Business Sellers - Postage Strategy

ballisticbrian

So how are business sellers setting their postage charging strategy in light of eBays plan to not only charge fees on postage but also remove "top rated seller" status if you don't offer free postage?


Let's use as an example consumables and foodstuff, because they are typically bought in multiples. e.g. The advert is for 1 item, but you expect the buyer to click on "Quantity" and select 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 however many they require.

Let's say your item is a jar of fishing bait. They can buy 1 or 2 jars, it will be a small parcel. If they buy 3 jars or 2 jars and any other item from you, it will be a Medium Parcel.

eBay would encourage you to offer free postage, but that means you have to set up the price of one jar (the actual item cost) to include the possibility that they may order 3, and include in the cost 1/3 of the cost of a medium parcel.

(Remember that these small and medium parcels now have 10% or whatever rate applied on top by eBay)

Different Sellers have different strategies such as offering other adverts for the same item in different quantities. Some buyers don't like this as it looks like spamming their search results. And even if you did that, you cannot stop someone using the quantity feature to change what they want.

The other way would be to advertise the item with the free postage option as eBay want you to do (and top wack postage included), and then a second advert with postage and postage discounts.

What's your strategy and does anyone think eBay have thought this though?

RFW

ballisticbrian wrote: »

What's your strategy and does anyone think eBay have thought this though?

Multi variation listings and no!
It wouldn't take too much thought for them to set up a discount system that could be offered. It could easily be the same system they have in place for postage reductions so hardly difficult. They've been promising it for years now. Amazon have a similar system available, I sell including postage on there and then offer a percentage discount for customers spending over £x.

celestius

I have moved as many of my items to freepost as possible, I won't do it on the low value items.

An item which I used to charge £15 + £2.20 postage now cost the buyer £17 free post. So I have lost out a little but I want the Ebay Premium Service badge on as many listings as possible.

I have an O.B.A account which allows me to send parcels by weight not size, it has saved me a fortune since the new parcel sizes were introduced!
If someone wants 3 items it is good for me as it will cost me the same as posting 1 regardless of size...

soolin

I am doing it for some of my items but for others I just can't see how it would work without cheating my buyers.

I have several MVL listings for similar widgets. On each I usually offer both a variation in colour/style and measurements (sorry I am trying to be vague here as I don't want to identfy my products as I seem to have a best seller).

My problem is that my buyers buy as few as one, and as many as 4-5 in one go- but may buy a mixture of style and measurements. So one item can go as a 69p large letter, some of the products can go 2 in an envelope for 69p- but on the same listing 2 slightly different variations just go over into a £1.10 weight band. Then on some listings 2 products will go as a small packet compared to them being sent individually as 2 large letters.

At the moment they are all immediate payment but I work out the best way to send everything, even if they have bought from 2 or more MVLs and refund the balance of the payment. If I go free posts I can't do that as ebay have confirmed the FVFs will be charged on the initial amount paid by buyer- with no refund given if refunds are made to P and P.

So someone buying 4 items from me in future will effectively pay 4 lots of postage even though it might well turn up in 2 envelopes at a cost to me of 2 x 69p stamps

campdave

Keeping postage the same - offering it separately and giving all extra purchases free post. At the moment I have no plans to increase postage as the slight decrease in FVF in my category and the increased free listings for featured shop means I'm not too much worse off once FVF on postage are included.

All the major sellers in my category have kept postage separate, and as roughly 50% of my sales involve 2 or more items, I think overall I'd be worse off through loss of extra sales by offering Free postage.

I will be putting more time into my website now though and trying to drive more sales there.

sequence

I've had multi-variation listings with quantity discounts for years, so no change. It's nice that the fvf playing field is a bit more level now though.

RFW

sequence wrote: »

I've had multi-variation listings with quantity discounts for years, so no change. It's nice that the fvf playing field is a bit more level now though.

Given that the postage charging competitors aren't sure what to do I'd say the playing field is tipped a little towards you (and me) for a change.

Obviously_the_best

My tactic, use more couriers.