Following our VAT announcement earlier this week we understand there is some concern in the community about the changes that will come into effect on Monday 1st December. We have collated the most Frequently Asked Questions and will add to these as new questions arise.
Question: I have a large number of listings and am worried I will not be able to update them all in time for 1st December, can’t eBay do an automatic system update to VAT? We understand one of the biggest issues with the change is the amount of time it will take to manually update listings. Our product team has been working hard to try to find a fast automatic update to listings. However, due to the numerous ways VAT can be displayed on the site, our system cannot be updated fast enough for us to have an automatic fix in place in time for the introduction of the new rate.
Question: Will eBay refund the listing and feature fees for items that need to be updated to reflect the new VAT rate? Yes, we would like to confirm that we will be automatically refunding the listing costs incurred by UK sellers who are business or VAT registered, where the listing is:
a multiple-item Buy It Now listing, and
manually ended and then re-listed to update the VAT information, between Tuesday 25th Nov and Friday 5th Dec 2008
For these listings we will refund the Insertion and Feature fees.
Question: If I change my description will I lose my recent sales score? Editing your description does not impact the recent sales score for your listing. The recent sales score is carried over to re-listed items so the sooner you re-list, the less likely the recent sales score will be affected. Question: What if buyers give me negative feedback for showing the incorrect information? Where sellers have not been able to update VAT information in time, we will review cases of negative feedback on a case by case basis.
Question: Why are you only refunding fees for multiple-item Buy It Now listings? What about my Auction listings? We are refunding fees on multiple-item Buy It Now listings which are manually ended and relisted, as if they have sales on these cannot be edited without ending and relisting.
Single quantity Buy It Now listings can be edited without having to manually end and relist.
For Auctions, given the Government announced the VAT changes on Monday 24 November, and the vast majority of auctions are seven day listings, we expect that sellers will have edited their Auction listings by Monday 1st December. Question: Do I need to apply for a refund? No, we will apply the refund through our usual invoicing process.
Credits will be issued through the normal invoicing process. We will do these in bulk for all the affected members in one go and they should be with sellers in mid to end of January.
We’ll do our best to ensure that it gets to sellers’ accounts as early as possible.
We are aware that you have been patiently waiting for your credits in relation to our announcement and changes made to VAT by the UK Government and apologise for the lack of a recent update. We would like to reassure you that we are working to have these credits issued as soon as possible and apologise for the delay.
I've queried the delay here and have been assured that credits will be appearing in invoices very shortly. We appreciate your continued patience with this and apologise for the delay.
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