Ebay and postage costs

Emmamumof2

Quick question - bought about 10 items from one seller - they are all extremely light cupcake decorations - sugar shapes! Granted there are 10 items but at £1 each ish they only come to £11 and they will be sent in small plastic sealable bags (from previous experience) and in a jiffy bag or a small plastic box then wrapped in brown paper - so granted there will be a small cost for packaging - however I would suggest to be fair these items would weigh no more than 0.5 kg max (Id say a lot less would be luck to be over 300g) so say 1kg to be absolutely sure plus packing - Royal Mail quote £3.35 for 1st class up to 1kg so I think a reasonable total cost would be £5 postage- she has sent me a combined invoice for £17.50!!!!! I have sent her an email with the above laid out and said there is absolutely no way I am paying £17.50 for such light items - this is half as much again as the items themselves - absolutely ridiculous - if she comes back and wont reduce to £5 I will have to go the unpaid item route - is it possible to make a complaint to ebay regarding the costs and the reason for unpaid items - if not I guess Ill be struck of ebay - any advice appreciated! I know this is premature and she may well come back and say yes £5 is more reasonable but if not how do I go about reporting for making masses of money on postage?!
Thanks in advance.

soolin

You cannot force the seller to combine postage, you cna report her for excessive post and packing but that probably won't stop you getting a strike.

Postage should always be queried before buying not after. If she didn't mention combined postage then it might have been best to either ask her or walk away, you'll probably find she'll be gone soon anyway with charges like that.

If you do pay and get the goods you can reflect your experience in feedback and stars (stars are much more dangerous for a seller). If you don't pay then you will get a strike (only 1 will count) but you can no longer leave any feedback.

pinkshoes

Did you contact the seller BEFORE buying and agree on a combined postage cost? If not, then the seller is entitled to charge whatever, but if they do all arrive in one envelope and cost less than £5, then you can always leave 10 lots of negative feedback, or mark them down on DSRs.

Emmamumof2

Yes I did and she said yes I will combine postage - however this combination to me is not really combining - she would normally charge £1.60 for each item - fair enough - but knocking £12 off a postage bill of £29 when it will cost £5 isnt really fair in my opinion - oh well - I guess Ill just have to wait and see what she says later - if she doesn reduce postage will def leave bad feedback and probably will get struck off.....you live and learn! Ive never been ripped off with postage before!

George666

soolin wrote: »

You cannot force the seller to combine postage, you cna report her for excessive post and packing but that probably won't stop you getting a strike.

Postage should always be queried before buying not after. If she didn't mention combined postage then it might have been best to either ask her or walk away, you'll probably find she'll be gone soon anyway with charges like that.

If you do pay and get the goods you can reflect your experience in feedback and stars (stars are much more dangerous for a seller). If you don't pay then you will get a strike (only 1 will count) but you can no longer leave any feedback.

Hi OP I agree with most of what soolin is saying but I sold 5 items to one buyer I admit it is a little different as I do not charge for postage in the UK so all 5 items were free post and packing.
I recieved a message from the buyer asking me to combine postage on the 5 items I replied by stating that the postage is free so there was nothing to combine.
The buyer then sent a rant about reporting me and and that they were not willing to pay for the items.
Eight days passed and I closed the non payment case about a week later I recieved a very nice message from the buyer asking if they could now pay as they had reconsidered their position and after conntacting ebay they had been told that I had done nothing wrong and that it was the 5 unpaid item strikes I had given them that now made it nearly impossible for them to buy anything from ebay due to seller preferances being set by sellers to block them from buying.
This was only a couple of weeks ago so I seem to think ebay may have changed the rules to 1 srike per item not paid for regardless of how many sellers are involved so you could end up getting 10 strikes and this will affect what sellers you can or cannot buy from on ebay.
I always thought the same as soolin it was 1 strike per seller if they were all within a 7 day period regardless of how many transactions you made with the seller but now it seems as though it is 1 strike per transaction.
Also any feedback you leave will be removed by ebay if you do not pay for the items and a non payment case is closed in the sellers favour as soolin said only leave feedback if you pay for the items.
Ten negatives for items you have not paid for will be classed as feedback manipulation by ebay in which case if the seller contacts ebay which they will to get the negatives removed you will be banned for life from ebay and any accounts you have with ebay will be closed as well not just the account you used to buy the items so if I were you OP I would not leave any feedback unless you have paid for the items.

Crowqueen

This is one of the frustrations people had with the free postage issue. A number of sellers who otherwise found it helped them provide good prices and remain competitive found that it was difficult to offer someone a discount for bulk buy or multiple purchases, because eBay did not correspondingly reduce the fees charged even though they might have been happy to offer postage discounts. If I was selling something that people bought in bulk I would look on it as an opportunity to give some sort of bulk discount, but I agree, I think they need to establish some sort of macro to apply a postage discount.

I think eBay having a rethink on compulsory free postage in certain categories was great and probably helped a lot of people sort this problem out.

I would also advise people in this situation to get a definite quote for combined postage as sellers usually use this to wriggle out of an agreement beforehand. I think not offering a combined rate is a bad idea, particularly on items that don't cost a lot to post in the first place as it can discourage people from buying - I bought a selection of trading cards from someone who not only said they combined postage but also gave a rate at which they applied a discount. After I'd bought cards from them on the strength of this advert, they failed to provide me with a combined total for a long time after I bought, so I paid anyway and just made a note never to buy from them again. I think these people just end up shooting themselves in the foot (not you, George) - it's stupid to do this to buyers as it really doesn't encourage people to leave you good feedback.

Emmamumof2

They have agreed to cancel the transaction so no harm done in this instance but still very bad and lesson learned - get a fixed quotation in writing for the number of items!

Crowqueen

That's good to hear. Good luck.

George666

Hi OP I am glad you got this sorted out and I do agree that overcharging on postage does not look good to a buyer and that no one me included likes to feel ripped off.
To reply to crowqueen this was a concern I had myself when I changed my business model but since the change I have only ever had 6 people ask for combined postage on my free post and packing UK items.
Five of them understood that free is as low as you can get when paying for postage on items and they left me positive feedback and according to my detailed seller rating reports which I run daily they also left good stars as well.
I have only had that one buyer and for some reason it was a recent buyer who was unhappy about this in fact all of the requests have been fairly recent.
I think most people even when buying multiple items from a seller will not have the cheek to ask about a postage discount when you offer free post and packing.
As long as everything you are selling is priced competitively this does not in my experiance put anybody off buying multiple items from you.
If fact I would say it is the reverse as it is easier for a buyer to get a total price for several items when they do not have to factor in any postage charges and can just add the price of each item together to get a total cost without also feeling they need to contact you first about combined postage or any other form of discount to stop themselves being ripped off on the postage.
You would be shocked at the amount of sellers who do charge postage however state that they do not combine postage and even more shocked by the fact that they still get some sales.

Crowqueen

I think most people even when buying multiple items from a seller will not have the cheek to ask about a postage discount when you offer free post and packing.

I do think it depends hugely on what you are selling. If you are selling books, you can't discount hugely anyway. I think the main complaint from some booksellers was that they felt they were going to miss out on multiple purchases because they couldn't actively offer a postage combined discount as a feature of their listings. What annoyed me with the trading cards was that the price to send one was £1, but it wouldn't have cost a whole pound extra to send another one in the same package. I guess as inclusive postage it wouldn't have been so obvious but would have increased the price to a level where it wasn't worth buying more than one from the same seller and ultimately quite inefficient to buy the cards you needed to play the game with properly. Since it's easier to buy these cards online than singly in a shop, inclusive postage without a discount macro or rate for postage would just make it impossible to obtain some cards or have sellers with huge economies of scale win out.

However, on some sites, like Play, this has always been the way in which things have been sold (inclusive postage) so I think some of the hullaballoo was misplaced, particularly if people found that inclusive postage actually improved sales overall.

From a buyer's point of view I also don't think it's cheeky to ask, as long as you're not rude or demanding about it. After all, all they can say is no.

terra_ferma

OP unfortunately some sellers still use high postage to avoid fee, although probably not as many as it used to be.
Many have combined postage automatically calculated, if a buyer doesn't personally often I don't bother to ask.
If I need to buy more than one item I look for combined postage as a way of saving money, as if it's free I feel I'm simply paying for it anyway.

From a seller's prospective, I agree it depends on what you sell, combined postage is essential to me, and free postage would definitely harm my sales as hardly anyone buys only one item, there is a huge difference in price because my postage is capped for multiple items.