Hi, I sold 3 items last month in ebay, which basically below its price. They came as gift (and were new), and i didn't need it. shop would take it back because i didn't have the receipt. So, i thought about ebay, as I knew you can sell stuffs there, and I had an ebay account.

So I put it up in ebay, I didn't want the auction option, but there is no other option that I could find (no "just buy it now" alone, I still cannot find it in their page, so if its there its not obvious). So I put it up in their list. It said listing is "free", and indeed listing was free.

Then one of the item, somebody bought it with "buy it now". My price was very decent actually 75% of the original price, and probably would have added the fees to it had I known about it. I kept shipping free to attract customers, and I would pay that from the money that I got from the buyer. ebay charged me 3.23%(and I am ok with that, at least they got me customers quick, and I think that is fairly reasonable). So baically I got about 66% of the price of a brand new item at the end, after paying ebay and shipping charges.

Now ebay sends me an invoice saying that they will charge me 9% of the value that my item was sold for. Its written nowhere i could see, and believe me i read the fine prints too, because i was new to it. It is nowhere obvious that these are the charges. So basically they have something called "listing fee", "insertion fee" and "final value fee" in their invoice. And there they don't even mention about the 3.23% they charged me when it got sold. So now there is at least 4 different types of fee. and for me they have "free 'listing' and 'insertion' fee as promotional offer". Now I am paying 12.23% for selling my item through them, of which I knew nothing about before my item was sold. The 9%, even after my item was sold, because it came later. Had I known it in time, I would have added that to the price of my item if at all i would opt for selling it through ebay after knowing that.

Now does everybody knows about these charges? if yes, then how are people selling their item in ebay? I mean if you add all these charges, how can you even sell an item in ebay when there are places like amazon, buy.com, or even the stores (where you can go and see/feel the item yourself). Is this charge legal? are they registered in BBB?

and people who regularly sell in ebay, do they pay these charges? how do they make money?

In summer of 2006, Ebayon several occasions offered a dime insertion fee for all ebay store owner and I did a whole of of auctions Instead of seeing a bill for that month for approx $500 I as charged for over $800. It took me so many emails conversing with over 8 Ebay representatives before one found out what happen. I am an ebay store owner for a long time, but since I was suspended before that the invoice was generated, the computer programs was not smart enough to know that, therefore no discount was given to me. This assoicate fixed the problem and credited me the money. I let the money sat there in the account for over 5 or 6 months, then I decided to ask them to mail me the amount. I used some of the refund toward or auctions, so the remaining balance was only like $233. Was I shocked what happen follows. Instead of refunding me the $233 they owe me, Ebay send me a bill for $over $700. They said that the whole refund to me was a mistake and they had the credit agency harrassing me for over a year. About 4 months ago, Ebay start sending me monthly invoices again which is weird cuz I haven't been selling anyting since that dispute. NOw the balance that I owe them is zero, but they have not remove the dent they put onto my credit report!!! They owe me money. I still have those dates of when they did the dime insertion fee for ebay store owners. I cannot get them to fix their error. It is horrible.
They stole my money.