I work as an online salesperson and sell product on eBay. Over the years eBay's fees have steadily increased, while service has steadily decreased. It has gotten to the point where eBay's (and Paypal's) fees have become a very large dollar amount; an amount that I do not feel is justified. I write this post to share information. Unfortunately I cannot share hard dollar numbers, but I can share approximations and percentages.

Our eBay account receives about 1000 feedback per year, with the items we sell usually between $150 and $800. We have the maximum discounts available for our account level, which is 20% off eBay fees. Despite this, between eBay and PayPal we lose 10% of our gross sales dollars to fees, with 75% of those fees going to eBay and 25% to PayPal. Our profit margins are fairly slim, so the 10% makes a huge impact on the net profit.

For this money, which amounts to tens of thousands of dollars per year, we get next to zero service. We used to have an account manager, but that went away a year or two ago (despite growing sales). We've had two negative feedbacks in our entire time on eBay. One of which was an outright and obvious mistake, and the other was a delusional buyer. In both cases, eBay was unable to provide assistance in removing the feedback, citing their feedback policy as not allowing them to intervene without a court order.

I understand that there is a price to pay to use the eBay marketplace, which allows us to reach millions of potential buyers. However, I think eBay has become greedy and the costs should not be as steep. I have emailed eBay about this but do not know what response to expect other than "You qualify for all current discounts, thanks for selling on eBay!" My only hope is that enough people will voice their concerns and eBay will do some restructuring. We are also planning to move our online business away from eBay but would like to keep selling there if it's profitable.

Tags	ebay