eBay will charge buyers a flat $14.95 shipping fee for sneakers sold through its Authenticity Guarantee program, and sellers will have 3 days to ship the items to the eBay authentication hub. It’s also increasing fees for certain sneaker sales.
These were some of the details eBay shared in an announcement board post on Monday after announcing the concept at last week’s eBay Open seller conference.
Update 9/29/2022: eBay provided more information on Thursday, revealing it’s partnering with FedEx.
eBay will update the seller listing flow to automatically specify the free domestic service for sneakers going through its Authenticity Guarantee. And, eBay said it’s also expanding Authenticity Guarantee to more sneakers.
eBay explained in Monday’s post:
“We’re removing the complexity tied to shipping for both sellers and buyers. Beginning in October, we’ll provide you with a label at no cost to you upon sale to ship your Authenticity Guarantee-eligible sneakers to our authentication center. The change will apply to new and revised listings and eBay shipping will be the default domestic shipping service. When you use eBay’s shipping label, we’ll also provide you with loss and damage protections if anything goes wrong during the first leg of shipping to the authenticator.
“In addition, our new handling time requires that you send Authenticity Guarantee-eligible sneakers to the authenticator in 3 business days or less, and buyers will receive their items within 3 days from the authenticator following authentication. We’re also taking the guesswork out of shipping costs to enhance transparency, build trust, and drive velocity. Buyers will pay a flat shipping fee of $14.95 in the US. We’ll share more details about these shipping updates soon.”
Surprisingly, eBay will change how it calculates its fees for sellers sold with the new $14.95 flat rate shipping fee: it will not subject sellers to final value (commission) fees or Ad fees on the shipping portion of the sale. It stated: “The total amount of the sale for Authenticated items includes the item price, sales tax, and other applicable fees.”
However, eBay will increase final value fees for sneakers sold between $100 – $150 beginning October 10, 2022.
“We’re aligning the final value fee for sneakers sold between $100 and $150 with those for sneakers sold for less than $100. The final value fee for sneakers sold between $100 and $150 will be 12.9% for sellers without a Basic Store subscription or above, and 12% for sellers with a Basic Store or above subscription. In addition, a $0.30 per-order fee will apply to sneakers sales between $100 and $150.
“As part of this change, items listed for under $150 may be subject to insertion fees if the seller has used up their monthly zero insertion fee allotment. Sneakers listed for $150 or more will continue to receive free insertion fees.”
Vice President of Seller Experience Xiaodi Zhang had announced news of eBay’s plans to roll out flat-rate shipping for items sold through its Authenticity Guarantee program during a keynote address on Thursday.
She described the benefits to sellers as no longer needing to figure out which carrier and services to select and knowing buyers would get a consistent shipping price, “so no more need to worry about that either.”
She said the flat-rate shipping concept would start in the US in the Sneakers category and would expand to additional categories and markets next year.
Here’s a rundown of all the news from last week’s eBay Open conference.
So nice to be a member of some elite catagory on Ebay. Enjoy
Well, I don’t have FedEx pickup only UPS Now, I am forced to figure out how to get my item to FedEx.. what happens when ebay’s authentication fails – how does the return shipping work? Honestly, I have no idea how it even works currently. It’s nice to know sellers are being forced a 14.95 fee that they now have to work into the price. It almost never costs that much to ship a pair of Nikes on your own with your own carrier agreements.