Home › Forums › Buying and Selling › Selling on eBay › UPDATE to Seller Update: eBay Now Waiving Early Termination Fees for US Stores
Tagged: early termination fees, ebay stores, waiver
- This topic has 14 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 10 months ago by
mickdog.
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03/03/2021 at 11:07 pm #86414
Sharyn mentioned this on the 2021 Update Thread, but I figured it might get missed there, so for those (like Jay) thinking about downgrading. eBay initially said there would be no waiver of the early termination fee, but ebay has updated that and now says (this is from the ebay Community Boards):
“…We just got an update on this: Early Termination Fees for yearly subscriptions will be waived for US stores starting today thru 4/30.”
So, you can downgrade between now and April 30th without penalty.
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03/03/2021 at 11:15 pm #86415
Oh, and keep in mind, the new free listings for Managed Payments sellers don’t begin until April 1st, I think….
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03/03/2021 at 11:34 pm #86417
Yes, April 1 is when you can switch if I read correctly. So weird why eBay is doing this. Arent they going to lose a lot of money in subscription fees? It’ll save us $3200/yr.
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03/03/2021 at 11:57 pm #86418
My guess is that they’re hoping to make up for it by increasing the volume of sales by removing barriers to listing more. Plus I bet they’re making a ton on promoted listings (not from me, though).
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03/04/2021 at 12:13 am #86419
Jay, in the early days of ebay, most of ebay’s revenue came from listing fees. ebay has been moving away from that model for years now, and its revenue is now primarily from: FVFs , Promoted Listings (an FVF variant, really), and Managed Payments. I’m sure ebay crunched numbers and decided that the small FVF increase, together with an increase in overall sales, will more than make up for the “lost” insertion and store fees.
While sellers love to talk about the good old days, the fact is, in the early days, ebay’s interests weren’t as well aligned with sellers. As I used to say, ebay back then made its money from seller’s hopes, not seller’s sales. A lot of sellers ran auctions and paid to relist unsold auctions time and time again….easy money for ebay, and if the item didn’t sell, so what? As long as the seller remained optimistic (I know it will sell eventually) and kept paying to relist, ebay made money.
Now, ebay’s revenue is really much more dependent on SALES….which aligns with my financial interest as a seller, since I am also dependent on sales.
I said, years ago, that ebay would eventually get to a point where sellers would pay zero or low insertion fees…but it would only happen once ebay was satisfied that Search had improved enough to deal with the flood of listings attracted by “free”, and once ebay had found revenue streams to replace insertion fees. We are pretty much there now. ebay is MUCH more confident in search and its battery of sales generators (promoted listings, Seller Initiated Offers, etc) and it can handle the millions of listings coming onto the platform.
So this change makes financial sense for ebay. Sites like Facebook Marketplace and Instagram charge little or nothing up front, and this allows ebay to compete more effectively. And if sales increase, as they likely will, ebay will more than makeup for the “lost” insertion fee/store fee revenue….
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03/04/2021 at 8:16 am #86422
This is a great explanation. I agree that eBay needs to compete with all these other sites with free listings. Glad they are feeling confident.
As you said, I’d rather we all make money when we sell, not when we list.
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03/04/2021 at 9:30 am #86429
This could be another case of eBay mimicking Amazon. On the Amazon professional plan, there is no listing fee but a $39.99 monthly fee, on their individual plan the monthly cost is .99 per item. The new eBay listing fees will likely attract larger sellers, in which case increased FVF revenue could outweigh lower listing fees.
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03/04/2021 at 9:48 am #86431
Old Dad,
I really don’t think copying Amazon has anything to do with this. ebay has been headed in this direction for a long time, and now feels confident that it can handle the increase in listings. And I really think the target audience is not so much larger sellers (most of whom offer multi-quantity listings, so they already get a huge break compared to small sellers of one offs, who generally have to pay for each item as an individual listing). I think the real target here comes from ebay’s growing understanding that there are a LOT of smaller one off type sellers with enormous death piles, which will only get listed if 1. it is free or cheap to list and 2. it is easier to list. While we all complain about the listing process, ebay really has been making an effort to make the process easier (including research, which is why they bought Terapeak) and photos (white background tool).
ebay under new management has NO desire to really take on Amazon….that’s a fight they know they can’t win. I think they are much more interested in being THE site for people to shop for the sort of stuff Amazon doesn’t do well….the old, the vintage, the odd ball, the refurbished, etc. ebay SHOULD have accomplished this years ago, rather than chasing Amazon…so they are now playing catch up.
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03/04/2021 at 11:58 am #86434
Thank you for this. Is there anywhere else on eBay this has been posted that confirms this? I would hate to cancel just based on a forum post and be hit with the early termination fees.
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03/04/2021 at 4:16 pm #86442
I love the date this new termination policy starts. Anyone else get the joke? 😀
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03/04/2021 at 4:19 pm #86443
Amatino, ebay uses April 1st a lot…..it’s the first day of Q2, so it makes sense. But yes, the better half and I joke about “ebay and April Fools Day” a lot.
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04/01/2021 at 11:41 am #87173
Why the heck doesn’t ebay simply send everyone a message explaining that they will waive the early termination fee if that’s what they are going to do instead of making us guess?
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04/01/2021 at 11:43 am #87174
It seems like this should be a very basic question and yet I am now in eBay chat with a third person who just wrote: “If you took a yearly subscription plan and you change it before it ends, you will be charged a termination fee and this is not waived just you’ve changed it to a different store. it is still considered cancelling the original subscription and you are penalized for that.”
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04/01/2021 at 12:00 pm #87176
They had me change downgrade my subscription while on chat with an agent and there was no fee shown in the transaction. I asked if that meant I was not being charged and they wrote: “Rest assured that you will not be charged a termination fee.”
Happy ending after all.
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04/01/2021 at 10:45 pm #87187
@mummers this is good to hear. I hope others report the same. I’m thinking of switching sometime this month myself.
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