Closing fees on eBay are called Final Value Fees because they’re based on the item’s final sales price, i.e., the final value it achieved in the auction.
Unlike insertion fees, final value fees are calculated on a stepped scale, with each “bracket” of the final value calculated at its own rate; the results of these stepped calculations are then added together for the total final value fee. It is a little like calculating income tax brackets.
Other differences between insertion fees and final value fees: for auction-style sales, the latter are not based on the category of the sold item, and if the item doesn’t sell at all, you don’t pay a final value fee. At the time of this writing, the final value fee rates for auction-style sales are:
Closing Price: Item not sold Final Value Fee: NO FEE
Closing Price:$0.01 – $25.00 Final Value Fee: 8.75% of the closing price
Closing Price:$25.01 – $1,000.00 Final Value Fee8.75% of the first $25.00 ($2.19), plus 3.50% of the Closing remaining ($25.01 – $1,000.00)
Closing Price:Equal to or greater than $1,000.01 Final Value Fee: 8.75% of the first $25.00 ($2.19), plus 3.50% of the closing price from $25.01 to $1,000.00 ($34.12), plus 1.50% of the remaining closing price ($1,000.01 – final price)
So if your old cell phone sold for $47.53, the final value fee is $2.19 (8.75% times the first $25.00 of the closing price) plus $0.79 (3.50% times $22.53, the amount of the sales price greater than $25.00), or $2.98. Should you get a final bid of $1,526.00 for that Stephen King book, your final value fee would be $2.19 plus $34.12 (3.50% times the difference between $25.01 and $1,000.00) plus $7.89 (1.50% times the difference between the closing price and the values of the other brackets), for a total of $44.20…give or take a penny or two for rounding.
The final value fee calculations for Fixed Price sales are broken down by the broad category of item sold, such as Computers & Networking or Clothing, Shoes & Accessories, then stepped in a similar manner as above; the first two tiers go from $1.00 to $50.00, and from $50.01 to $1,000.00. Since there are so many different breakdowns and calculation rates, I won’t list them here, but you can read about them in the eBay Help Topics section eBay.com Listing Fees (http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html).
A FINAL WORD TO THE WISE, keep track of the fees you paid to eBay so you can write them off at the end of the year as an expense of your eBay business.
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