WTB wrote:
However, my question is: What happens next? I know after a week or two they remove your access to your eBay account until you've paid your fees because that has happened to me before (for a fee of about £2 that I totally forgot about). But what do they do after that? Can I feasibly get away with not paying this for a long time? I have no plans to use eBay for a while. I will pay the fees eventually, but being skint and with Christmas on the way, I really can't afford it this month or probably next.
They will stop you listing other items on Ebay , and will (if you have paypal linked to an account) claw the money back from there and start chasing you for it - however you probably have quite a while.
I know someone they messed around with a while ago and he simply opened another ebay account and used that for ages until they caught up with him , linked the old account and asked for the missing money - he grumbled but paid up and that was a good year or so.
I really wish there was a good alternative to ebay to sell tat as when you list something they charge you for :
Initial listing fees (varies but if you start with a reasonable start or reserve can be quite a bit)
Final value fees which is basically 10% of the total it sold for
Then Paypal fee's of 3% of the total *plus* postage
So sell a £100 item with say £10 postage then they charge
£1.30 to list
£10 final value fees
£3.30 Paypal fees
so you walk away with £85.40 and the hassles of dealing with someone who will want it shipped to outer mongolia , will have been emailing you every 5 minutes since the auction ended to check if its sold , then will say its not compatible with what they wanted and return it for a full refund (or simply not get in touch - in which case Ebay will still charge you the £15 and you get it back 'later')