MSE News: eBay sellers beware - its fees now eat into postage costs

RFW

Saveit wrote: »

I can see my weekend full of editing rearranging now aghhh

It does take a fair bit of effort but when you have what would have been about 50 different listings in one it doesn't seem that long.
Multi variation listings tend to do better in Best Match too.

campdave

Another vote for MVL here too, reorganised some of my items that weren't massive sellers into a single MVL and sales seem to have picked up a bit for those items.

Saveit

campdave wrote: »

Another vote for MVL here too, reorganised some of my items that weren't massive sellers into a single MVL and sales seem to have picked up a bit for those items.

That's good to know I will give it a go thanks for the help and RFW too, getting the camera out as we speak, need photos of the selections, instead of a photo of one flower I will do the a pic for 2, 3 etc , at least the photos are free! although I always uploaded extra photos on the listing page so that's not a real saving to me. Off to work it out and hopefully carry on and jump through a another hoop that Ebay has put in front of me

jasmineswhiskers

Not sure if this has been mentioned but couldn't find it, and was wondering about peoples thoughts on the following situation. I sold an item for £6 which was particularly heavy and postage was listed as £8.90 (2nd class med parcel nearly 2kg). The buyer is local so wants to collect which is fine but I presume that there is no way to avoid the 10% on the postage fee even though the item will not be posted. (Save on Paypal fees as they will be payng cash so I guess that kind of balances it.)

RFW

jasmineswhiskers wrote: »

Not sure if this has been mentioned but couldn't find it, and was wondering about peoples thoughts on the following situation. I sold an item for £6 which was particularly heavy and postage was listed as £8.90 (2nd class med parcel nearly 2kg). The buyer is local so wants to collect which is fine but I presume that there is no way to avoid the 10% on the postage fee even though the item will not be posted. (Save on Paypal fees as they will be payng cash so I guess that kind of balances it.)

You can add 'collect in person' as a delivery option and list it as free. Select that when sending an invoice/marking as paid.

barmonkey

I changed all my auctions to include free postage,
I usually start my items at £15 + p&p of £5.50, normally over a week I would sell between 8 and 10 items at around £34/40 + p&p, in the 2 weeks with free postage and a start price of £20 I sold 2 items, went back to my original system and back up to 10 sales a week.

go figure

Rotti

barmonkey wrote: »

I changed all my auctions to include free postage,
I usually start my items at £15 + p&p of £5.50, normally over a week I would sell between 8 and 10 items at around £34/40 + p&p, in the 2 weeks with free postage and a start price of £20 I sold 2 items, went back to my original system and back up to 10 sales a week.

go figure

Having been in (proper) retail for 15 years there is an easy answer to that one - price points. £14.99 still looks cheaper than £15 and £19.99 looks cheaper than £20 even though there is only a penny in it - it is a psychological hoodwink that has been used for decades - one of the reasons items were priced at 19/11d in the old days - the other being to make the odd dishonest till operator open the till to get the penny change instead of sliding the £1 note up their sleeve.

If you go to an ordinary auction and are a regular you get to know other peoples' patterns - there are some who NEVER bid over £20 for anything so going the extra bid will clinch the deal. So if an item starts at £20 they don't even bid on it. The same will happen in eBay if the auction start price is too high. Better to start low and let it find its own level sometimes - my son got over £200 for a saxophone started at 99p and charged the postage on top. Happy seller, happy buyer and I see no reason to fix something that wasn't broke!

If it is about stopping dishonest and fee-dodging sellers, then take a little extra time and trouble and go after them instead of making across the board changes that disdvantage so many. We are being penalised for their transgressions.

EKEA

I don't really understand why some people think this is a good thing.

I have a large computer case to sell. As with all my auctions, I would start at 99p. The postage for the item would cost £15 as it's pretty heavy.
Yes, they can take a final value fee from me, but if it cost me £15 to post, I don't see why eBay thinks they can take some money from that. It means I would put it costs more to post to cover their fee, like in the olden days with people covering PayPal fees. Yes the rules say you can't do this but I'd just lie and say I had to take it to the depot which is 20 miles away. Plus with couriers it's a lot harder to find out the actual postage cost.

ballisticbrian

like in the olden days with people covering PayPal fees.

I don't know what you mean by olden days. Paypal are still taking 3.5% of your postage charges today.

POPPYOSCAR

I did a survey not that long ago about Ebay.

They put forward all sorts of propositions asking what would make you buy more from them.

I know they will make more money from this but I am also wondering if lot of people who did the survey gave the indication that free postage would encourage them to buy.

More people than you would think do not like high postage charges and do not look at the overall cost, as demonstrated on threads on the subject on here.