Question about eBay pick-up fee
 

Apologies if this issue has already been addressed in a zillion other threads -- I tried to do a search for it but I'm not an expert searcher.

I recently won an eBay auction for a bike [C&V content: it was a Raleigh 20] which was advertised as local pick-up only. This was OK with me, although it's in another state and I won't be able to pick it up until next month. Seller said he is OK with that.

Here is where it gets odd, or at least it seems odd to me: I went to Paypal to pay for it and found that a $10 "pick-up fee" had been tacked onto the sale price. This was not mentioned in the seller's auction terms, and when I queried him about it he said that he had no idea where it came from either, and offered to refund the $10 when I pick up the bike. Seller has a 100% rating so I am willing to believe that this hidden charge was not his doing.

I have only done a few eBay transactions in the past, and none of them were local pick-up. Is this some policy that eBay hides somewhere in the fine print?

Thanks for bringing this up. I just sold a trail a bike on ebay, local pick up only. The buyer tried to pay on Paypal (we later did cash) but he said something about a $10 fee he thought was shipping. I had no idea what he was talking about, now I do. Something to watch out for, both as buyer and seller. As seller I don't want the buyer to think I'm trying to gouge them for some extra money.

Jeff

It's not a mistake. It's $10 default "handling fee" that the seller apparently unknowingly chose to apply to items he sells that have local pickup.
Some sellers charge handling fees for local pickup. In a way I don't blame them as I value my time, which gets used up if someone wants to come to my house to get something.

But it's still alot less time than packaging a bike and running it over to FedEx or the post office.

what you should do to beat the system is when you pick up the item and it all checks out, tell the seller to send you a cancel request because the item was lost or damaged. That way you don't have to pay that fee and the seller gets his auction fees back.

i've done this on a few occasions cause a seller pitched this idea to me for local pick ups. Just don't abuse it too much or they'll catch on.

To add to Miamijim's thought, you don't have to worry about it getting lost or damaged in transit or insuring it.
The buyer has an eyeballs on inspection and can't later badmouth you that something was wrong.
You the seller want to get rid of the item so you make an appointment just like you would do with a doctor, dentist, PTA and etc
You also have payment in your hand, a clean transaction.
Life is full of "hurry up and waits" The buyers time to find and travel to your place is valuable too.

Thanks to all for the clarifications.

...You're not serious, are you? That's fraud.

right, and they'd pay more for that.

It's ok to value your time, or your jokes, or your good looks, but if you decide you will charge a fee for it you need to tell people first and give them the option to decline the offer. Otherwise I could just go stand on the sidewalk and hand out invoices for "my time".

Who is hiding it? What do you think a handling fee is?

Gimmie a break. PayPal and eBay make more than enough money off the backs of you and I.
I have no remorse nor sympathy for finding any type of work around I can for transactions involving either organization.

Thanks for the tip, MapleLeafs. However, I usually just pay cash when I meet the seller in person.

hahaha, i hope there's a lot of sarcasm in that....

I sell enough stuff on ebay, they can afford to give me a few freebies, especially with their massive fees. Also it's so BS that they take a cut off the shipping.

If you think that's fraud then you'll have to call our every single person on the C&V marketplace that sends payments as a gift, technically that's not a gift, it's a payment for an item so they should dock you more than 1%.

The way i look at it is you can be a sucker by abiding to every single rule or just know how to work the system. As long as you don't kill or harm a person or animal you're good to go.

Good point! And it's not like anyone from eBay ever reads these threads!

The fee should have appeared somewhere in the auction. Since the seller was unaware of the fee he might have used the "sell one like this" link on another auction to start his own. I've done that before and many of the earlier auctions options are transferred. In particular, I've found international shipping enabled on items I normally wouldn't ship overseas.

That is all any reasonable buyer would ask -- a little truth in advertising.

Once again, this just proves that no one should EVER buy or sell anything on Ebay.