Managed Payments Experience?

Any sellers out there that are in the "managed payments" program have anything to report to the rest of us? Can you conform they are charging 25c per item rather than 25c per payment?

The last ebay update indicated they are going to force more to switch to it and we all know it is coming to all of us eventually.

Eye, what is the "Managed Payments" program?

Peter

ebay's own-brand rival to Paypal.

The correct term is "incarcerated". Joining the program is a one-way trip to using unfinished incompletely designed software. I suppose that third party applications will someday be able to capture complete transaction information. Managed payments and ebay collected sales tax is a double whammy against any seller interested in tracking finances. Sellers who have attempted to import the ebay Orders report and the Payments reports into Excel will understand just how seller unfriendly ebay software has become. For comparison, reconciling PayPal transactions started working just two years ago. Before that, I began to suspect that PayPal was skimming. After an ultimately successful attempt to remove non balance affecting transactions from the PayPal annual transactions report, the process became manageable. Before that, it was not.

Unfortunately, the ebay Orders report only goes back a maximum of 90 days. In order to gather a year of order transactions, reports must be downloaded bimonthly and stitched together after duplicate transactions are removed. The Payments report, available to Managed Payments inmates, is said to be able to download transactions for an entire year. Sellers must use Google Chrome because the report hangs in Microsoft Edge. A join of the ebay Payments and Orders reports reveals that sale amounts don't exactly match between Payments and Orders. The mismatch is small and may relate a failure to standardize ebay collected sales tax calculations. The Payments is incomplete without the Orders report.

The bottom line: If you like testing partially designed, buggy software Managed Payments is for you. If you don't keep track of sales or don't file taxes, Managed Payments could be for you.

One other caveat: Foreign buyers must log into US ebay, www.ebay.com, to pay. Except Germany which also is saddled with Managed Payments, other foreign www.ebay.com/b/260/" rel="nofollow">ebay sites, notably www.ebay.com/b/260/" rel="nofollow">ebay Canada, are unable to accept payments to Managed Payments sellers.


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I haven't done enough analysis yet. Even if I can figure out if the charge is added to each item of not, many buyers who pay before an invoice is sent seem unable to combine orders. A few buyers were still unable to combine orders for PayPal before the incarceration started. If I knew, I am not sure if I would be allowed to say.

"If I knew, I am not sure if I would be allowed to say."

???

Some of us call it Mangled Payments.

Yes, the 25¢ per item charge still exists and many sellers have already said if they insist on it, if ever forced into it, they will leave ebay. Many are card and stamp sellers.

All ebay will says is that it is being looked into.

I just sold a 60 item order which cost 60¢ in Paypal fixed fees as we can still only do 40 at a time.

Under Mangled Payments that would have been $15 in fixed payment fees.

Great benefit to sellers, not.

Only one that will benefit is ebay, and at this point in the Mangled Payments process, low priced sellers will get the shaft as usual.

Sellers incarcerated in the Managed Payments program may be subject to an ebay nondisclosure agreement.

The writing has been on the wall for awhile now, but one day or another ebay will not be a viable place to sell stamps or covers. I've been able to dodge ebay shipping labels and their Global Shipping Program, but I fear this Mangled Payment program might be it for me. I've been working on a 3,000+ item auction for awhile now which I hope to squeak into ebay before they try to rope me into this garbage program of theirs.

For now, I sell on ebay, HipStamp, and HipPostcard and have avoided being sucked into ebay's managed payments. Once that changes, I'm gone from ebay the same day, and all-in at the Hip sites. ebay's greed and need to stroke their investors will ultimately cost them many smaller sellers and one can only hope, revenue as well.

As a very casual seller, Hipstamp offers a better transaction experience compared to ebay. No payment hold, no trying to force using their shipping service, easier to find key info, etc. I listed a bunch of items on both platforms for comparison purposes, and far prefer it when I get a sale on Hipstamp.

Of course, as I'm so small scale, ebay wouldn't care, but I know my preference. And as a result, moved more of my buying too from ebay to Hipstamp.

A friend who is getting forced in shortly showed me the message they sent him and it said 30c per order, not the 25c per item we heard earlier.

The latest shaft is ebay is going to charge the same one time FVF on the price, shipping and sales tax collected.

Also, international sales will be charged an increased fee, as Paypal charges, but also a 3% conversion fee on the total if buyers pay with their own currency. That way buyers do not have to pay a conversion fee but sellers will have more costs.

There is a 26 page thread on ebay that has a lot more issues as well if anyone wants to read it.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Payme...05383#M69989

No need to do more than skim the thread. Most posters seem fixated on the trivia of individual fee changes. In some ways I agree with ebay that individual fees does not matter so much. Now for the part they left out. But, if total costs rise, it will be prudent to move stamp sales elsewhere. Many sellers seem to like the idea of subtracting fees from sales totals. I dislike the idea of comingling revenue and expenses. Untangling PayPal reports is bad enough. Now for the part ebay is not telling anyone. Reporting from ebay is a mess. Orders reports span the most recent 90 days, leaving sellers who wait until the end of the year in the lurch. PayPal goes back seven years. The Payments report, available to sellers incarcerated in the Managed Payments program goes back farther but is useless without the Orders report. Exported reports as comma delimited (csv) files are difficult to import into Excel and data loss is almost inevitable.

Now for the bad news. Most US sellers will be incarcerated into the program by July 20, 2020, or so ebay says, reminiscent of the seen in the War or the Worlds remake where people are scooped up to be transported to their doom. Again, probably not doom for most ebay sellers, especially ones who do not track revenue and expenses for tax reporting. Higher volume sellers may be impacted the most. I would look for the date to slip, but ebay may not care if some sellers are left behind.

Now, for those who do not want to participate. Try listing a few coins and some collectible currency or adult items. For now, Managed Payments cannot handle sales in some categories. The other alternative may be HipStamp which may not be required to collect out-of-state sales taxes, or at least not yet. I do not envision ebay having the capacity to register everyone's bank accounts and efficiently collect money on behalf of sellers on day one. Instead, the system may lock up for everyone.

Buyers who send checks, money orders or cash can still be processed outside of Managed Payments, but such sales cannot be solicited, except the ebay recommends sending PayPal invoices to international buyers who find themselves unable to pay. International Managed Payments buyers must logon to the US ebay site to pay or maybe on the German ebay site. Will this be fixed by July 20th? My guess it that it will not.

One thing that interests me for managed payments is what the rates will actually be for store subscribers. ebay claims the transition is a cost savings, but for stamp sellers with stores the commission rate is 6.15% now. Going to over 12% is not exactly a savings. I am hoping that the store discount is retained, given that I am paying a subscription and didn't consent to a rate change.

I do not view hipstamp as a particularly viable option at the moment. My buy-it-now items mirror in to hipstamp. I sell a couple of covers a month on hipstamp, and a couple hundred on ebay.

Dutch and Paper - are you saying instead of paying ebay 6.15% and PP 2.9% + 30c, we are going to be paying ebay 6.15% PLUS 6.15% + 30c? on top of our store fee?

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/f...fees?id=4822

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/s...fees?id=4809

According the document, store selling fees in the Stamps category will be

8.5% on total amount of the sale up to $2,500
2.35% on the portion of the sale over $2,500

Why is HipStamp important? Even if few buyers buy, having another venue available helps keep the market competitive. Astute buyers who check prices may find some stamps slightly less expensive if the seller offers a discount or taxes are not imposed for out-of-state sales. A reason for not offering a discount is that it is more expensive to manually enter order information into SixBit. However, ebay processing costs spiked because of the need to manually capture Managed Payments data from Seller Hub. It is possible to export order information from HipStamp and import into SixBit through an API (application program interface), but the relatively low volume of HipStamp sales has relegated this project to the someday maybe list.