I overcharged on postage

StaffsSW

the182guy wrote: »

I don't think so. You can't give yourself a wage for packing and posting an eBay item. The P&P charge should just be the amount spent on the physical packaging, and the amount spent on the courier to deliver it. You might get away with a very small amount for your petrol but you can't slap on £5.80 for 'minimum wage'.

Depends if they are a business seller or not - these are legitimate charges that need to be factored into the cost of selling.

the182guy

stevew8975 wrote: »

Depends if they are a business seller or not - these are legitimate charges that need to be factored into the cost of selling.

Are you joking? So what you're saying is business sellers should add a wage onto P&P, then for example the P&P for a CD would be £6.80. Don't think you'll sell many CDs like that.:rotfl:

Let me rephrase it then. You can add your hourly wage onto the P&P cost, but you'll end up in the same situation as OP here where the buyer will want a partial refund or hit you with a neg and poor DSR's, or all of the above regardless of partial refund. That's if you
can actually make a sale with largely inflated P&P.

epm-84

the182guy wrote: »

Are you joking? So what you're saying is business sellers should add a wage onto P&P, then for example the P&P for a CD would be £6.80. Don't think you'll sell many CDs like that.:rotfl:

Let me rephrase it then. You can add your hourly wage onto the P&P cost, but you'll end up in the same situation as OP here where the buyer will want a partial refund or hit you with a neg and poor DSR's, or all of the above regardless of partial refund. That's if you
can actually make a sale with largely inflated P&P.

That's assuming an employee could only dispatch one CD per hour and do nothing else in that hour. If they couldn't dispatch more they'd certainly be sacked.

StaffsSW

Where did I say that it should be loaded into the P&P element?

I seemed to have missed that bit from my own post somewhere, can you help enlighten me on that?

the182guy

epm-84 wrote: »

That's assuming an employee could only dispatch one CD per hour and do nothing else in that hour. If they couldn't dispatch more they'd certainly be sacked.

And if you only made one sale per hour? Most eBay sellers are sole traders with no employees. The ones that have employees are usually businesses that trade elsewhere like a high street or website and use eBay as another outlet.

stevew8975 wrote: »

Where did I say that it should be loaded into the P&P element?

I seemed to have missed that bit from my own post somewhere, can you help enlighten me on that?

You replied to my post about adding a wage to P&P cost, and you said depends if they are a business seller or not, implying that it's OK if you're a business seller.

If you can't survive without clawing back business costs like that then it should be on the price of the item or reserve where it will contribute towards the eBay fees.

Anyway the fact remains that if you charge ridiculous P&P on eBay then you'll not be in business for long. It doesn't matter how you justify it, business costs, staff costs or whatever. This thread is a product of a seller overcharging and look what happend here.

epm-84

the182guy wrote: »

And if you only made one sale per hour? Most eBay sellers are sole traders with no employees. The ones that have employees are usually businesses that trade elsewhere like a high street or website and use eBay as another outlet.

Then you're paying yourself for an hours work and only doing 10 minutes work so you're overcharging and won't provide competitive prices. Self-employed people aren't protected by any minimum wage requirement they make how ever much money they can in how ever many hours they work. I imagine most people like this will see a massive boom in sales in November and December and see a short fall in January

the182guy

I don't think buyers really consider the sellers 'hourly rate' when casting their DSR votes and feedback. Substantial profits from P&P doesn't go down too well.

natnhay

Extortionate postage charges puts me off bidding for the item.,would rather see a reasonable starting price. I think people take postage in to account and bid less anyway.

sneaky

cyberbob wrote: »

Because if people avoid fees. Ebay get less money so ebay put fees up and I have to charge more to cover the fees so I sell less and make less profit. So I lose out. Its basic economics. Try not to be so myopic.

I charge 9.99 postage for my items and I have a contract with parcelforce where I pay 5.50 per item. Sue Me :rotfl:

StaffsSW

I didn't realise we had Sir Digby Jones within our midst.
I bow down humbly in front of the great business mind in our presence....