Ebay postage overcharge

Furch

I have recently purchased an item on eBay and when it arrived I noticed the postage was just slightly over £2, the seller had charged £9.99.

I don't mind paying slightly over the postage costs on items from eBay occasionally but this really is quite a big mark up. The item even arrived in a reused jiffy bag which is fine, but it means that there weren't even any packaging costs to add to the postage.

So far in my time on eBay I've never given any negative feedback and I'd prefer not to if possible. I realise its not a huge amount of money and had it just been a pound or two I'd probably let it go, I just feel a bit miffed that the seller is creaming off all this extra cash.

Has anyone else here been in a similar situation, if so what route did you take and what happened?

elf06

Hi this happened to me a few months ago and when I contacted ebay (after trying the seller) they pretty much said that I had agreed to the postage costs so there wasnt much I could do. However I contacted the seller and said that I had been in touch with ebay and that they had asked me to get back in touch with the seller and if I had no luck then they would persue it further (not strictly true but it was always worth a shot) and when the seller got back to me they offered a partial refund.
I think I still paid someting like £1.50 over the actual postage costs but I got a refund of about £5 or £6 quid so I was happy with that

BigMan

This practice is used by sellers all the time, lets say ebay take 10% of your money in fees.

£1 item £99 postage - Seller pays 10p
£99 item £1 postage - Seller pays £9.90

Although i have exagerated these figures, it shows why people do this.

Hence the reason ebay brought in the 5 star system, if a power seller drops below a preset amount of feedback in p&p, they are penalised.

soolin

Talk to the seller first, if that fails to get ans sympathy reflect your experience in the feedback and stars that you leave.

Sellers are not only allowed to charge actual postage costs though, packing costs etc can be added as well but most sellers keep those reasonable especially in light of the new star system.

BTW there is a whole board dedicated to ebay matters if you want more info, just follow my signature.

Enfieldian

This should have been posted on the Ebay board as you will find many similar threads there.

To be honest, the P&P is always clearly displayed in the listing so you can take this into consideration when bidding.

In a case where an item has P&P of £8 and the maximum I am willing to spend is £40 all in then I will make a best offer on the item of £32 and so on.....

Dejayy

If a sellers is clearly overcharging on the postage you can report it to Ebay and they will either ask the seller to lower the postage charge, or remove the listing.

bb999

Why get wound up about postage costs.

If an item cost the seller £1.50 and was worth £10 to you this would not be a problem, so why is postage any different.

As long as the overall deal (item + postage) is acceptable to you then why worry?

dmg24

Dejayy wrote: »

If a sellers is clearly overcharging on the postage you can report it to Ebay and they will either ask the seller to lower the postage charge, or remove the listing.

This should happen in theory. In practice it rarely does.

bb999 wrote: »

Why get wound up about postage costs.

If an item cost the seller £1.50 and was worth £10 to you this would not be a problem, so why is postage any different.

As long as the overall deal (item + postage) is acceptable to you then why worry?

It is against the spirit of ebay (if there is any spirit/ goodwill left in ebay!), for the reasons noted above.

soolin

The fact that postage is such an emotive issue is why ebay are bringing in the capped or 'free' postage in many categories that were historically subject to these type of fee avoidance.

Sellers that still massively overinflate p and p will just give ebay the justification they need to roll out 'free' p and p across the board. I rather suspect that is on the cards sooner or later anyway.

willo65

I also list items on ebay as inclusive P&P, I think more people are then inclined to bid and in the end you end up with a higher price.

scoopster123

Ebay Postage Costs.

I run a shop on ebay shop and when i started trading i was looking more at the overall price and not the price of postage for a competative postage cost.

The reason a seller will indicate a higher postage charge is to save themselves money on ebay fees which in turn in some cases is passed onto the end buyer! But unfortunitaly sometimes it is not!

What also has to be remembered is that the buyer also looks at the combined price when buying off ebay. They then are accepting both the price of postage and item costs.

Maybe if ebay changed its postal price structure and did it on weight it might be fairer and more accurate postal prices would be set. But what would happen is that you would be paying more for items as ebay will take a bigger cut! Which will be passed onto the buyer!

We used to have high postage costs - 5.50 for postage and an auction price starting at 0.01p. These sold for 5.51 all in, i had the odd complaint so changed and changed to 4.99 item cost and 1 postage but my buyers paid a higher combined cost of 5.99.

Hope the above helps!!

Regards
Trev