Postage mispriced - what should we do?

soolin

chinagirl wrote:

I Got Caught Out With Postage A While Back On Ebay. I Ordered Goods And Paid Postage As Advertised At £2.50. When I Received My Parcel, There Were Stamps On It For £0.78 Only. The Jiffy Bag Must Have Cost Maximum £0.50, So I Emailed Them, And Suprise Suprise, Got No Reply. I Did Not Take It Further, But Now Look Long And Hard At Postage Before I Bid On Anything.

Chinagirl, you were not caught out with postage, you paid what was advertised and it is immaterial what the actual post and packing was.

If you are happy with the quoted p and p then that is fine, just build it into your final bidding price. If p and p looks excessive then don't bid and report the seller to ebay for fee avoidance. Ebay allow sellers to charge post and packing plus all associated (reasonable) costs.

I regularly buy from ebay and from online shops and ebay is no worse than a lot of shops. Last year Dabs took their standard rate post and packing off me (just under £3)for an MP3 player which weighed next to nothing, however i had factored all that into the price before i bought and they still worked out cheaper.

Soo

biblejohn

humph wrote:

The way I see it is that I know the postage costs before bidding so I factor that into the total amount I am willing to bid for an item. If the seller makes a few pennies on the postage so what. They have not misled anyone because all costs have been stated.

I use my kitchen scales to weigh my items and at times have over-priced the postage by a few pence. It has also worked the other way for me too and I have undercharged. I think as long as you state the postage costs in an open and honest way that is sufficient.

I do the same. The price im happy to pay for an item is the postage + cost of item. If the person says it will cost 5quid to post and im only happy to pay 6quid in total then i only bid 1pound. If it then turns out that the person only paid 2quid to post it then im not bothered as i got it for the price i wanted to pay.

People who charge silly prices for postage do anoy me though as I sell a lot of stuff on ebay and always keep the postage to the correct amount. Sometimes i even make a loss as i hope to recoup some of the postage costs from the sale price.

dougk_2

People forget that P&P stands for postage and packing costs.
Its not just the cost of the stamp!

Jiffy bags cost normally 20p (ok you can get them cheaper sometimes and sometimes you recycle them),Brown paper and tape cost money, envelopes cost money..........

Then what about the time spent on packing the items and taking them to the post office - which with half the post offices shutting means a trip out into town or a car journey - petrol costs lots of money!

True I don't like to see rip off postage prices , but say 50p or even £1 above the price of the stamp is not too much.

I always look at the postage cost as others have said and my bid refelects that. The same happens if a buy an item from an online shop or travel to a store to buy it.

humph_2

dougk wrote:

Then what about the time spent on packing the items and taking them to the post office - which with half the post offices shutting means a trip out into town or a car journey - petrol costs lots of money!

That is a really good point doug - I sometimes spend my lunch break queueing in the post office.

dccarm

To update: we got an email to say the additional postage will be just short of £10. Having looked at similar magazine collections on ebay we've realised that she has inadvertently picked up a bit of a bargain so she is going to pay the extra postage and say no more about it. I reckon that the ambiguous / mispriced postage has possibly put people off bidding more, so with a better listing there might be a profit to be had on the resale. If we decide not to keep them permanently.

So a lucky escape and a valuable lesson in reading the small listing all the way down to the seller's instructions.

payless

dougk wrote:

Then what about the time spent on packing the items and taking them to the post office - which with half the post offices shutting means a trip out into town or a car journey - petrol costs lots of money!

PLUS

humph says
" That is a really good point doug - I sometimes spend my lunch break queueing in the post office."

---

IMO once you start charging for your time , it makes this activity look more like a business / employment activity ( which one may or maybe do already)
- with it comes tax implications ( even if you are just selling your old junk rather than actual "trading")

VH

Payless, you're absolutely right!

Charging for postage and packing is one thing. But petrol, time queueing in the post office, shoe leather??? As you say, start charging for this kind of stuff and you may as well be running a business.

chrissyw4

chinagirl wrote:

I Got Caught Out With Postage A While Back On Ebay. I Ordered Goods And Paid Postage As Advertised At £2.50. When I Received My Parcel, There Were Stamps On It For £0.78 Only. The Jiffy Bag Must Have Cost Maximum £0.50, So I Emailed Them, And Suprise Suprise, Got No Reply. I Did Not Take It Further, But Now Look Long And Hard At Postage Before I Bid On Anything.

As selling on ebay incurrs 'listing fee', 'final value fee', and if the buyer pays with paypal, 'paypal charges', and extra charger for photo's etc, i think the seller is entitled to add a bit extra to the actual royal mail cost to cover all these charges.
Selling on ebay is expensive when you have alot of listings and I dont think buyers (especially new ones) appreciate this!

robowen

I love the way the price of a jiffy bag has come down to a mere 20p when arguing the toss over postage and packaging.

I don't recall EVER ..seeing a jiffy bag for 20p in the post office.
Don't forget, when being under pressure to get the item out, you don't always have the time to shop around.

Finding bags at that price requires planning ahead.....something us blokes are no good at. Anyway, you'd have to buy bags of all sizes unless everything you sold was the same size.

chitty

robowen wrote:

I love the way the price of a jiffy bag has come down to a mere 20p when arguing the toss over postage and packaging.

I don't recall EVER ..seeing a jiffy bag for 20p in the post office.
Don't forget, when being under pressure to get the item out, you don't always have the time to shop around.

This is where working in an office comes in very useful