eBay Policy Change...

Going into affect this month:

"The key update to the eBay User Agreement is that we’ve made it clearer how we address violations of our policy on offers to buy or sell outside eBay. Sellers who violate this policy may be charged a final value fee for the applicable item, even if it doesn’t sell.

Thank you for being a part of the eBay community.

Sincerely,
The eBay team"

eBay be like

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Yikes, that is nuts

I propose we implement a cryptograph that can be quickly decoded to reveal messages containing your instagram account or other personal contact info. Some thing like alpha bravo charlie. example of what I’d send to someone to contact me on Instagram:
ivysaur gengar:
@ pikachu electabuzz abra charmander omanyte charmander kabuto tentacool charmander gengar

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How are they going to prove it? With paypal being separated from ebay, it would all be done on speculation?

Ultimately if you follow a certain pattern you will be fined.

Unless they’ve changed it, they give you a couple warnings first, but the violation is if you do the following:

Discuss with a buyer the possibility of selling off Ebay or if you provide contact info to initiate communication outside ebay. Then you
take your listing down soon after the exchange with the buyer.

I was warned once because the buyer asked if I wanted to sell off ebay and I accepted and at the time I didn’t really realize how closely they scan your messages. Another time a buyer asked me to sell off Ebay and a couple days later I decided I wanted to keep what I had listed so I took the listing down, but didn’t sell to anyone. Ebay took that as responding to a buyer’s request and said they wouldn’t do anything now, but not to do it again.

So ultimately, if you continue this pattern enough, at a certain point it sounds like Ebay is straight up going to fine you. Which is kind of BS for example, in the one situation above I didn’t sell to anyone, I took my listing down on my own accord, yet still got a warning.

On5 tim5 a s5ll5r wrot5 m5 a m5ssage

that looked like that ^^^ to tell me his phone number through an ebay message. (so in this case 555-5555).

I don’t think he was warned about it.

Just going to rant for a second, so feel free to ignore this:

I rarely ever try to do deals off ebay. I’ve only ever done 2 and one of the guys ended up becoming a good friend trading YuGiOh stuff together.

I understand that it’s against their policy because it literally takes away their ability to make money form those deals when they provide the meeting place for us to even connect with the buyer. It’s not something I would consider doing for every deal because I am paying for a service to allow access to buyers and sellers from all over the world through Ebay. I get it and I am more than willing to go about it with that in mind most of the time and use the service honestly.

I do have beef with Ebay for a number of different reasons. However, the driving factor as to why every so often I’m not going to sweat making a deal off ebay in terms of a moral dilemna is because when I charge shipping for a listing, I have to pay a final value fee on money that I never actually get because it’s going to pay for shipping and insurance. That is complete BS to me. I know it was to prevent people from inflating shipping costs to avoid fees, but why should I have to pay that fee every single time? So occasionally, I really don’t feel bad about making a deal off ebay.

Doesn’t matter. They say even if it doesn’t sell.

If eBay suspects something they will charge you fvf for that listing even if it doesn’t sell. So a 1000.00 listing could cost you 100.00 fine.

Something tells me there could be a legal issue here? Any of our legalminded members here have any ideas on this?

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Guys. If you do any deals off eBay… DO NOT END THE ITEM. Change it to something else. This has worked many times for me. Final value fees don’t trigger unless an item has ended.

Ever see a price jump up → sold off eBay.
See a $100 card become a .25 bulk card → sold off eBay.

eBay will eventually get smarter. If anyone even hints about off eBay, DO NOT END THE ITEM.

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No longer the case. the 10% Fee only applies to however much the card sold for. No fees applied to the shipping cost. (At least on German eBay)

I still think 10% is insanely high and feel like eBay could use a competitor to get their shit together. They have so many functions that don’t work, and so many rules that are somehow only important if eBay doesn’t profit off of it. Oh, someone is selling custom-made or straight up fake cards? Eh, we’ll let it slide, since we get a 10% cut. Oh, you’re trying to sell outside of eBay? Better not do that or we’ll fine you.

Just so new people aren’t misled, That is still the case almost everywhere in the world.

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Seriously? 10% Fee even on the shipping? That is insanely shitty. I’m super surprised it’s not the same for German eBay.

WHAT. A. LEGEND.

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Personally I think this is incredibly fair. By listing an item on ebay, you are in effect using their platform, their marketing, their advertising, their programming costs, their customer service, their reputation, and all those other things that make ebay the leading online marketplace in the US. You might be surprised how difficult it would be to get eyeballs on your product without using ebay (and no, those of you that have been using ebay for the past 15 years and claim you wouldn’t have a problem without ebay because you could just use insta/facebook/virbank/here can’t pipe in - the ebay marketplace allowed you to get where you are now). You’d have to do your own marketing, your own advertising, host your own website, pump up your own credibility - the minutiae of what it takes to become a successful business or make easy sales is not to be understated. All of that little crap is taken care of by ebay, and in my opinion, is worth the 10% cut. Try to flip your perspective for a moment and consider their point of view - you are the owner of a successful online marketplace where you take care of all the small stuff and allow your users to get tons of views from thousands of potential customers for 10% of their final item’s cost. If you did some rudimentary investigation and found 20% of your customers were organizing deals outside of your platform, costing you millions even though your marketing, advertisement, customer support, legal, etc etc costs are the same, wouldn’t you try and reduce that problem as well?

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I have no issue with the the 10% fee. My issue is that I pay a 10% fee on shipping costs.

Do you not purchase shipping through ebay? I get a 15% discount off USPS shipping every time I purchase my label through ebay.

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Not sure why you mention sellers with 15 years experience shouldn’t complain. Who with 15 years experience was complaining? This doesn’t hurt those sellers.
I list my items with the costs built in to the listing price. When it sells all’s well.
BUYERS will get hurt. If they message me hoping to save 20% I’ll try to help them. And it is fair. Why? Well most business savvy people already understand.
Ebay raised their fees years ago to make up for people inflating shipping charges fee free. After a year they decided to charge for shipping prices and did, But did they lower the fee percentage? LOL.
Later, to make up for off auction activity, they raised their fees again. Then they found a way with algorithms or something to reduce that activity but did they lower the fees back? Uhmmm…No.
Now they are doing this new thing plus a fee increase will likely follow.
This, and the earlier stated policy’s, always hurt the buyer.

I’m fairly certain eBay has an extensive legal background and an excellent legal team that would review this before implementation.

This policy change has no effect on buyers. Oh, you mean buyers (and their respective sellers) that want to intentionally flout ebay policy in order to receive a discount. Yeah, jeez, ebay really should be looking out for those guys :open_mouth: I’m not sure why ebay would care about users that intend to use their platform against their terms of use that ultimately removes money from ebay’s bottom line. Even though ebay’s platform, advertising, marketing, reputation, etc etc is what made the arrangement between buyer and seller possible in the first place.