That sounds a tad harsh! 

All I can say is that, in my experience at least, ebay.uk is not the same. Funds hit my ebay account immediately and, Bank Holidays apart, is transferred to my bank account the next day.

As I've mentioned previously, I use the ebay global shipping programme and the buyer pays for this service - I just pay for shipping to the UK depot.

Something like this could have been done due to prolific scammers...  advertise a bunch of nice items overseas, collect the money, ship a box of rocks, and disappear with the money before the buyer receives the shipment.  If you don't get paid until buyer gets the item, that scam is dead. 

I actually had this happen to me several years ago...  I bought an early headlight switch for a good price.  What eventually arrived was garbage and not that switch.  Seller had apparently hacked someone's Ebay account and used it to sell for a couple of weeks.  My money was gone but ebay sent me a shipping label to send the package to them as they were going to try and track down the scammer and prosecute.  (It sounded like there were a lot of victims and they knew who did it)  Ebay gave me a full refund...  this was long before the "buyer protection" they have now. 

The problem is these policies open up sellers to scams buyers can pull...  it's a vicious cycle.  Too bad there are so many people who think it's ok to commit fraud...  Even though most people are honest in my opinion.  It's those few that pull the scams or commit fraud that drive costs up and make things difficult for everyone else. 

Ebay charges for an ad, so pay for the ad, no problem. A large final value fee is too much money to pay them simply because a sale was completed on a vehicle. Isn't that what the ad fee is for? It's like paying them twice, just my opinion. I don't sell big items on ebay anymore, it's simply too expensive.

The eBay .11 cents on the dollar stepped in front of a 50 - 50 sales partnership deal today. The back end liabilities are far too high and since I’m already divorced - entering into any type of partnership is a 100% deal killer..

asco

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Yes it doesn't seem right that they base the final sale price which includes the sales tax, but the collection of those taxes where mandated by the government which forced eBay and others to collect and forward those taxes to the states which they are due. With that mandate comes a huge burden and cost to eBay. They are trying to recoup the overhead that comes with that mandate. I don't blame eBay but still don't like it. I blame the government for those costs. To make it worse, this year you will get the 1099-k on $600 dollars in sales which most likely will cost you additional taxes unless you have kept every receipt on stuff you sell on eBay.

Conversely, here in the UK, ebay collecting the sales tax (in our case VAT) on purchases from overseas has made things a little cheaper for buyers of items of about £200 or less (I haven't checked this threshold recently).

Previously, HMRC (our tax collecting agency) would raise the tax on imported goods upon arrival in this country, and this would be collected by the delivery agent. The agent, of course, would then levy their own fee for the collection of tax. Now, everything (certainly in my experience) sails through customs, whether or not the tax has been collected by a third party such as ebay.

Yes it doesn't seem right that they base the final sale price which includes the sales tax, but the collection of those taxes where mandated by the government which forced eBay and others to collect and forward those taxes to the states which they are due. With that mandate comes a huge burden and cost to eBay. They are trying to recoup the overhead that comes with that mandate. I don't blame eBay but still don't like it. I blame the government for those costs. To make it worse, this year you will get the 1099-k on $600 dollars in sales which most likely will cost you additional taxes unless you have kept every receipt on stuff you sell on eBay

Using that method of thinking are any big box retailers charging you 12% of your total purchase price to collect the sales tax and sending it to the government? I don’t think so.

Next question why are they ALSO charging 12% of the final value fee on the sale price, sales tax AND SHIPPING COSTS, I use my own shipping and pay for it, WHY do they make 12% on the shipping, they have nothing to do with my shipping and don’t have overhead on that?

"WHY do they make 12% on the shipping, they have nothing to do with my shipping and don’t have overhead on that?"

Someone on here, possibly Mark, pointed out a while back that, back in the day, fleabay didn't charge their % on shipping costs. However, some sellers tried to be cute and charge a low sale price, but exaggerated shipping costs - fleabay cottoned on to this and hence their charging on the total cost.

Page 4 of different views on whether the fees are justified or not.......interesting read. Myself, I base it on net gain after all costs, which makes ebay a fail. That 1099 doesn't care if I paid x amount at a swap meet for said part, or that I drove 100 miles and spent 4 hrs picking up that parts bike....because I have no receipts.
Not blaming ebay.
I'm certain more sellers are finding other avenues based on ebay sales volumes being the lowest they've been in at least 10 years.

There are bookkeeping and accounting charges that coincide with collection and distribution of those tax dollars. If I collect your tax money, then put it in an escrow account, I too need to be compensated for my overhead costs to forward those funds to the IRS. They can’t charge the buyer. It’s unfortunate.

asco