Under charged for postage, lost money.

carlih1

Hi

I had some stuffed toys for sale and stupidly put the postage at £1 and £2 instead the four items cost me £16 which was more than i got for the whole lot, lol. Well i intend to learn from my mistakes, does anyone have a good system for working out postage?

Thanx

c

ts_aly2000

Scales. And the royalmail website.

Sorry to sound so obvious. And yeeep, we've all messed up on the postage before... I use the little 2Kg cheapo economy scales from Tescos, and add another 100g on top depending on the packaging.

heatherw_01

Unfortunately it is down to weighing correctly and now measuring it to make sure that it is correct.

carlih1

Ah theres the prob i was just guessing. lol sounds stupid now i think about it, anyway a few people got some good deals.

Will buy some new scales with my paypal money i think

Thanks for the replies

Carli

bleugh

after a few years you get a 'feel' for things and can usually guess accuratley within a quid or so :-)

till then, get yourself some cheap digital kitchen scales, and also cheap digital 'person weighing' scales


the kitchen work for up to 2Kg

for larger parcels on the 'person weighing' scales, simply weigh yourself
then note the weight. then weigh yourself again holding the parcel

subtract one from 't other and round up a bit

OverlandLandy

Carlih1

Dont take it badly...Think we have all been here........I have sold lots of items on Ebay....and even last week I 'guessed' the weight of an item.....and GOT IT WRONG.

it weighed about 2.2kg and cost £7.70 to post...I had charged £4.50! and the item only sold for 99p!

I usually use scales and the Royal Mail website - normally I'm pretty spot on. I factor in packaging materials and even tape etc....I always aim to be fair on postage costs (unlike some who appear to make all their profit on the postage!)

So I agree - get scales and use the Royal Mail Website.......

And remember - Its not a mistake.... 'its a valuable learning experience'!

DrFluffy

ts_aly2000 wrote:

Scales. And the royalmail website.

Sorry to sound so obvious. And yeeep, we've all messed up on the postage before... I use the little 2Kg cheapo economy scales from Tescos, and add another 100g on top depending on the packaging.

That's exactly what I do...

mrbadexample

Always worth looking at other people's auctions to see what they charge for similar items. Hope no-one looked at yours. :rotfl:

Contains_Mild_Peril

I think undercharging for postage is a mistake most of us have made at some time - I know I have. I found out the hard way that my kitchen scales are rather inaccurate with items which significantly overlap the edges.

bleugh wrote:

after a few years you get a 'feel' for things and can usually guess accuratley within a quid or so :-)

till then, get yourself some cheap digital kitchen scales, and also cheap digital 'person weighing' scales


the kitchen work for up to 2Kg

for larger parcels on the 'person weighing' scales, simply weigh yourself
then note the weight. then weigh yourself again holding the parcel

subtract one from 't other and round up a bit

Unless you sell extremely bulky and heavy items, I don't think it's necessary to buy 2 sets of scales, though if those are the types of scales you already own, then fine. If you're buying scales espeically for parcels, fishing scales would be more economical. Just put your package in a carrier bag and suspend it from the hook.

chimpanzee23

I have undercharged postage before on a item that only sold for £6 odd. I sent a polite email explaining that I undercharged postage, they sent the extra money via paypal.

GabbaGabbaHey

Don't forget that you should not just be charging the buyer for Postage - you should be including all the other things which are involved in getting your product to the buyer - including the packing materials which you use, the cost of your time (even if only at minimum wage) to package it up and take it to the Post Office, the cost of getting to the Post Office (bus fare, petrol, taxi), etc.