Sick of being accused of Postage Rip Off

biblejohn

campdave wrote:

Postage is the price charged for posting the item, not to cover your ebay and paypal fees. If the final value of our item does not reflect that, maybe you should start it at a higher value. As it stands, a £1.11 mark-up on postage to me is unreasonable.

I agree there. I dont charge any extras on my postage. My postage is for posting the item. So its the royal mail charge + packaging.

For example, i recently sold some video tapes. The postage was 1.33 + 25p for the jiffy bag and i charged the customer £1.50 postage. So I actually lost out by a few pence.

I always post the item the following day after it sells and send it first class so all my customers get the item as quickly as possible.

I hope that the item sells for enough to cover the ebay fees. Hell, i dont even charge the person 5% extra for paypal like a lot of people do.

Maybe im too generous?

Munki_2

This is stupid. Postage and Pckaging costs are exactly that. POSTAGE - e.g. A stamp or two... and PACKAGING - e.g. an envelope or jiffy bag. Possibly add a bit for you time and efforts, but that sort of thing is hard to quantify. Anything else other than these things ARE NOT P&P!!!

Adding your Paypal & listing fees etc onto the P&P is completely misleading and inappropriate. If you want to ensure you recover your fees you should increase the starting price of the auction. Simple.

However, it is the bidders choice whether or not to bid on the item. They should check the P&P beforehand and in the event of them bidding and not realising it (as long as they don't use Buy It Now) they can still retract their bid.

The fact of the matter is that the P&P sould not be so high as to have bidders moaning in the first place! ;-)

Sorry to have a rant, but I do feel the excessive P&P costs on eBay need to be stopped (perhaps not you're example so much... but especially the people who send from Hong Kong and charge, say, an extra £25 P&P to send an iPod).

Now I'm off to take a chill pill. :-)

Munki.

Munki_2

biblejohn wrote:

I agree there. I dont charge any extras on my postage. My postage is for posting the item. So its the royal mail charge + packaging.

For example, i recently sold some video tapes. The postage was 1.33 + 25p for the jiffy bag and i charged the customer £1.50 postage. So I actually lost out by a few pence.

I always post the item the following day after it sells and send it first class so all my customers get the item as quickly as possible.

I hope that the item sells for enough to cover the ebay fees. Hell, i dont even charge the person 5% extra for paypal like a lot of people do.

Maybe im too generous?

You're not too generous (well perhaps you should be making sure you're making your money back, but sometimes it's hard to set the start price right to encourage the bids).

I don't charge buyers PayPal fees. I charge the costs of postage & packaging only. I post the next working day. I sometimes don't make any money like yourself. But I also have very good feedback and more than make up for any minor shortfalls with the items that do sell well.

People are getting more funny about bidding on items with higher P&P costs. Lower P&P - heck even offer free P&P and increase the start price slightly - it's amazing how people will bid on that item more. It must be a psychological thing....

Tojo_Ralph

RACHIE77...

To me, Postage and Packing is just that.

P+P is not Final Value Fees, Listing Fees, Petrol/Car/Taxi/Bus Fares, Time or Effort.

Over 70% of the P+P fees are add ons, hence my suggestion that the fee be listed as a "Posting, Packing, Administration and Handling" fee.

Tojo_Ralph

Naturally, I'd be intrigued to know what the item was (assuming it's not a sim card), and I'd be intrigued to know exactly what the complaints were?

Suffice to say, should a seller charge me £2 P+P for a CD, and choose to send it in a timely manner unprotected in a plain envelope not a jiffy bag, he would be getting a Neutral, Neither good nor bad, no better than average.

PASCALI

Hintza

I would not be worrying about the comments re P&P, however if you take into account your time it takes to list a 99p item, sell it for £1.25 (and presumably some do not sell so you have lost your 30p listing fee) is it worth selling the item at all?

I would only sell at 99p if the item cost me less than 50p, I also charge p&p at £1.50, so the p&p covers all the postage fees, all the Ebay fees and even covers the cost of the product, so whatever it sells for is pure profit.

I will probably be slammed by some of the other posters here, but if you are serious about Ebay you should be using it as a vehicle to make money, if you can make a profit on the P&P without being too greedy, then do so.

carpbud

My boyf got me a coat for christmas. The coat he won for 99p (yes!!) and the postage was £6.99. When we got it, the postage was just (and only just) over £3!! And sent in a bag.

We complained to the guy, but all he said was we knew what the postage was when we bid on it???!! what???!!

We gave him negative feedback, and he went and gave it to my boyf, saying he hassled him!!

a total waste of an ebayer.

Munki_2

Pascali, I won't hassle you... ;-) But what I will say is that to the vast majority of people eBay is not a vehicle to make money - but simply sell unwanted items and for people to grab themselves a bargain. It's people that are out there trying to make lots of money out of P&P costs that will loose out in the long run because people wont bid on their items. Reducing the starting price to cover the listing fees and make themselves a modest profit or even break evens - combined with correct P&P costs will almost always get more bids in my experience.

The main thing is for people to check the P&P before being tempted to bid, and choose not to bid out of principle. If everyone did this then eventually these people who try to make a quick buck from P&P will be forced to reduce it to a more competative amount (i.e. the correct amount!)

..and breath... ;-)

Munki.

PASCALI

carpbud

You knew the p&p was £6.99, you received the product safely and presumably in a timely manner, whats your problem ?

carpbud

Munki wrote:

Pascali, I won't hassle you... ;-) But what I will say is that to the vast majority of people eBay is not a vehicle to make money - but simply sell unwanted items and for people to grab themselves a bargain. It's people that are out there trying to make lots of money out of P&P costs that will loose out in the long run because people wont bid on their items. Reducing the starting price to cover the listing fees and make themselves a modest profit or even break evens - combined with correct P&P costs will almost always get more bids in my experience.

The main thing is for people to check the P&P before being tempted to bid, and choose not to bid out of principle. If everyone did this then eventually these people who try to make a quick buck from P&P will be forced to reduce it to a more competative amount (i.e. the correct amount!)

..and breath... ;-)

Munki.

I do do this. I buy videos, and sell them. So I know what it costs to send them out, which is £1.01-£1.50. It makes me annoyed when I see people charging £2-3.50 to post!!!