eBay is giving sellers in the UK only one month’s notice of new higher fees for certain auction features and fixed-price listing upgrades. Sellers who set reserve prices, thereby protecting themselves if the bidding on their auction listing doesn’t reach a certain price, will pay 4% for using this feature instead of the current 3.5% fee. eBay UK will continue to cap the fees at 150 pounds per item.
There are additional fee changes impacting fixed-price format as well. Some sellers will see a significant increase in fees for those upgrade options.
As is typical, eBay spun the changes as a positive: “Simpler” fees for some optional listing upgrades, it said. But as shown in the chart below, for sellers who use optional upgrades for anything but 30-day listings, it is a fee increase.
In fact, the only fee decrease is for 30-day Gallery Plus and 30-day Subtitle, and those are very small decreases compared to the increases eBay is imposing in other areas.
It’s also worth noting that UK sellers are required to offer Buy It Now prices at least 40% higher than the starting price for auctions (the requirement is 30% in the U.S.).
eBay UK is also changing its policy around ending auctions early:
As announced earlier this year, if you end an auction early after it has been listed for more than 24 hours and buyers have already placed bids, you will be charged a fee. This fee is the same as a final value fee, based on the highest bid price when you ended the auction.
We’ve previously waived this fee for your first early ended auction with bids every calendar year. We’re now revising this so that instead, we’ll waive the fee for any auctions cancelled within 24 hours of listing. This is regardless of whether your auction has received bids. We’re doing this because we realise sometimes you might need to take down an auction you’ve listed.
We’ll also still waive the fee if we have to end your auction early for any reason.
The new fee structure takes effect on August 14, breaking eBay’s commitment to give sellers a minimum of 60 days notice of changes.
See eBay UK announcement for full details.
