> But eBay hasn't done anything since the 1990's except raise fees.

Meanwhile it's now 100% free to sell on eBay for non-professional sellers.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/fe...

They're playing stupid semantic games in order to claim there's no selling fees while still having selling fees. The fees were ostensibly shifted onto the buyer, except they're bundled into the sale price and cut from what the seller receives, so in effect nothing actually changed.

Before: Buyer pays £100, seller receives £100, seller later charged £5 fee, ends up with £95.

After: Buyer pays £100, eBay pockets £5 "buyer protection fee", seller receives £95 with "no fees".

Except you can price higher to include that cut, and the buyer protection fee is a lower percentage than the sales one was (between 7% and 2% VS I think 11%).

> it's now 100% free to sell

Nice:

> You won't pay final value fees or regulatory operating fees

Of course, they will likely find some other way to extract their fees.

It would be nice, however, if the final value fee went away for US non-professional sellers.

There does seem to be no indication (at least on the page you linked) of how they define "private seller", which also opens up the possibility of them defining it so narrowly that, say, only five UK residents ever qualify.

Only in the UK, and only on "private sellers". eBay is losing a lot of marketshare in the UK so they've taken drastic measures to try to get people listing again.

Makes sense. In the UK, their fees plus the encouraged (used to be mandatory as an option) Paypal payment option steals a very significant chunk of the purchase price from sellers.

In the last 5 years I've won multiple auctions for not-really-worth-shipping things like bikes, paid via Paypal, then had the buyers contact me to say the fees are too high, cancel the auction and deal separately in cash.

For anything that you're picking up in person anyway, very little reason to use ebay vs. FB marketplace.

Nothing? Don't forget when their security team sent pigs heads to people and terrorized them:)

I think I missed this…

Wow! That was a read that kept on escalating.