A Way To Calculate Postage Charges?

shanti

Hi there I 've just started selling stuff on ebay (in the last couple of months), mainly books and was wondering how other people work out postage charges. I don't really want to fork out for a set of scales just yet.
cheers!

spalding

I got a set of scales form my local pound shop and if you ask in a post office they will provide you with a book detailing all postage cost for various method including international very useful, its the Royal mail guide to services book, you can also look up prices on royal mail website

VH

Same advice as spalding really.

I have a cheap set of scales from Tesco. Only cost around £3 but very reliable. It's worth investing in a set as they are very cheap and you will not make mistakes when 'guessing' the weight of your packages.

Weigh your stuff before you start your auction add on extra weight to cover packing. Then work out the price from the Royal Mail website (if you are planning to use them).

Don't forget to add some money on to cover the costs of your packing.

Another good tip is to search for items the same as yours on EBay and check out the postage on these, this is generally a good guide.

shanti

thanks guys! thats really helpful

spalding

No problem happy to help

JonSimmonds

As the other people have said, use some decent scales + allow for packaging (i use a old jiffybag with a 10p coin in to allow for tape + invoice paperwork etc!) then i printed off the royal mail website charges info. Its usefull this way if your buyers complain about p+p costing to much you can refer them to royal mail and get them to visit their local stationary store to check the price of a jiffybag!

Remeber that royal mail are changing their postage fees soon (saw something at the sorting office about this when i went to collect a parcell, recorded delivery is going up by alot as well as first class post to) so watch out

HairyHatMan

Here's the link to the royal mail postage calculator:

Postage calculator

HairyHatMan

According to the web site, recorded delivery is going up by all of 1p and 1st class post is going up by about 5% as is next day special delivery.

The only increase that stands out is the additional compensation for standard parcels - about 50%

sparkle_3-2

Yeah just use cheap scales and go to https://www.royalmail.co.uk and they work out how much it is.