ffutures | What a surprise...

eBay are reintroducing their charges for private sellers listings as a "buyer protection" fee, non-refundable to sellers, which if I'm doing my sums right will cost about the same as their original charges. Except that it's apparently going to be variable, so that it may end up costing more in some circumstances - it really isn't explained clearly. It looks like the impact will be greatest on low value items. They are also not going to pay sellers the money for goods until they are delivered, which in practice means that sellers are going to have to switch to tracked services for all items - in the case of overseas sales this is going to mean it costs several times an item's value in a lot of cases. Alternatively I can use eBay's global shipping service, which doesn't cost the seller anything above normal postage but costs the buyer a lot more and means you can't combine postage on multiple items.

Not impressed...

Later - Corrected because I originally said the Global Shipping thing cost the seller more, which is not what I meant to say.