Deal has ended, view more eBay deals by clicking here.
Update 3/25/21: Deal is available again, must sign up by March 31, 2021.
The Offer
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- eBay is offering some eBay sellers a $15 off a future purchase when they sign up for eBay managed payments by March 31, 2021
The Fine Print
- Offer valid on Eligible Purchases of $15 or more made on or before 12/24/2020. Valid only for purchases from eBay.com. Item(s) must be delivered to a U.S. address and not returned to remain eligible. Users who remain eligible will receive a $15 off coupon in My eBay: Messages and by email to their registered address by 12/11/2020. Limit one coupon per user.
- Eligible Purchases exclude purchases made with a coupon, as well as purchases of warranties and protection plans, and items from the Coins & Paper Money, Gift Cards & Coupons, Vehicles from eBay Motors, and Real Estate categories. Only invited eBay members registered to use managed payments with an address located in the United States are eligible for the Coupon.
- Coupon is subject to U.S laws, void where prohibited, not redeemable for cash, has no face value, and cannot be combined with any other Coupon, or when paying with PayPal Credit Easy Payments or Gift Cards. Any unused difference between discount amount, as shown on the Coupon, and the purchase price of item(s) in a single transaction (or cart) will be forfeited. eBay may cancel, amend, or revoke the Coupon at any time.
Our Verdict
We’ve seen bigger bonuses in the past for signing up for managed payments (e.g $250 invoice credit) so not sure if this offer makes sense if eligible. I guess it’s probably better to secure something than nothing at all though.
Don’t enroll in eBay managed payments. The fees increase after this. eBay is charging seller fees on Sales Tax collected after this change. And no transparency in the final out paid to seller.
I enrolled in managed payments before the end of the year as it sounded like I would have to or be unable to make new listings or modify existing ones.
Ebay gave me an unexpected $200 gift card a few weeks later. For switching. Took a bit of the annoyance out of having to switch.
Hmm I enrolled last year for the promo but got nothing… And my payments are still going to Paypal so I’m not sure how the rollout even works.
sounds like there may have been a bug in enrolling. or you were rejected ? anyways, no real benefit I can see, so if eBay still lets you modify existing listings and create news ones, don’t bother
I’m not sure, I thought they did it in waves so I just left it. When I try to enroll again it redirects to the info page that tells me I’m already enrolled and will start getting payments to my bank account instead of Paypal soon, but it’s been like that since December. I actually would prefer this since it takes out the hassle of me having to withdraw from Paypal ever so often and the fees are slightly lower.
Fees look the same to me. And before I was able to pay the eBay selling fees with a credit card to meet minimum spend. Not anymore.
I got an eBay message about this, was about to go through but then saw they need my SSN. It did say that I would have to enroll by 12/31 anyways, so maybe good to do it now for the credit.
i had to look at your profile picture twice lmao
lol the cat is definitely easy to mistake for something weird 😂 or my knees? 😬
its the knees LOL
The reason to wait is because if you sell more than 200 items in a year they will report it to the IRS. By having one account on managed payments and one account using paypal, you can now sell 200 items on each account, or 400 total before they report it to the IRS.
yeah, its 20k in sales or 200 transactions. it works if you sale low priced items that will keep you under 20k so you can probably take half your payments through managed payments and half through paypal. im not sure if thats possible, i havent got the call for managed payments yet.
You should be reporting the activity on your tax return even if you dont get a 1099-K. Sounds like you are trying to evade paying taxes on your sales.
Ebay sucks and I used to use Craigslist a lot to avoid fees. However, people don’t seem to use Craigslist a lot these days (even before Covid) and anything I list on Craigslist, I rarely get any messages but if I list them on Ebay, I usually sell them in 1-2 weeks. Any other sites or apps for local meet & sell?
Offer up. Facebook marketplace
I think a lot of people have gone to facebook market place, at least from craigslist. As for ebay there have been a lot of other selling platforms that have tried to recreate ebays popularity but a have found most of them to be pretty much useless.
I gave up on CL as it is too easy for buyers to change their minds or require too much back and forth on pricing forever. I hate wasting my time and don’t like to allow strangers to come to my house. I once tried to sell a Nexus 4 and the buyer asked to meet at a T-mobile store 20 miles away, then he decided he didn’t want it because Nexus 4 didn’t officially support LTE. I had to drive 20 miles back. But the phone was sold on eBay within 3 days hassle free. The out of state buyer even left a thank you note.
I prefer paying the fees over wasting my time as I only sell stuffs no longer needed. It’s usually very quick and easy to sell on ebay although they charge a lot of fees.
Nevermind, please delete.
The way eBay is wording it, they’re going to switch everyone anyway, so I went ahead and switched to eBay managed payments.
My initial experience is quite negative and unfortunately that’s likely negative reality eBay sellers will have to live with.
1. I was (erroneously) expecting than now when PayPal is out of the picture, the selling fees will be lower. Not at all. eBay took over the exact fee PayPal was charging and added it up. 12.35% + $0.30 per transaction for management payments.
2. My first sale under the new rules happened on 11/23 around 11AM. The payment was sent from eBay at midnight 11/25. That’s 1.5 days after they received the money. Email from eBay states I should expect 3-4 days until the payment reaches my account. Probably an overstatement if they already initiated ACH. But with PayPal, I would have had the money on 11/23.
3. That eBay fee of 12.35% – the smart guys charging that on sales tax portion as well. I will reach out to them and hope they either fix it quickly or even better they don’t and face a good class action down the road.
The way they’re treating sellers is just not right. I still have to use eBay for some sales but I try to keep this to a minimum.
Agree with this being somewhat shady, the money they will make off of imposing these hidden new fees will easily outweight the meager $15 they are offerring (between now and when they are forcing us all to change anyhow), which btw wont come through for weeks even after you’ve updated your bank information. Dissapointed in Ebay.
If you don’t like it, then leave.
eBay makes money off of transactions, not sellers. To have transactions they need buyers, and this is a buyer-friendly move.
Right, I do not like it. For better or for worse, eBay has monopoly on country-wide marketplace. I use eBay as little as I can and will continue reducing my volume there further.
To have transactions eBay needs both buyers and sellers. I don’t think sellers will leave not matter what but they may raise prices accordingly and make the marketplace less attractive to buyers.
I don’t complain about the fees in general. They can take 20% if they choose so and I will decide whether it’s worth it for me. But taxing a tax is a ridiculous concept. In fact, eBay even violates their own documentation.
Here is from eBay. “This fee is calculated as a percentage of the total amount of the sale. The total amount of the sale is the amount the buyer pays, including any shipping and handling charges. Sales tax isn’t included in the calculation.”
The point of my post was to simply share the reality of the move eBay is forcing us to take. There’s pros and cons like other people mentioned but in my mind it’s mostly negative.
PayPal was also taking a percent from the tax as well
I have used eBay managed payments and PayPal before. I prefer eBay managed payments for a few reasons:
1. That 12.35% fee you pay? That fee is eBay’s 10% final value fee of 10% + the credit card fee of 2.35% + 30 cents. This is still marginally less than what PayPal takes, which is 2.90% + 30 cents so you do indeed save a little.
2. Yes, managed payments take longer, but I and anyone who resells stuff on eBay shouldn’t care. My cash flow isn’t so tight that I absolutely need my money within a day of getting it, and I can wait 3-4 days if I need to. I pay for most things I resell with a credit card, so I can float payments for weeks if need be without paying interest.
3. Guess what, PayPal already already charges swipe fees on sales taxes. So this comparison between them is a moot point. Online and in-person sellers have to pay swipe fees on sales tax anyway, and this has been an industry standard for years way before eBay managed payments (or even PayPal) was formed.
To compensate for this, many states offer tax credits for people that pay their sales tax on time. Of course because eBay collects and remits the sales tax for you, you see none of these savings, eBay does.
Oh and you forgot a couple of things:
4. It’s not PayPal.
Enough said.
5. Returns and credit card fees are issued to your monthly eBay bill instead of being pulled form your bank immediately upon refund.
This is important because it gives you a few weeks of cash flow instead of PayPal just pulling the money directly from your bank. It also makes accounting easier since you pay a single bill at the end of the month. And most importantly, you can now effectively “pay” for your returns, eBay processing fees, and credit card fees with another credit card, giving you the ability to earn more points on your credit card than you could before.
6. Returns credit your original credit card fee back to your account! –
When you sell something on PayPal, PayPal no longer refunds credit card fees, but eBay does. That means if a customer has to return a $1000 item, you get your $30 transaction fee you paid back instead of PayPal keeping it. This is the whole reason I switched in the first place.
I have managed payments on one account and PayPal on the other. I prefer managed payments because it has saves me money on my eBay sales and most importantly, it’s not PayPal. PayPal needs to die in a fire with how they treat their merchants. Maybe eBay is just as bad, but at least I can save some money.
Dylan, I agree with some of your points. But when a change happens, I hope it is to the better, The change from PayPal to eBay payments at best is equal but in many senses seems to the worse.
My biggest problem is the 12.35% on sales tax. That does not make any sense. It’s not the money I ever see. Why should I pay the fee on it. eBay by is responsible for collection and remission of the sales tax. What do I have to do with it?
And even if PayPal charged this (which I’m not sure they did), it was 2.9% on the amount of the sales tax. Now it’s 12.35% of the sales tax.
Dylan, you said “That fee is eBay’s 10% final value fee of 10% + the credit card fee of 2.35% + 30 cents. This is still marginally less than what PayPal takes, which is 2.90% + 30 cents so you do indeed save a little.”
That is not totally true. At a 6% tax rate, the selling fees under the new and old system are around the same. However, most states the tax rate is 7% + and at that rate the old paypal system was a little cheaper. Here is the math involved using a sample item sold at $100 with 8% sales tax:
New ebay system: 12.35% of $108 = $13.34
Old ebay system: 10% of $100 = $10 and paypal 2.9% of $108 = $3.13 for a total of $13.13
However, if you have an ebay store and sell in categories with reduced rates (like the computer category), the new system is cheaper.
I agree with Dylan about many of the reasons for getting away from paypal. Another reason to add to the list is paypal’s 6 month return policy. Yes, someone can buy a computer from you on ebay, use it for 6 months, and then file a claim with paypal that it is not as described and you will have to take it back. Now with ebay managed payments, the return window is only 30 days. I had a buyer who filed a complaint on ebay and ebay sided with me so they then filed a complaint with paypal who gave them their money back. Much easier now that you are only dealing with 1 company and only 1 return policy.
Also, I have never forgiven paypal for their disgraceful behavior in 2016 when the Paypal Digital Gifts system was hacked and they made people fight for their money back. (See https://www.doctorofcredit.com/paypal-digital-gifts-hacked-last-month/)
They must have bought off a bunch of politicians because other than DoC and a few other small blogs, the media absolutely refused to report anything about it. I even tried to contact Brian Krebs from Krebsonsecurity and he told me that there was no paypal hack, the gift card numbers were probably just stolen from my email (even though I showed him the DOC post and all the other blogs where 100’s of people had claimed they lost their money.)
It was really disgraceful because they made people fight with them to get their money back and if people didn’t realize that the gift cards were hacked until months later, they lost all their money.
So yes, I only use paypal as a last resort, because as a company, I find them reprehensible.
The same math for a Top-Rated seller works out in favor of Managed Payments, might be only marginally, but still cheaper. Was always a PIA to pull multiple reports to ensure everyone charged the right %’s.
Managed Payments allows daily deposits and the sales usually settle in 2 days or less for me. It would take this long to get from Paypal to a bank account anyways, but would have to do manually.
You make some great points especially about paypal fees not being credited back for returns/cancels. I would like to be all under one platform for accounting purposes and slightly lower fees.
When you mention sales tax collected from behalf of ebay, do you mean we are not able to get any tax credits because we technically do not pay for sales tax outright?
The only problem I can still see is fraudulent buyers that could do chargebacks. I’m not sure how ebay handles this. I know paypal allowed buyers to do chargebacks up to 6 months, insane.
Paypal and ebay always collected their 12.9% +30 cents fee with the total including your sales tax. It is what it is.
still not eligible – ugh!
Important to know that there’s no way to unenroll from managed payments, and you can’t sell in certain categories including bullion.