As eBay Rolls Out Cost Of Goods Sold, Sellers Say Default COGS Filled In Without Their Consent
UPDATE 9-26-25
eBay is once again facing an embarassing premature launch failure as COGS feature is rolled back due to a "system error" causing erroneous data to be displayed to sellers.
Liz Morton
As eBay rolls out new Cost of Goods Sold feature to more sellers, questions and concerns remain about how company will use this new data point for fees, offers and more.
Support for COGS has been one of the most frequently requested features from many sellers over the years and eBay received mostly positive reactions when they announced it at eBay Open 2025 last month.
Liz Morton
Track Your Costs
Sellers who buy inventory with resale in mind know that tracking item-level costs is crucial for profitability, which is why eBay is introducing an optional “Your cost” field in the listing flow to input, update, and manage their costs with ease. Once an item has resulted in a sale, sellers can also input and update their cost from the earnings page.
This results in smarter pricing decisions without needing a separate spreadsheet or tool. Sellers can update the cost data at any time and use it to plan promotions, adjust ad rates, and more confidently price their inventory. It will also feed into their earnings page, which is located under the Seller Hub Payments tab.
And this actually isn't the first time eBay has attempted to launch Cost of Goods Sold - but the previous attempt in August 2024 was quickly withdrawn after an embarrassing premature launch failure.
Liz Morton
eBay appears to be doing a phased rollout of the feature, so it's not yet available to all sellers, but those who do have access can find it under the See Pricing Options menu in the listing form.
Once toggled on, eBay provides an additional optional field to enter the COGS, emphasising that this information is never visible to buyers.
More information about the feature was revealed in the Mastering eBay: Optimize Your Business Operations session at Open, including that this feature will initially only work for single item listings (though they can be multi-quantity) and is not available for listings with multiple variations. It also only supports a weighted average cost accounting model and does not allow for other methods like First In, First Out (FIFO).
And if the seller has entered COGS, it will be shown and used in Earnings calculations in reports and records under the Payments tab.
The presentation also showed COGS would be used to display "earnings after acquisition costs" on order detail pages.
But some have questioned the wisdom of allowing eBay to know too much about your profit margins, fearing it could lead to higher fees or other changes that would benefit eBay's bottom line at the expense of sellers.
But a seller in the eBay community may have stumbled upon another potential pitfall with COGS as it appears eBay may be assuming or entering that information themselves if the seller doesn't enter it themselves.
Buyer offer shows Your cost now ? What does this mean ?
Buyer offer shows Your cost now ? What does this mean ?
The seller confirmed later on in the thread (including more screenshots) that not only had they not entered in COGS for this listing and the had no idea where eBay would have gotten a cost of $3.00.
Some suggested that might be eBay showing what fees would be charged if the offer was accepted at that amount but the seller said that doesn't make sense - they do not have anything that add additional fees (like listing fee, bold face up-charge, sub-title if any, promo fees, 2nd category etc.) except having Promoted Listings set at 9% which wouldn't equal $3.00 and the Final Value Fee wouldn't be $3.00 on that amount in this category either.
Another seller then chimed in confirming they are also seeing this same thing with the same $3.00 - and they also did not enter $3.00 anywhere and have no idea where eBay is pulling it from.
In this instance the random $3.00 "acquisition cost" is being displayed as eBay explained COGS would show on order detail pages.
I believe you when you say that you did NOT enter $3.00 on the listing form, because at this time there is NOT a place to enter this information.
Listen, I am severely OCD (works out great for me) especially when entering anything on the listing form. I am paranoid about ebay checking a box or opting me into something when listing, so I look everything over very closely.
As you can see from my screenshot from the order details page of an item I listed and sold last Thursday, it shows the same $3.00 at the bottom under Order Earnings After Acquisition Costs. This doesn't appear on anything I sold before or after this particular sale, just this one.
I chalked it up to Thursday night maintenance strangeness. Oh, I also would like to mention that I checked this particular sale's details on the Payments page, and this $3.00 is NOT deducted from my earning or in the fees section, so it is not because of add ons or anything else, it is Ebay simply inserting a random number (seems to be $3.00) as your acquisition cost...strange but true and soooo ebay.
And apparently it's happening in the UK as well, where it's causing even more confusion because it's displayed in US dollars instead of pounds.
Random US fee ? For selling
by u/Mindless-Economist81 in ebayuk
Hi guys just started selling on EBay , sold 1 item earlier with no problems , although when I got an offer for a second item it’s saying I’ll be paying a $3 charge ? Does anyone know why as the buyer is in the UK as am I.
Even more alarming, one seller who says an "acquisition cost" of $39.99 was shown in the Order Details for an item they sold said when they contacted eBay support, they were told that information was picked up because they did "sell on like this" from another seller's listings.
Maybe I'm just a little foggy this morning and not thinking straight, I'm a newer seller and sold something overnight. When looking at the financial stuff I'm a little confused on the acquisition cost being in the negative. A screen shot is provided. Can someone explain this...
...Issue resolved, a live agent through eBay was super helpful. A field was filled out automatically when posted. Since I posted the item from a similar item that was being sold. The field is what the item cost to the seller but it's not viewable to the buyers.
If true, that is absolutely alarming as the only thing worse than eBay knowing your cost of goods would be for your competitors to be able to see it by using sell similar as a workaround.
But to be clear, I have attempted to do a Sell One Like This from listings of sellers who report being affected by this and did not have any COGS automatically copied over, so this may just be yet another example of eBay support giving out bad information.
eBay community staff has not responded to being tagged in responses to those posts to acknowledge the issue, nor has eBay responded to request for comment as of time of publishing.
Stay tuned for updates and let us know in the comments below if you are seeing eBay fill in a default Cost of Goods Sold for your listings!
