Ebay - sellers charged me for `extras`

Lisey_Loo

Just after some quick advice please. I know all about not buying if you don`t agree with the p&p costs, but sometimes these aren`t obvious until the item actually arrives with the buyer.

Bought from 2 separate sellers this week. The first seller has charged me £1.99 for p&p. Item (mascara) arrived in an ordinary envelope, not a jiffy bag, with a stamp on. I`ve queried her p&p price and got this reply:
Unfortunately my post/packing fee breaks down as follows; 25p eBay charge to list the mascara, 60p final value fee charged by eBay when it sold, 54p Paypal fee to receive your payment into my account and 52p for a 'large letter' first class stamp. Before envelopes, giftwrap and bubble wrap the above fees come to £1.91, which is why my postage has to be £1.99. I am able to offer a discount on multiple purchases, but have no way of making a profit if I lower my P+P on single items.

Should she be charging these costs in her p&p costs or add them into the price of her BIN item? Her profit should come from the BIN item price surely? I didn`t have any giftwrap or bubblewrap on my mascara.

Seller 2 charged me £6.40. I bought 6 CD`s from him over 2 auctions. I emailed to ask if I could pay for them all together, and asked for a postage discount, he replied yes to both questions, discount would be applied. CD`s arrived in 3 jiffy bags, postage a total of £2.34. I know jiffy bags cost money, as I account for that myself.
His reply was:
I have sold nearly 400 items on e-bay with the majority being CD's and have had 100% feedback with every buyer being satisfied with the CD and I assume the p+p. I usually charge £1 p+p for every extra CD in multiple buys within 5 days of auctions and have never have had a complaint before. I have charged you the least p+p for extra CD's (and also 6 days between auctions) since I have started selling on e-bay. The Cd's I am selling are from my personal collection, I am not a business, which I have paid full price for usually paying between £8 and £12 when they were released, these Cd's have been well looked after as you can tell by the one's you have received and my 100% feedback. I have worked out with postage, packaging and petrol to my nearest post office a couple of miles away, (as I always get proof of postage), I probably made about £1 from the p+.p. With p+p your Cd's worked out to just over £3 each which is considerably less than I paid for them.

Again, should the profit come from p&p charges? I`ve sold lots of things, and have never been like this with buyers. Have I been `too nice` all these years? Any advice welcome, as I`ve looked on the Ebay discussion boards and can`t find much about my problem. I`m not happy with either of them, so I`m not in the mood to lie and give a positive.

Cute_'n'_Quirky

p&p means postage and packing so they are correct in adding the packing charges to the cost.

At the end of the day you were happy with the BIN charge otherwise you wouldn't have bought the item.

As a buyer we have nothing to do with how the Seller chooses to calculate their profit.

StaffsSW

eBay is no longer the first choice of venue for picking up stuff for pennies. More sellers, private and business, are becoming very cost savvy and therefore know that they will be charged for insertion fees, final value fees, paypal fees etc - and as these have just increased, effective from today, expect mroe prices to rise to cover these costs.

At the end of the day, if you don't like the price, don't buy the goods. If you want CD's for pennies or less, rather than pounds, get to car boot sales dead early, or put wanted posts on Freecycle.

If more and more people take issue with P&P charges, coupled with the increased fees and feedback changes, and seller non-performance, and star ratings, there will be less of the smaller hobby sellers left. When these sellers leave, it will just be the big businesses and far eastern sellers left on eBay.

Hintza

I have just bought 10 items from a seller P+P charge £42.50. Total weight 2.8kg all arrived (bar 1 which is missing...grr) via DHL.

A month ago they would have charged me £15 for the same amount still excessive but needless to say I am not a happy budgie.

As for OP in neither case have you said how much you paid for the item. I would be loading my P+P if there was chance that the item sold for pennies. You can't expect folk to do it for nothing and I think your first seller has explained their costs very well (and they haven't charged for their time to wrap the package)

poppy_f1

if i feel before bidding that the postage charges seem excessive i rarely bid, unless of course i REALLY want the item in which case as long as it works out cheap enough for me i will reconsider and still bid

dazza.mk

The price you are happy to pay for an item is the Purchase Price + P&P.

eBay have got buyers trained very well to consider that 'loaded' P&P is wrong, when the only person who loses out is eBay themselves (due to lower Final Value Fees)

appleblossom

The OP's seller can be reported to ebay - you are not allowed to cover the cost of paypal charges via the buyer - this was stopped some years ago - I don't think you can out the selling fees onto the seller either. It doesn't matter if the OP got a bargain or not with the combined selling/postage costs, the seller has blatantly admitted that she is using the postage charge to recover her costs which is against ebay policies.

Whilst I appreciate the 'you knew the cost before you bid' line that always comes up as an answer in a post question, I really think that the extortionate postal charges need to be addressed - I was charged £35 for something that £12.50 to post - I accepted £35 as I thought the item was a lot heavier then it was and that seemed about right being sent with Royal Mail and adding packing charges on, however, since receiving it, I am ob. not happy at the seller making at least £15 (and tbh there was not £7.50 worth of packing there by any stretch) by hiking up the post - if he wanted the extra £15 he should have started his price out at £15 higher not rip ppl off. I have asked him for a partial refund for the excessive postage and if he does not reply, having read the ebay help pages, I am well within my rights to report him to ebay which I shall do and he will receive feedback and dsr to reflect it.

Perhaps it is about time ebay started selling at a single price only with both asking and post price combined as a starting price as I for one and fed up with sellers taking the p.

nickyt

When I do use Ebay (and thats not often now) I always look at the P&P that others charge for the same thing. If someone charges more P&P and less for the item, I would buy from the other one. I do not like it when they try to make their items look better by starting at a lower price then bumping up the P&P charges. I start to wonder if anything was to go wrong how would that seller deal with it.

dazza.mk

#7

By advocating that the seller in your example should have added £15 to the purchase price and reduced the Postage by £15 you do realise you would then have to pay an ADDITIONAL £1.50 in eBay fees (8.75% on the £15 + 25p insertion fee).

So your advocating you'd rather pay an additional £1.50 to see the correct split between price and postage?


If someone lists something for
£10 + £2 P&P

or £2 + £10 P&P

and the item arrives safely I don't really care how much the stamp cost!

dazza.mk

Actually I'll probably get a bargain, due to all the people who will bid up the £2 P&P item, but refuse to bid on the £10 P&P item due to the high P&P charges :-)

appleblossom

#8

I would not have to pay anything extra in being the buyer.

Why not just make everythin 0.01p BIN and then charge the rest as the postage fees?

Or why not just use the 2 charges as they should be - Selling price and Post/Packing price - are they not there seperately for a reason?