News on eBay fee credits

December 22, 2008

In December eBay ran a listing promotion offering free subtitle for sellers with a Featured or Anchor shop. Originally the promotion excluded items listed using the Good ‘Til Cancelled (GTC) format but sellers were offered free subtitle on GTC listings via the Sell Your Item form. Because these listing never end sellers would be billed for subtitle every 30 days for GTC items until they either sold out or were manually ended.

Normally once a listing has had a sale it’s not possible to remove a subtitle, but by the 8th January eBay will add the ability to remove subtitles even if the listing has had a sale. Sellers will need to remove subtitles from GTC listings by the 15th January as from this date they will be charged when the listing renews for another 30 day period.

Subtitle fees incurred between 1st - 15th January will be refunded for any sellers who who created a new GTC listing with subtitle feature enabled in December or added a subtitle to an existing GTC listing in December. Currently a date for refunds (if applicable) hasn’t been announced.

eBay have also announced on the PowerSeller forum (log in required) that they will be processing the refunds promised for sellers who ended and relaunched listings in order to make VAT rate changes. Credits should appear on users accounts by mid to end January.

January seems a long time to wait for credits incurred on the 1st December, but to be honest for most sellers with shops the fixed price listings concerned would only have costed 5p or 1p. (For myself the additional fees were only around £5.00). Sellers who use expensive listing enhancements such as Featured First will have a much larger credit due.

Whenever eBay run a listing promotion where the credits will be refunded in the future (rather than at the point of launching the listings) sellers should always ensure they have the cash flow to wait for credits. Invariably they won’t fall in the same month as the fees are incurred.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under CLD, Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | Leave a Comment 

How to get free subtitle until the end of January

November 29, 2008

Free subtitles for the whole of December is available for sellers with a Featured or Anchor shop. I have to say as one of those paying £50 or £350 a month it’s nice to see some added benefits coming in although the cost justifies itself purely on listing fees alone.

If you want to take advantage it’s possible to upgrade your shop, and if you’re a habitual user of subtitles it could cost justify itself in a month. The normal subtitle fee is £0.35 for short duration listings and £1.05 for 30 day listings - if you add subtitle to as few as 30 listings it pays for the upgrade. (30 listings @ 20p + £1.05 = £37.50, 30 listings @ 5p with £1.05 waived = £36.50 including the extra £35 shop fee)

Good ’til canceled listings are excluded from the promotion, which makes sense, if you add a subtitle you’d be paying for it on each renewal. By limiting the promotion to 30 day or shorter listings it gives the opportunity to remove the feature when you relist after the promotion period.

For those that wish to take full advantage it’s effectively free subtitle up until the end of January. Many sellers will be relisting their times on the 1st December with the new VAT rates, by adding a subtitle and relisting on the 31st December you have the opportunity of 60 days worth of subtitle for free.

I’ll be manually ending all of my listings tomorrow and relisting them on Monday 1st with revised VAT for free. Now I can add subtitle for free so what’s started as a nightmare for sellers has turned into a cloud with a silver lining.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under CLD | 6 Comments 

eBay to refund all fees for VAT affected listings

November 28, 2008

eBay have just announced that they will refund all UK insertion and listing enhancement fees to enable sellers to update multiple quantity fixed price listings with the new VAT rates.

To qualify for the refunds UK sellers must be business or VAT registered, the listing must be a multiple quantity fixed price listing and and it must be manually ended and then re-listed to update the VAT information between Tuesday 25th Nov 2008 and Friday 5th Dec 2008. For qualifying listings eBay will refund both the Insertion and Feature fees.

On the Q&A forum eBay give further explanation explaining that they’ve been working to update the site automatically but it’s simply not been possible to achieve this in the short period since the Pre-Budget report announced the VAT changes. Hopefully by the time the next VAT change takes effect on 1st January 2010 there will be an easier way to adjust VAT rates on the site.

There will be no need to apply for refunds, they will automatically be credited through the normal invoice process.

Although it still leaves sellers with a fair amount of work to do to update all their listings over the weekend at least they won’t be penalised financially on listing and insertion fees. Those who have multiple listings with the more expensive enhancements such as Featured First can breathe a sigh of relief that their fees will be refunded.

If you’ve been delaying updating your listings but now intend to take advantage of the relist credits we’ve written a check list for changing the VAT rates on auctions and fixed price items to make the process as painless as possible.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, News | 30 Comments 

eBay Ireland aren’t assisting with VAT changes either

November 28, 2008

Lest UK sellers think they were alone in being given no help from eBay with changes to the VAT rate, eBay Ireland have put out an announcement regarding their own VAT changes which is almost a cut and paste copy of the UK one. Irish VAT increases from 21% to 21.5% on Monday 1st December, and as is the case for UK sellers, Irish eBayers will have to individually amend listings without sales, or end and relist items with sales/bids, in order to be able to edit the VAT rate quoted.

The announcement about changes in the VAT rate was made in October, so eBay Ireland have had even longer to come up with a more useful solution than the week that Alastair Darling gave eBay UK. Irish sellers will no doubt draw their own conclusions from the timing of this announcement, one working day before the VAT change goes live: could it have only been prompted by the change in the UK rate?

One small improvement on the Irish announcement: the patronising tag line

With strong competition and early discounting coming from the high street this Christmas season we know buyers are now, more than ever, being attracted to great value bargains.

which concluded the British one has been omitted.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Site Changes, eBay.ie | Comments Off 

Action plan for VAT changes to your eBay listings

November 28, 2008

Due to the large number of VAT registered sellers who will have to update their eBay listings manually this weekend I thought I’d share my work plan for updating VAT rates on live listings.

To do today

  1. Use TurboLister to bulk edit all auctions without bids ending on or after 1st to amend to the new VAT rate. It will then be correct on the date the auction ends.
     

  2. Bulk edit all templates in TurboLister (you’ll need to do this in two steps - all auction templates and then all fixed price templates)
     

  3. Consider launching shorter duration auctions to cover any days when you didn’t list. 3, 5 and 7 day auctions can plug the gap and be listed today with the new VAT rate. (If you use 1 day auctions make sure that they are listed with the current VAT rate)
     

  4. Schedule fixed price listings to start on 1st

To do on Sunday 30th November

  1. End auctions with bids, consider selling to the current highest bidder if an acceptable price has been reached.
     

  2. Use TurboLister to bulk edit any fixed price listings without sales or best offers, for any subsequent sales before midnight edit VAT back to the old rate on the SMP invoice.
     
    This is potentially the most difficult step as whilst you can see start and current quantities to identify listings with sales (Right click TurboLister columns, click “Customise columns” and make “Qty” and “Available Quantity” visible), it’s not possible to see which listings have received best offers. Attempting a bulk edit which includes just one listing that’s received a best offer will block the VAT field from being revised.
     

  3. End any fixed price listings with sales or best offers and relist with the revised VAT rate as soon as possible (or schedule them to restart on 1st December) and manually edit the VAT rate on the SMP invoice for any final sales from the 30th.
     
    You should now have all your listings updated showing the correct rate of VAT and can enjoy the rest of your weekend!

    Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 30 Comments 

    eBay UK sellers must manually edit listings for VAT changes

    November 26, 2008

    eBay UK have finally made an announcement about how the 1st December change in the VAT rate should be reflected by sellers on the site. That’s the good news: the bad news is, we’re on our own.

    eBay’s announcment says this:

    • the VAT rate can be edited on listings without sales.
    • listings with sales will have to be either allowed to end as scheduled, or manually ended by sellers, and relisted with the correct VAT rate.

    After 1st December, offering items for sale with 17.5% VAT will be illegal, so allowing your listings to end naturally after that date is not an option. Listings with sales, therefore, *must* be ended and relisted, with all eBay listing and featured listing fees payable again on the new listings.

    Frankly, this isn’t good enough. It would not have been too much to ask for eBay to automatically change all 17.5% VAT-listed items to 15%, or if not that, to make the VAT field editable on listings with sales. Instead, they’ve abdicated any shred of responsibility; not only are sellers left with huge numbers of listings to edit when they should really be ramping up their sales to crazy point for Christmas, but eBay are profiting by the extra listing fees on the whole mess.

    eBay have said that editing the VAT field will not affect sales recency for Best Match: this isn’t going to be a whole bunch of comfort to sellers faced with editing and paying to relist their entire eBay inventory.

    If anyone from eBay is listening, please reconsider: do a bulk edit from 17.5% to 15%. And if you won’t do that, then at very least, consider waiving some listing fees.

    Updated to add some conversations with HMRC
    A couple of TameBay readers have spoken to HMRC and been told that they do not need to change the VAT rate quoted on eBay so long as their own records and invoices show the correct rate (see comments below).

    We’ve just spoken to HMRC’s Glasgow contact centre and been told that displayed rates *do* need to be changed, and that sellers need to contact eBay to find out how to do that (ha ha).

    So if you’re chosing to leave 17.5% standing, it’s very much at your own risk.

    Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Featured, News, Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 92 Comments 

    The pre-budget report, VAT and eBay

    November 25, 2008

    eBay are looking at ways to enable the change in VAT from 17.5% to 15% without sellers having to cancel and relaunch their items. Currently it’s not possible to edit the VAT rate once a listing has sales or bids. Relisting would incur additional fees (and listing enhancement fees) along with loss of Recent Sales boosts in Best Match.

    Changes to VAT were announced in yesterday’s Pre-Budget Report by the Chancellor Alistair Darling. In short the VAT rate will reduce from 17.5% to 15% from December 1st 2008 and will stay at the reduced rate for the whole of 2009. For 5% and 0% VATable products there is no change in rates.

    How will this affect eBay buyers and sellers? Well for VAT registered sellers possibly the most important change is the VAT rate displayed on your listings. You’ll also have to change VAT rates in any accounting packages that you use.

    For buyers there may be a small reduction in the cost of goods, but in all honesty many sellers are unlikely to make price cuts in any bar the most competitive categories. A £9.99 (inc 17.5% VAT) item today is unlikely to be listed for £9.78 (inc 15% VAT) on the 1st December and 21p is unlikely to sway buyers either. There is no legal obligation for sellers to pass on savings although the government would like to see sellers do so.

    Do I have to pass on the VAT reduction to my customers by reducing my prices?
    The Government is making this change as part of a broader package of fiscal measures to give the economy a boost. Passing on the tax reduction through reduced prices will stimulate consumer spending and mean that both businesses and consumers benefit from this change. But ultimately decisions on prices charged by business and paid by consumers, are for them rather than the Government.

    There are some other changes sellers need to be aware of, such as changes to the VAT Flat Rate Scheme percentages. If you’re a VAT registered seller all the information you need is available from the HMRC Detailed Guide for Vat-Registered Businesses (opens in .pdf) which covers the VAT standard rate changes.

    Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 4 Comments 

    PayPal double charge VAT on eBay

    April 6, 2008

    This post was written in April 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

    Early on Friday morning sellers reported that eBay sales paid through PayPal were having VAT double charged. This appears to have affected many sellers both those who had already charged VAT had it charged again, and those who aren’t even registered to collect VAT still had VAT added.

    Collecting VAT for non-VAT registered sellers is not only illegal but even for VAT registered sellers is against the new eBay VAT policy that went live on 20th February this year. The best advice for all sellers is to check payments received on Friday through PayPal and if VAT was added incorrectly to refund the over payment.

    TameBay reader Simon who sells on eBay as trolleymaster told us “The main worry for me and other sellers was the loss of our high DSRs and/or feedback rating”. When a glitch like this results in overcharging customers sellers should refund as quickly as possibly, but Simon also advises stepping up communications to affected customers to assure them you’re aware of the problem and informing them of how you’re resolving it.

    Potentially the biggest problem for sellers unaware of the problem will arise at a tax inspection when they discover that they’ve unwittingly double charged VAT. This will be a tough one to track back at some point in the future, especially as there has been no communication from eBay on the announcement board for future reference.

    As of Friday evening it appears the glitch was resolved, so it’s just Friday’s payments that need to be verified.

    Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured | Comments Off