It's 5.25% for ebay + listing fee and then a smaller percentage rate when it goes over a certain price. Paypal is 2.9% plus 30 cents or something. When you compare it to Amazon (99 cents + 15%) and Half.com (15% flat) .. it no longer looks expensive at all. In fact, someone attentive could make a living playing the "spread" between the three. Buy from one place, sell higher at another and provide liquidity to everyone.
i agree - the fees are very steep - and getting steeper - there was some alleged comment the ebay ceo (is her name whitman, maybe???) made a while back about not stopping until seller's pay out the wazoo in fees... but compared to running a business, it's cheap and requires no capital...just a credit card. plus it's a haven for tax evaders... one thing you can do is contact a seller and see if they have more of the item (if it's something like a book or CD that they probably have multiple copies of) and are willing to sell it to you outside of ebay...you still have to pay via paypal, but you can usually get a few bucks discount as they don't have to shell out the fees.... i often am able to negotiate a lower price that way...
When you do that, do you get a nasty email message from eBay about deals negotiated outside the system? I just wrote and asked a seller if they had more of a closed item, and in came this un-charitable message from eBay! For clarification, I did use the eBay system to get the seller's address and send the message. Although they promise the email is confidential, hey obviously have software that reads those emails. Cheer, kp
geez, what a bunch of a-holes!!! i guess things have changed -- it's been a year since i've bought or sold on ebay...however some sellers will post their email or web address in the listing, in which case you can circumvent ebay altogether...
the way to get around THAT part (contact person) is: email the person and ask if you can contact them about (said item). according to ebay's rules, this is not spam...and therefore ok, as you're not doing 'unsolicited commercial email'. however, it's ok to ask permission to contact said person once - as long as you do NOT contact them again if they ask you not to, and don't send the same "can i contact you" message more than once. this came up when i was discussing ebay's spamming policies, where they took the "spam is what everyone else does - not us!" approach. so i asked them about the contacting thing, and got that answer. so, if you want to get around it, there you go.
Thanks. Good point. I have contacted sellers through their system before to ask questions about the product, and never heard anything from eBay. I was surprised to discover their system 'reads' the message you send and determines if they like it or not. Cheer, kp