Ebay clearly wishes to capture the fees formerly paid to PayPal. And I note that along with your bank account Ebay requires your credit card. If there's not enough funds in your bank to cover their fees, they charge them to your credit card. But at least with a credit card you can contest those charges.
“If there's not enough funds in your bank to cover their fees, they charge them to your credit card.”
That’s not how it works. They collect fees from the seller on every sale, as a percentage of that sale. So, someone buys your thing, the entire asking price goes to ebay, and ebay deducts their percentage from that, THEN ebay pays you what is left after they deduct their fee. There’s never any reason they would need to charge your credit card for their fee, because there are only fees involved if you sell something, and they take it right off the top before you ever see the money. It’s not like the earlier system with Paypal where ebay charged you their fees after the fact, monthly, by debiting your paypal account.
And if people don’t want to deal with separate fees for shipping, just offer “free” shipping and build that into your selling price, something which always made more sense.
There may be other reasons to not want to deal with ebay, but this isn’t one of them.
For someone selling lots of stuff, lots of obscure stuff, there simply, realistically, is no alternative to Ebay. I’ve sold almost a thousand things on ebay over the last many years, and if I was trying to rely on craigslist, FB marketplace, classifieds here or on other photo sites, 300 of those things would still be sitting in my garage collecting dust. That’s what ebay’s “high fees” have done for me.
When I read about the changes in their managed accounts I freaked out, sounded horrible, scary, didn’t want to change, etc. Waited until the last possible day to change over. After a period of mental adjustment, I’ve made my peace with it. I liked the old way better, but it’s still the best way in the world, for me, to clear stuff out and get it on its way. Nobody on craigslist or FB marketplace wanted my focusing screen for a Contarex Special, but somebody on ebay did.
List things on here or other non-ebay places first, give it a week, and if no one wants it at these smaller venues, then add whatever it takes to cover the ebay fees, and put it on ebay. If you have it priced realistically it will sell there eventually, and you’ll get your money. If it doesn’t sell, that only means you don’t know what it’s really worth, and priced it emotionally instead of realistically.
The attitude some people have is “I’d just rather not sell it than use Ebay.” Okay, then, just keep it.
