay has become increasingly buyer-centric, and the seller can very easily lose out to unscrupulous buyers (and I did on one occasion). Also, when not long ago I went to try to sell something on eBay, quite expensive, a few £thousand, eBay wouldn’t let me. The fact that I had perfect buying and selling history including selling A few things things over £1000, and hundteds of things under, they said I needed to be a much more active seller for them to increase my (invisible snd unknown to me) selling limit. It seems to me that they basically wanted me to be a trader before I could sell what I wanted to!
For any collection you need to do the “scan QR” procedure to prove the buyer has been and collected. Eve with COC unless you do this the buyer ca get a refund and the item.
Interesting. My history is slightly longer than yours! Perhaps it depends on how much you sell, at what price relative to something you now want to sell, and exactly how recently. My selling history has been sporadic, frequency, and very very in cost though more things under £100 an over, and several years since I lost someone something over £1000.
Sorry for delay @Guinnless has answered your question.
I’ve sold and used the postal service and found all ok I was concerned initially as the funds hadn’t landed in my account.
But an email directed me to the new get paid section and I just requested the transfer.
All ok.
I don’t know how they make their money now but they must have made a fortune previously.
It’s probably just an algorithm that blocks any very high priced sales that are out of proportion to your previous behaviour, which raises automatically some kind of stop message to you.
Probably, though unclear exactly (as I said, I thought a number of things over £1000 anyway regardless, there is no way I can do what they suggested which is effectively somehow find lots of things to sell, presumably of high value but below whatever the limit is they’ve imposed so lots of low-priced things wouldn’t do, for the sake of trying to sell one thing I do want to sell. I’m in the process of sorting out another sales route. Unfortunately with no seller fees I can no longer regard it as eBay’s loss! However fees for me selling elsewhere will be far less than eBay selling fees used to be.
There is a UK good online ‘medium’ where many Naim items are sold (inc. by members of here) aka ‘the fishy place’, or the ‘poisson rouge’, acronym: PFM.
There’s a process where the collector has a qr code in their eBay app, and the seller can scan it to confirm the item was actually collected.
All very well, except when the buyer’s husband is tasked with collecting a wardrobe that your wife has listed on eBay, and neither has access to the partner’s eBay account.
This will only come into play with disputes and the buyer can say “no I didn’t collect it”.
It doesn’t prevent being paid. Cash on collection is no longer an option, at least I thought so, haven’t listed in a while.
I’ve sold a number of items on eBay that have been collected.
As part of the communication process with the buyer, I always remind them that they need to bring the QR Code or Number with them for the collection.
No Code or Number, then no collection. I have only had issues with one buyer who didn’t bring it, but they got the account holder to email it to them. So all OK in the end.
I posted it a while ago on here, but this may be a more obvious place people will look for eBay info so copying her:
The trouble with eBay is that protections are all buyer oriented. Yes it is totally right that buyers are protected from unscrupulous sellers, but there is virtually no protection the other way round. I found that out to my cost when a buyer (of a Naim product) claimed case damage that absolutely was not there when packaged - extremely well packaged - and offered no photos. After a few exchanges, where he was seeking a partial refund, I was left in no doubt that if I hadn’t gone along and instead got eBay to arrange return, not only would I have lost the shipping cost but it would arrive ba k with big scratches.
