commission charged on shipping

[2eweantiq]

Why does eBay charge a commission on shipping charges?  eBay does not have anything to do with these charges.  The Seller sets and collects these through PayPal so, again why are commissions collected of these charges?

[theafkgamer]

In my opinion, ebay charges these to fight against those sellers selling things for one cent and $99 shipping.

They probably could've handled this better, especially for those using calculated or Paypal shipping, but what can we do.

[rose-dee]

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@2eweantiq wrote:

Why does eBay charge a commission on shipping charges?  eBay does not have anything to do with these charges.  The Seller sets and collects these through PayPal so, again why are commissions collected of these charges?

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This is nothing new, as it was introduced at least a couple of years ago.  Prior to that time, there was a lot of abuse by sellers of the fee system (and a lot of buyers getting ripped off), because you could list an item for a few dollars and make your profit by charging outrageous shipping amounts (which weren't subject to Final Value Fees).

EBay's solution squashed that particular abuse by sellers, which was really needed.  However there are still perfectly allowable strategies to minimize how much you pay in FVFs overall.

[recped]

The primary reason in my opinion is that eBay encouraged sellers to use "free shipping", sellers who wanted to go along with that said "yeah but now we have to pay fees on shipping because it's included in the item price".

To level that required fees on shipping.

In addition, when fees on shipping was brought in the overall percentage rates for fees was reduced. Ultimately sellers of cheap items with high shipping paid more in fees while almost all other sellers saw reduced fees.

[dgour98]

I understand their reasoning... But bottom line is sellers pay more fees if a mailing goes to California (example $25 box shipped)

than to Toronto ($10 box shipped) for the exact item.

If you have an honest seller charging exact shipping costs, then ebay is taking their extra cut from the actual sale, which is not right.

[pjcdn2005]

The fees aren't based on your international shipping cost unless that cost is less expensive. They are based on your first domestic shipping non-express shipping option. If you are using domestic calculated shipping then the fee is based on the cost of shipping from your postal code to your postal code.

[rose-dee]

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@dgour98 wrote:

I understand their reasoning... But bottom line is sellers pay more fees if a mailing goes to California (example $25 box shipped)

than to Toronto ($10 box shipped) for the exact item.

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No, this doesn't have to be the case.  As I mentioned above, this is where strategies come in to reduce the FVFs you pay.  Which one you use will depend on what you're selling, and where you're primarily selling to, so there is really no one universal solution for every seller. 

However, as 'pj' stated above, one way to minimize FVFs on shipping is to keep your first domestic (Canadian) shipping service is as low as possible (or even free), as long as it's not an express service.  This works especially well if you sell mainly to the US.  In fact, depending on the value and shipping weights of your products, and your customer base (mainly US or mainly Cdn), what you save on FVFs on shipping could theoretically offset free shipping domestically.