What: TopHatter is an auction site to sell clothing, purses, shoes, housewares, beauty products, electronics, furniture, jewelry, crafts and tools
Expected pay: NA
Husl$core: $
Commissions & fees: vary
Where: Nationwide
Requirements: Be over the age of 18
Review:
It tells you something when a website is so reluctant to provide its commissions and fees that it doesn’t even allow you to see them until AFTER you upload products for sale.
What TopHatter does tell you is that you’ll be charged fees — many fees. There’s a success fee, which is charged when an item is won and paid for; a commission on the final sale price, plus the shipping costs for each item; a processing fee on each order. When you want to cash out you, you pay another fee.
A blog post estimated that the fees average 25% to 35% of the sale price, which is exorbitant. Worse, because this is an auction site, you don’t have any assurance that your products will sell for enough to make up for the high cost.
If you’re not yet convinced to pass this opportunity by, check out this piece by AuctionSiteNews, which notes there are entire Facebook groups dedicated to complaining about the site. Most of the positive reviews have disclaimers noting that they’ve been paid to tout TopHatter.
There are dozens of better places to sell — from eBay to Etsy — we suggest you find one (or more) that suit what you are selling and avoid this site.
What their users say: From Creative Hive:
“I started my minimum bid at $10, close to my wholesale price. And eventually it sold for $24. Tophatter takes a 10% commission off your winning bid, so eventually I received a Paypal notification for $24.60 ($24 winning bid + $3 shipping – $2.40 commission). I made just shy of $19 for the necklace. That’s a 32% discount off my retail price, or a $9 cost all together….or $9, I’d have to say this marketing promo was so-so. Tophatter’s 10% cut is steep, but considering that they provide you an instant sale, that’s not too much to ask. I had some short time for chatting with people in real time, and even had some people convert into website visitors. Plus I gain 2 weeks for being listed in their archives for people to see. I’d like to view this as not just a one time sale, but also as another way to market your shop. Something like this does have long-term effects on your overall business.”
From Pissed Consumer
I have been a member of Tophatter for some years now. I recently became a partner. It means I could sell higher volumes. Let me give you a piece of advice… it is not worth it. Following you will see an example of the fees they charge and the $ you make. I sold a set of 6 Kleancolor nail polish. My cost is $3. The item sold for a total of $15 ($10 for the item plus $5 for shipping) Fees: Listing fee $1; Label cost: $3.45; Commission fee (30%): $4.50; Processing fee:$0.74 Total fees taken: $9.69 My item cost: $3.00 Total: $11.69 My profit: $3.31 That does not include the $ I spend on gas when I go drop off at the post office or buy my product. Nor the time I send printing, wrapping the package.The envelope I use or the bubble wrapping. I wish buyers would know all this when they purchase so they have an idea of what the sellers are making. Basically, in order to make money sellers are being forced to sell cheap inexpensive products at a super inflated rate. I do understand that the system they use is expensive and their platform costly, however, pages like Amazon and eBay take much less percentage for a better site.
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I have been selling on Tophatter for over a year and let me tell you I am surprised they have any sellers left. I honestly can’t figure out how anyone is making any money on this site. At first it was awesome. All together the fees were only about 10% but after a few radical changes, then changes back as they got too many seller complaints, they have just started a new fee policy which easily rivals the original radical changes they made. Now to have any product listed in an auction you have to pay a scheduling fee of around $1.50. I say around because they give you a suggested amount that should be paid if you want them to even consider entering your item into an auction. Then if your item doesn’t sell, which happens a lot even if you have a great product listed as either there are too many products on each page to scroll through or there aren’t enough buyers on the pages, you still have to pay that $1.50. Now if your item does sell you have to pay the $1.50 plus 12.9% of the winning bid with shipping included and an extra $0.30 on top of all that. Because most items sell for $10 or under I will work the math for you and this might also shed some light on why so many sellers are selling very VERY cheap items. If I sell an item that costed me $5 for $5 plus $5 for shipping the sale equals $10 which gives me a profit of $5. Then you take out all the fees…so 12.9% of $10 is $1.29 + $150 + 0.30 which equals $3.09. So my actual profit after all of this? $1.91. Now you also have to consider the cost of packaging supplies the drive to the post office etc. And again this is only if you sale your item. In the first 4 days of them implementing their new system I lost just under $200. Yes lost. As in I owe them this amount of money when I made $0. I was making a couple thousand a month before this new fee policy came to be. The reason? because they don’t tell you when they will list your item or how many times they will list it even if it doesn’t sell say the first 3 times. You can put that item on hold, if you even catch this happening in time as most sellers sell hundreds of items, but the hold doesn’t take affect until their system updates which can take hours. All the while you are losing a lot of money. They implied that you can set a budget for how much you want to spend for each category i.e. jewelry, toys, accessories etc. but again if the system picks one item and auctions if off over and over again it will eat your entire budget and you wont make a single sale. Before this drastic change the system would put up your items in auction with no fee if it didn’t sell and if it didn’t sell say twice your item would not be put up for auction again. It would also tell you what to improve on that listing if you wanted to try and have it auctioned again. Beyond that there is also another lovely new fee policy which states if an item is returned or delivered broken you not only have to refund the buyer but you also still have to pay all the fees. That means in the above example you would lose $8.09 which is the cost of the product plus all the fees. Now if the package was really delivered broken I could understand this, however buyers have learned that they only need to say an item was delivered broken and without showing any proof they will automatically get refunded with no questions asked. This happens A LOT. So I hope this sheds some light on Tophatters seller fees and why sellers are selling $1 items for as much as they can get. Also it should be noted that if you do buy an item and it is super cheap and you list that as the reason for the return, which again happens a lot to the buyers due to the fees sellers have to pay, you can’t get a refund unless you ship it back to wherever it came from – China in most cases – with a tracking number. That postage that you have to pay to ship with a tracking number out of pocket is guaranteed to be way more that you paid for the cheap item so you won’t return it. Before these changes to the fees most sellers were legitimate, like me, and sold some really great items. Now, well it is about how can you trick someone into buying your very cheap item for a lot of money…or just trying to not owe Topphatter any money…which isn’t likely…in either case.
Same thing is happening to me. How do I get out of all these fees. I basically lost $88.00 after making $10.
Just let me say, WOW! I’m sorry that happened to you guys. If it’s any consolation I have decided not to move forward with selling on Top Hatters thanks to your experiences. I really appreciate your shedding some light on this.
Agree 100% with the above comments . Sold 5 items and they ended up with almost 80% of the money. Interesred sellers beware.
I end up $403 in fees to tophatter for $5 item but I didnt pay them anything so they blocked my account.Thanks God they did that.
Always getting a bid too low reason for my items not listing and can’t get a explanation as to why. Their fees are crazy expensive too. Not sure how anyone is making any profit on this site.
Every comment above is correct. I have sold 11 things on TopHatter. I owe them about $40 bucks after everything and did not make one dollar. They charge to list your item, those charges have been raised to $2-$5 dollars each time they list it (You pay this whether or not your item sells.) If your item sells you pay $0.30 +2.9% processing fee, plus 10% commission on the total sale, including shipping.
Thanks so much for all your BEWARE post. If it wasn’t for all the fees Tophatter might have more sellers. Again thank you for your post 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
I began selling on Tophatter on 10//01/2019. After running a few Auction campaigns, I immediately learned that approach would not be profitable. So I tried the “Buy Now” campaign strategy. Things appeared to be going well. Around mid-November, I began to receive INR (Item not received) disputes. Since, I had chosen the free shipping methods offered by my vendors, I did not have delivery tracking to address the complaints with.
Lesson learned, I changed my shipping method to China EMS, also referred to as ePacket. Things were looking better. Items were updating as delivered and the payout screen began indicating upcoming payout amounts of about $1,000. Not bad at all for a beginner.
Then, on December 19, 2019, the Tophatter system began to block me from entering China EMS tracking information in their fulfillment screen. The error message displayed said “Tracking number has already been used to fulfill another order.” I double checked this with my vendor and several other online tracking websites. All sources verified the tracking numbers as new and valid China EMS information. So, I then reached out to Tophatter’s seller support email for assistance. The response I received was that the numbers were for China Post which is not supported by Tophtter. And, that the orders must be refunded immediately. Here’s the thing, China EMS is a subsidiary of China Post. By the way… their response did not address why their error message said that the tracking numbers had already been used to fulfill other orders. They completely ignored the original concern.
Choosing not to go down the error message rabbit hole with them, I sent them screen shots of the tracking information I found online showing China EMS as the carrier which they say is supported by their system. Still, they insist that the numbers were for China Post and not China EMS. None of this makes sense at all. For the moment, I have paused all campaigns until this issue is resolved. Not sure how I’m going to move forward with them from here. Has anyone else experienced this same issue with Tophatter? If so, were you able to resolve the issue?
Did you find a solution to your problem? I am experiencing the same thing. Please help.
I bought several items from Tophatter 6 months ago. As of yet I haven’t received any of my items. They say after 60 days they give you a refund. They gave me the run-around but no refund. I have nothing nice to say about Tophatter. Stay away. Don’t buy anything off of Tophatter
They don’t care about customer satisfaction! That buyer protection crap doesn’t apply if you never received the item. They don’t care! Your out on the cost as well! No poduct and no refund. Your screwed! Amazon and Wish always care! One way or another, they make it right and don’t leave their customers with nothing! Absolutely the worst company ever!
TopHatter watch this site. people you will bid and win then they will pull it from you ( no sale) .not cool waiting to see if I get the stuff I even won. (Bid on and won ) binoculars, ear buds , both got taken back by the seller, not cool. Be careful gets addictive. Then you figure out they might be shooting the prices up. But they can’t get them all , that’s why they that’s why they didn’t sell me those things, too much of a loss
I started selling aug 18th 2021, my buyers received there products very quickly within 5 business days, I had a rating of 4.6 sold 160 items 2 returns 1 wrong address and 2 untraceable. I went on to print out my orders. I no longer can sell. I’m am still very confused. I decided to get a contract with USPS on my own (I wanted to see if it was cheaper it was by 35% and if labels are refundable if not delivered in 7 business days.) I just started this 2 days ago. I also have 2800 in fees. I have not made a dime. Not sure what to do