Buyer Commissions Require Immediate Review

Dear Delcampe Team and Members,

I’m writing today to highlight a critical issue that has been affecting sellers like myself over the past few months.

Since the implementation of the new commission system in April, our sales have dropped by an alarming 50%. I’ve attached screenshots at the end of this post to provide clear data to support these claims, and I urge both the Delcampe team and other sellers to review these figures.

To adapt to the new commission structure, we immediately reduced all our prices by 10%, hoping this would help cushion the blow for buyers. Unfortunately, this measure has had little impact on reversing the sales decline. Despite this effort, the numbers speak for themselves—our average sales volume continues to shrink.

It’s important to note that as professional sellers, we did not request this commission change, nor do I believe any of my colleagues in the community did. The new structure has proven to be detrimental to both buyers and sellers alike.

Here’s a recent example to illustrate the issue:

A client purchased 77 items for a total of €136.84. We covered the shipping costs ourselves, without charging the client. Under the new commission system, Delcampe took 10% of €136.84 plus €0.30 per item. This resulted in total commission fees of €36.79—an effective commission rate of 26.8% on the sale.
This level of commission is clearly disproportionate and unsustainable. Last year, we were paying just €0.14 per item, with a 20% discount, bringing the rate down to €0.112 per item. The increase between then and now amounts to nearly a 270% surge in the per-item fee!

I still have hope that Delcampe will recognize this issue and reconsider the current commission system. This structure is burdening buyers and placing undue strain on sellers, making it extremely difficult to remain competitive. It’s clear that something was miscalculated, and it’s having a devastating impact on our businesses.

If this situation does not improve, sellers may be left with no choice but to explore alternative platforms or build their own marketplaces. The success of Delcampe is directly tied to the success of its sellers, and I trust that the team will take this into consideration before more sellers are forced to leave.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter. I welcome any feedback or suggestions from other members of the community.

Kind regards,
Nick Martinez Smith

"It’s clear that something was miscalculated". Yes, it was clear to everyone from the beginning. The only people who still don't understand their platform at all is the Delcampe bosses. The platform is dying, and hence their short-term prrofit surge will be short-lived.

I agree, from a buyer’s perspective. Having returned here after some time, I was rather shocked by the Platform Fee in my recent invoice: I had no idea of the change in fees. Even having invested a fair amount of time looking for items of interest, I doubt I will buy them here. Most are low value (my pockets are not deep!) and the fee per item makes them expensive. A real shame

A real-life example of the low-priced items:

My sales for the period from September 12th to October 11th:
24 orders for a total of 50 postcards
Total value of goods: 40.35 euros

I myself received 28.00 euros after deducting the subscription and PayPal fees.

What Delcampe collected for this:
3.33 euros subscription fees
15.00 euros fixed purchase fees (50 x 0.30 euros)
4.04 euros variable purchase fees (10% of 40.35 euros)

That's a total of 22.37 euros. Delcampe therefore collects fees of 55.44 percent on my sales.

Now I don't see it as my job to use my work to make Delcampe do well. So of course I will be leaving Delcampe at the end of November at the latest.

With the Delcampe fees this site is no longer for professional sellers, just for people selling items at 1 euro.

I think is better you migrate to others platforms with more audience

Also for my clients sales have crashed. Probably for Delcampe the commissions generated by sales are enough to continue
the business but NOT for professional sellers

We will find out the truth with the next balance sheet filed

Dear customers,

Thank you for sharing your feedback with us. We understand that the current pricing structure poses challenges, especially for the sale of lower value items. We've spoken to several sellers and buyers, and we are aware of the difficulties this creates.

We are actively looking into ways to improve this situation. One of the main challenges we face is reconciling the storage costs for low-value items that remain on the website for a long time before being sold.

It's important to note that some comparisons being made are not entirely accurate. For instance, comparing a price inclusive of all taxes without discounts to a price excluding VAT with a 20% professional discount is like comparing apples to oranges. If we compare the previous rate for a private seller, inclusive of all taxes, the average cost per item was between 27 and 28 cents, with an average percentage of around 9% (incl. of all taxes). Therefore, we should compare 30 cents with 28 cents and 9% with 10% (incl. of all taxes). Previously, a 50-cent stamp cost 27 cents + 9% commission, which amounted to 31.5 cents (resulting in a 63% commission in this case), except for professionals with Club+ subscriptions. This has always been the case since 2012 with the introduction of the fixed fee tax that covers fixed costs regardless of the item's value. Additionally, VAT can go up to 27% in Europe, so 30 cents (all taxes included) equals 23.6 cents, which does not cover the hosting costs of this item, costs that have significantly increased.

To address these issues, our team, along with Sebastian Delcampe, will be holding another meeting in mid-November. This time, we will include a selection of English-speaking sellers and buyers to discuss the challenges you are facing and explore potential solutions.

We are also planning to hold promotions on platform fees. Additionally, we advise regrouping lower value items into lots and focusing on promoting higher value items as the best sales strategy.

If you would like to be a part of this meeting, please write to us at magazine@delcampe.com .

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Best regards,

Dimitri

Yet another sale lost....my price for the stamps bought was £57 plus discounted registered shipping......other costs pushed the final invoice to £80!!! The buyer ultimately refused to pay, and I don't blame him. I do not want to leave negative feedback as this is not his fault but I now can't remove this transaction from my interface without doing so.

Consequently I still have no faith in the new system.

Hello "richnoddystamps",

Thank you for sharing your point of view with us. We will of course take it into consideration.

However, please note that the platform fees are already included in the price displayed on the page of your item. This means that the buyer already knows the price (including platform fees) before confirming their purchase. I also note that your buyer had to pay import fees. This is a requirement of the European Union that we must comply with.
The European Union requires marketplaces, such as Delcampe, to collect import VAT on goods sold to European individuals by professionals located outside the EU, for any shipment up to 150 euros (about 125 GBP).

Best regards,
Cecilia

Whatever the case the buyer withdrew from the purchase saying the fees added were too high.

As far as storage costs are concerned: make each new listing last 6 months then auto-delete it so the seller has to reload. Very simple. Alternatively limit the lowest sale price to, say £1. It would be interesting to know how many of the 21million stamps for sale are priced below £1. Removing them with a low limit would 1. Reduce significantly the number available and 2. Force sellers to re-group stock.

One of your members states they have reduced their sale prices… members with their own website are experiencing no problems with their prices on their own websites so why should we reduce prices just to support low value items on Delcampe.

My subscription is now the free level, with only 1000 items for sale. My intention is to rotate stock on the 1st of each month using API. This has proved successful this month, with a good rate of sales… we shall see in NOvember if it continues to be successful. The downside is that this method deprives buyers of over 30,000 other items that are not available here but only on my own website. This limits free choice.

I will be interested to hear what the next meeting says. I do not hold out any hope for a beneficial change…. Seller should pay commission… not buyers.

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citation:
"One of the main challenges we face is reconciling the storage costs for low-value items that remain on the website for a long time before being sold".

Why on earth do you allow all these mass-items of minor interest to remain on the site "forever and a day" (until it's sold) This is contra-productive, because it only takes storage space.
It would be much better, if EVERY item is limited to - say - ONE YEAR on Delcampe (without further automatic renewal). Of course I know, sometimes miracles can happen (even to me) and an item, floating here for over 10 years, is finally sold. But it would be much more successful, if items had to be uploaded anew (not by FAKE NEWS option). This would remove all the "garbage" from shops, that maybe are no longer active or whatever?
But - to be honest - it is not in Delcampe's first priority to REMOVE all these odd items:
IT'S MONEY THAT MATTERS

99 percent of buyers are private buyers. Sales tax is not of interest to them. They have to pay the full amount. There is no reduction anywhere.

This is all very interesting, and I am glad to hear Delcampe say "to address these issues, our team, along with Sebastian Delcampe, will be holding another meeting in mid-November. This time, we will include a selection of English-speaking sellers and buyers to discuss the challenges you are facing and explore potential solutions".

I would also hope that the mix of participants will include those from the postcard buying and selling side, because the price and listing issues are not identical to those for the stamp side of the community. Broadly speaking, the lowest price point for postcards tends to be higher than for stamps, which helps. However, the £/€0.30 fee for every item purchased (as opposed to a group of items purchased in a single sale) discourages such larger sales as it does for stamps.

I was also startled to read (if I interpret the comment by Dmitri correctly) that the hosting costs per item are greater than 23.6 cents (although not clear for what period that cost is incurred, and I don't expect Delcampe to tell us !). But if that is the case, then the argument for setting a minimum item price higher than that (e.g. £1 as suggested above) must be very strong. I do accept of course that this would be more of a change for stamp sellers than those of us on the postcard side.

To answer one question above, it seems from a quick search that about 5.4 million out of 21.2 million stamp items currently on sale are priced at £1 or less (about 25%). The equivalent numbers for postcards are 2.4 million out of 49.3 million items (about 4.8%).

Anyway, look forward to hearing more in due course !

I should add I would also support placing a time limit on how long an item can be listed.

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Dear @Dimitri and fellow members,

Thank you for your message and for the engagement in this discussion.

Regarding Dimitri's explanation, I'd like to address a few points.

On the issue of storage costs, limiting image size would be an immediate and practical solution. Allowing 1MB+ photos is excessive. A basic Google Cloud plan charges €0.020 per GB per month, meaning around 10,485 images at 100kb each could be stored for just €0.20. While I understand there are added costs like traffic and server mirroring, I don’t believe storage is the real issue on the current 0.30 euros per item fee.

Regarding taxes, I find the comparison of tax-inclusive and non-tax-inclusive pricing confusing. As a Spanish business, we pay our taxes quarterly, and within the EU, professionals listed in the ROI don’t pay VAT to other member countries. Even if we did, those taxes are deducted during our quarterly filings.

To keep it simple, let me refer back to the example from my original post. For a sale of €136.84 (77 items), our fee to Delcampe last year was €22.30. The buyer paid the full amount of €136.84, and that was the end of the transaction—everything worked smoothly. We never had an issue with the commission rates. The real problem now is that buyers are unhappy, as has been clearly demonstrated in this thread.

In my opinion, the new commission structure is more about simplifying Delcampe's compliance with EU regulations. Delcampe now only needs to report sellers' total subscriptions and doesn’t have to track commission fees, refunds, or Delcampe Pay transactions. While this might ease internal processes, the new system has hurt the platform.

I fear this is a misstep. RubyLane tried a similar approach in the U.S., but quickly reverted due to its impact, although they never fully recovered. As professionals on multiple platforms, we’ve already begun shifting focus toward other ventures.

P.S.: I also have other concerns, such as Delcampe being the only marketplace we use that charges for API access, and yet it does not allow us to retrieve customer emails. Perhaps this could be a topic for further discussion in the coming weeks.

P.S2.: I forgot to mention two important points.

First, last year, we, as sellers, were very mindful of having to list items at a minimum sale price of €0.40 due to Delcampe's fees. Anything lower, and we would be operating at a loss. Now, that same item costs buyers a minimum of €0.74, making it nearly impossible to sell. As a result, we now have potentially hundreds of thousands of items on the platform that are unlikely to ever sell.

This miscalculation in the commission structure only worsens the situation, as it leads to an accumulation of unsellable items, wasting valuable storage space. The math is simple.

Secondly, while it's good to hear there's a planned meeting in mid-November, I was surprised by Dimitri's comment: "This time, we will include a selection of English-speaking sellers and buyers."

I’m surprised that no English, German, Spanish, or Dutch sellers were consulted before these changes. Whoever participated in those initial meetings clearly missed key points that have been raised repeatedly in the forums over the past weeks and months.

Yes, I was also surprised too that asking English-speaking salespeople was regarded as something special. After all, we in Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Spain, etc. pay exactly the same fees as French salespeople. So we can expect to be asked the same questions and not treated like something exotic that you just give an ear to for once.

Hello,

Regarding my comment about the English speaking community, I realize the way I phrased it may come off as French speaking customers are prioritized. This is not the case. I simply meant that this is the next meeting that is planned. We planned on inviting customer from other communities from the onset. It's just that organizing these meetings takes time and of course, we need to take the linguistic component into account

My main issue with the new fee structure is that it was a cash grab which delcampe did not feel able to do as sellers fees, so moved them to the buyers hoping for a more muted reaction.  The buyers have not moaned about the fee increase as much as the sellers, true, but have voted with their feet as the stories above show. As there are fewer buyers, sellers are listing elsewhere, often with better results than listing here previously.

The new fee structure massively penalises buyers who buy multiple items, and sellers who have shops that can support that (especially the pro (and hidden pro) sellers). The fees are proportionate when a single item is bought if compared with any other site, if you take all fees into account.  They are not when large numbers of items are bought.

How to resolve this? Move fees back to the sellers and charge fees where your costs are. A couple of ideas below.

Mangopay should have a transaction fee and % fee (with additional currency fees) as any other payment provider has. It's so obviously one of the causes of the item fee increase, and the majority of my sales don't even use mangopay, so buyers are paying extra for nothing. Take these fees out of the item fees and they become more reasonable, and encourage multiple purchases.

Secondly, if you want to reduce items, increase your shop fees (aka insertion fees) and reduce fixed item sales fees accordingly. I doubt the actual sale of an item costs you that much (the biggest issue is likely dispute resolution), fixed items sales fees are therefore subsidising the rest of the site, including storage. Hipper venues charge double what you are charging for shop fees at each tier (albeit without fixed item costs at the checkout) and seem to be doing well. I'd fold the 'added value' features of club+ or whatever it is called now into this at no additional cost as a lot of stores are cancelling that feature.

Finally I'd remove the API fee (its a buggy product which needs better features as can be seen on the API forum) and the ultimate shop tier (you can have at most 8 sellers at that level so is probably costing you more in maintenance than you are getting in to implement it). To reduce items listed further I'd introduce a 'starter' store at 100+ items for around GBP1 a month for small sellers to avoid stagnation in their offerings, it would also fund a further decrease in the fixed item sales fee. 

At the end of the day delcampe needs to charge fair fees in the right places to continue to trade. Unless there are further changes soon I have grave doubts it will be here in a few years.

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Thank you for all for the feedback and constructive criticism so far Please don't hesitate to share your ideas.

You obviously manage to keep the website multilingual. So where is the translation problem? You can create subpages that are only accessible to logged-in sellers, for example. It is easy to add another filter if you only want to survey large sellers or only sellers in a category. For a serious survey, no one needs a YouTube video with 88 live viewers in which pre-filtered questions are dealt with superficially and which gives the impression that the main aim is for a Mr Delcampe to put himself and the Delcampe logo in the foreground.

If the cost of storing "stale" items is the reason for the increased fees...remove most of the non philatelic listings. These
non stamp listings are hardly viewed or sold. Then rethink your new pricing structure as it is,as it will always look like a money grab by Delcampe.
The best way to solve the overflow of cheap items is to put a restriction on the minimum price of items listed. Nothing under $2 can be listed and remove current listings under $2.