Ebay Postage - Opinions

ballisticbrian

No, no, what I'm talking about is where one seller charges £1 for the item and 99p postage and the other seller charges £1.99 with free postage and people think they are getting better value from the one with free postage.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

RHemmings wrote: »

And higher postage, in this case, benefits me as a buyer not at all. It just gives a higher profit margin to the seller and less money to ebay.

Apart from buying from a long established business over some guy with 18 feedback.

I agree that generic goods will always be available and there will be plenty of competition on such items to keep prices level. I however wouldn't be making my purchasing decision on P&P. Feedback, returns/t&cs, overall price of course, the P&P charge, couldn't careless unless it's a clear overcharge to deliberately avoid eBay fees, partly as my principle disagrees with it but mainly because those avoiding fees aren't like to be great at sorting any issues out.

The example quoted only tells me 1 thing, that item is probably worth paying £21 for, how that is split up, I don't care.

RHemmings

ballisticbrian wrote: »

No, no, what I'm talking about is where one seller charges £1 for the item and 99p postage and the other seller charges £1.99 with free postage and people think they are getting better value from the one with free postage.

That's not my situation. I don't think I'm getting better value from the free postage for the same full cost. For the same total cost, either free postage or reasonable postage are both equally good for me. It's only when postage becomes notably unreasonable that I become dissatisfied with that individual component of the purchase. And even then, it's not that I consider the item worse value overall, just that the p&p alone is not reasonable.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head wrote: »

Apart from buying from a long established business over some guy with 18 feedback.

I agree that generic goods will always be available and there will be plenty of competition on such items to keep prices level. I however wouldn't be making my purchasing decision on P&P. Feedback, returns/t&cs, overall price of course, the P&P charge, couldn't careless unless it's a clear overcharge to deliberately avoid eBay fees, partly as my principle disagrees with it but mainly because those avoiding fees aren't like to be great at sorting any issues out.

The example quoted only tells me 1 thing, that item is probably worth paying £21 for, how that is split up, I don't care.

But this comes back to my very first post in this thread. How the total price is broken down into item price and p&p price does not strongly affect my decision to buy. It only becomes important when I'm considering what stars to give for p&p, which is a separate and moderately independent decision.

ballisticbrian

That's not my situation. I don't think I'm getting better value from the free postage for the same full cost.

That's the problem we're all talking about different things. I've actually had people write to me under that scenario I've posted above saying, "thank you for paying the postage, that's was very kind of you - god bless", when I had just added it on the cost of the item.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

RHemmings wrote: »

But this comes back to my very first post in this thread. How the total price is broken down into item price and p&p price does not strongly affect my decision to buy. It only becomes important when I'm considering what stars to give for p&p, which is a separate and moderately independent decision.

The current system certainly has merits in aiding those who want to do well in upping their game but I see so many poor larger sellers letting customers down day after day over simple things (mainly not replying to complaints) who get by as it's a number's game and have seen a few threads over on eBay from small sellers restricted over the odd low for dispatch or P&P because they take a couple of days to post or charge an extra 50p on the P&P that I can't be bothered to pander to eBay's games.

If something was bad enough I'll leave non-postive feedback, otherwise I'm not interested in stars.