- Beginning today, eBay UK is removing selling fees for private sellers
- New features include simplified listings, eBay balance, Simple Delivery and Local, to make selling easier and safer
- Research reveals an estimated 294 million unused items could generate £9 billion in resale income[1]
eBay UK today announces that it has removed fees for private sellers across all categories, except motors (Cars, Motorcycles & Vehicles listings). This means that private sellers will no longer pay final value fees or regulatory operating fees when they sell on eBay.
eBay UK introduced free selling in fashion earlier this year and is now evolving the experience even further to foster a more streamlined and safe selling platform. These new features include:
- Simplified Selling: Sellers can list items across categories within minutes using guidance about the best pricing and shipping options, alongside AI-generated descriptions and photo-enhancing tools.
- Simple Delivery: This service, currently being rolled out across categories, offers sellers a tracked and fully covered delivery at competitive rates, prepaid by the buyer, for a simple and secure shipping experience.
- Local: eBay Local lets shoppers find nearby items available for in-person collection, all protected by eBay’s Money Back Guarantee. Sellers’ listings will have increased visibility with local buyers, along with an easy and secure payment process.
- eBay Balance: Starting from mid-October, this new feature gives sellers the flexibility to use their earnings to shop on eBay, promote their listings, purchase delivery labels or withdraw available funds.
“eBay is constantly improving the marketplace experience in order to deliver on what our customers want,” said Kirsty Keoghan, GM of eBay UK. “Removing selling fees across categories is designed to give buyers access to greater breadth and depth of inventory, while creating a simplified and streamlined experience for sellers.”
Improving the marketplace experience for both sellers and buyers
After eBay Germany removed selling fees last year, C2C volume in Germany returned to positive growth, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of incremental GMV relative to our prior trajectory. Plus, not only did more people start selling on eBay, but more than 250,000 sellers started buying—and they ended up buying twice as much as buyers who don’t sell, illustrating how free selling drives holistic growth. eBay UK has also already seen positive results since its launch of free fashion selling and AI-powered listings in April of this year, with a double-digit increase in listings for popular items such as jeans, shirts, and dresses.
eBay is further supporting its community of hundreds of thousands of business sellers with new exclusive features. These include enhanced seller protections and free 1:1 support with seller clinics to give sellers easy access to growth support. Alongside pre-existing programmes such as Pro-Trader and Start-up Scale-up, business sellers have access to a suite of bespoke tools to help scale up their businesses.
Unlocking the hidden value of UK homes
With an estimated 294 million unused items in homes across the nation[2], there is an estimated resale potential of over £9 billion to be unlocked. Half of households (50%) value their unused items between £50 and £300. Nearly a quarter (24%) of UK households are sitting on items worth over £500. The most commonly unused items in UK homes include adult clothing (44%), DVDs and/or CDs (33%) and technology items (27%).
The majority (56%) of people sell items they no longer use to make money, with almost half (47%) finding it more sustainable than throwing them away. Many want to increase the amount of space they have in their homes (55%), whilst nearly a quarter (23%) of households sell items to fund buying new items.[3] Alongside free selling, eBay’s new features will make it easier than ever to sell unwanted items.
Disclaimers:
*No Final Value Fee, No Regulatory Operating Fee and Insertion fee waived for property and classifieds
[1] Research commissioned by eBay. Opinium consumer research, 2,000 Nat Rep UK adults, carried out August 2024
[2] Office for National Statistics: Families and households in the UK: 2023
[3] Research commissioned by eBay. Opinium consumer research, 2,000 Nat Rep UK adults, carried out August 2024.