Help!! Buyer Bought the Lot. Multiple Purchases Postage Costs...

perry_2

I put 8 individual Items on Ebay as buyitnow entry’s. So if you did a search on an item you would have 8 in your view.

Now the thing is a guy has bought the lot but I've spaced the costs out with postage costs.

1. He wants to pick it up (his preference) or 2 wants a massive discount on all the items postage costs. The total postage costs stands at £70.

Where do I stand?...... Can I have him pay for all the items & postage costs as they were put on as individual items - the buyer did not contact me prior to purchasing these.

Thanks.

soolin

If you did not specifiy combined post and packing then your buyer should have asked rather than just assume you would do so. However, having said that could you not wrap all the items together as far as possible and see if you can make a saving on the post and packing and pass part of that on to the buyer?

What I did recently when I was selling childrens toys was quote for 2nd class post and packing in my auction terms but when asked at the end of the auction about combining items gave them a small discount but explained that due to the weight of the combined items I was having to use 1st class instead of 2nd class. On one 'set' of items the combined weight actually meant that it was cheaper to use parcel post instead of standard post and I suggested that to the buyer on the basis it was cheaper but slower.

Soo

donstermonster

Helloo

I sell loads of items on EBay and i always make a point of not "making" on postage costs.
I will include a charge for packaging and in rare instances maybe even for petrol to a post office BUT i do not like buying something and the seller bumping up the price by making money on postage (The main reason i never make money on postage is because it upsets me if somebody does it to me)

If you intended to sell an item at a lesser price and make the money up on postage it is not really very fair and no doubt you would not be happy if it happened to you so i am saying that if he has offered to pick the items up (probably due to the massive postage costs) then it does seem fair , alternatively when sending bulky or multiple items i use a courier that picks up from my house uoto £30 kilos for £11 and can recommend a couple of these type of couriers if it helps
Cheers
donstermonster

24seven

The debate of if people should or should not make money from postage aside...........

You could say that you don't except callers and the items are already individually packed up ready for dispatch, I cannot see anything wrong with that tbh.

If a buyer does not like your postage costs then they should not buy from you.

You never said you would combine orders or allow personal callers.

culpepper

depends on the items I suppose but they are going to be far better protected if individually wrapped. Also if any are lost in the post it is less of a loss to lose 1/8 . There is a postal calculator on here
which could help you to 'fine tune' the postage costs.

angelcake

Hi, this is unfortunate! You should say to the bidder that you don't accept the Pick-up as an option, it was clearly stated in the auctions your methods of delivery i.e first/second class postage. As for a postage discount, surely you could squeeze a small one in....say 50p of each item - used recycled packaging. It really is your fault for using the P&P to get more money for the item, but the bidder would have spotted this! I saw a high postage and emailed the person asking if I could pick it up -this was fine - and before auction ended!

- you could always say that the items are at a friends house, as you were selling them for a friend and that friend lives x miles away?

Encantador

I can see what people are saying but how important is it not to lose the sale?
If you are not really bothered about starting again and maybe not selling, go for it. If you are, try and do a deal.

The postage issue on ebay has been talked about a lot, the bottom line is what is the total and is that what you think the item is worth, if not, you don`t buy it, simple. If it is, what does it matter how the price adds up.

We all know that the reason for hiking the price is to reduce ebays costs. I am all for keeping money in our pockets and not in ebays which is what this site is all about.

quoia

perry wrote:

I put 8 individual Items on Ebay as buyitnow entry’s. So if you did a search on an item you would have 8 in your view.

Now the thing is a guy has bought the lot but I've spaced the costs out with postage costs.

1. He wants to pick it up (his preference) or 2 wants a massive discount on all the items postage costs. The total postage costs stands at £70.

Where do I stand?...... Can I have him pay for all the items & postage costs as they were put on as individual items - the buyer did not contact me prior to purchasing these.

Thanks.

As a long term eBay seller and buyer, in order to offer proper and correct advice I'd like to see your auction listing.

Please post your eBay id or a relevant item number so that this may be possible.

I have some suggestions and comments from what you have already posted, some I think you will like but others you will probably hate (due to logic & common sense not really being on your side) but I'd like to reserve judgement and my opinion for the moment.

Let us see the auction listing.

soolin

quoia I'm not sure we do need to see the auctions to offer a general opinion. According to the original post the buyer did not ask about combining post and packing before bidding so he has therefore agreed to buy each item individually.

Don't forget that ebay now offer the opportunity for sellers to indicate in an auction that they do combine p and P and it seems that the OP did not offer this as an option.

However, if the seller cannot make some accomodation to the buyer there is the risk of a negative, although only one 'point' would be lost from the feedback rating even if multiple negs were left. However the seller could retaliate with filing an NPB which is much more harmful to an ebay user.

Personally I would try to meet the buyer half way, but that is just me , the OP is perfectly entitled to stick to her original auction terms and by bidding that is what the buyer agreed to.

Soo

quoia

soolin wrote:

quoia I'm not sure we do need to see the auctions to offer a general opinion...............................
Soo

OK Soolin, a few "general" points.

1. If you "load" the postage and "lighten" the item cost you generally only save a few pence in eBay fees. The buyer usually pays the same amount except in disputed circumstances like these. It is eBay that loses out slightly.

2. If you set out to "break" the rules don't complain when you "get found out" and/or "taken advantage of" when that is precisely what the seller's intention was in setting their pricing structure in this manner.

3. The seller was trying to "make money" out of eBay (in an "illegal" way - as defined by eBay's T&Cs anyway) and in the spirit of this site (MSE.com) where file sharing, illegal audio & video MP3, MP4 downloading is frowned upon and monitored, and any posts pertaining to this are promptly deleted, trying to justify a deliberate flouting of eBay's policy is very difficult. The buyer themselves maybe a MONEY SAVING EXPERT and should be praised for trying to do exactly that !

4. Without the specific facts (which are not available as I type) I presume that each of the 8 items are relatively very cheap (only £2 or £3 or most probably less ?) with respect to the the postage charge for each one of £8.75 (£70 total for 8 = £8.75 each). I bet that this is £8 pure profit and 75p for the actual P&P !
If the individual item was high in value, say £100 or more, weighed many kilos, needed specialist packaging etc., then this high cost might have some justification if it were genuine. The buyer collecting items like this actually helps the seller. It/They don't get lost or damaged, seller gets paid cash, doesn't have to find suitable packaging and wrap them all up, and no visit to the post office or similar to despatch the goods.
I could be wrong but I'd hazard a guess that these items from perry may well have been sent in a secondhand jiffy bag with a 2nd class stamp of well under £1.

5. SOOLIN? (and others?) Some eBay auctions have inacurate or vague location information for the seller and hence item location. If you bid on an item (or several for that matter) from a particular seller, ending up with an overall postage cost of several pounds (even several tens of pounds) and when sent the address to send your payment to found that it was your next door neighbour, would you really expect to pay the postage and not collect in person ? OK it is probable that you know your next door neighbour, but if you were perry's neighbour in this case and was then told that the postage was part of the purchase price would you really cough up £70 ? Especially if all 8 items sold for a fraction of the P&P? Perhaps for a total price of £20 or less?
Perhaps the neighbour argument is rather unlikely but where do you draw the line and just cough up unreasonable postage costs? The seller might not live in the same street but how about a few streets away? Somewhere in the same town? Near to where you work? Very close to where your parents or brother/sister/best friend lives and you would visit regularly? (Or where this person would pay and collect on your behalf?) In a town 50 miles away but where you happen to visit at least once a fortnight?
Most auctions list one or several methods of delivery option. A relatively small number actually include the specific phrase "can be collected" except for those items that are almost impossible to post and it is the only option. Very very few state that goods CANNOT be collected personally. (Most of these tend to be "businesses" and not private individuals - except those with something dodgy to hide.
I personally have collected on over a dozen occasions and have never been refused when I requested to do so from a truly genuine eBayer, even when this option was not specifically listed in the auction. The nearest was less than a mile away from where I live, most within a 5 to 15 mile radius and once I made 2 separate collections from different sellers on the same trip to London for a social event , one being about 80 miles from where I live, the other over 160 miles. I have also delivered and made halfway meets and used a 3rd party on several occasions.
On the few occasions I was turned down, each and everyone ultimately proved to be a crook, running scams against eBay or the buyer, selling goods that did not match the description or nothing at all. Just waiting for cheques to roll in before taking the money and running. All of them became "not a registered user" very shortly afterwards often as a direct result of the evidence that I sent to eBay.

In this particular case I would still like to know what the items are, how much the individual/total costs were and the relative ratio of costs to P&P, what sort of packaging etc. was likely to be used to see by how much the P&P had been manipulated.

ROBDOLPHIN66

Hi
I have to agree with quoia in the main, though it would be really useful (and fairer) if we had the listing details.
I personally mainly sell CDs which (nearly) always cost 42p or 60p for UK 1st class post and I always send them in a new featherpost bag. For this I charge £1.30, I would say that this is approx the average P&P charge for a CD on eBay and possibly a majority of other (CD) sellers that I deal with use sub-standard packaging . Also, I offer combined shipping at a rate of 70p per additional CD.
Is it (right) / fair that I make say an average of 50p on the P&P? Where do you draw the line?
Also, I would like to ask a question about combining postage as a seller - how do you get eBay to specify your postage discount on your listing (I currently just have it written in text)?
Thankyou