Ebay fees on postage - Is this legal

Stoke

The whole free postage thing might be a good shout in fact. Does it reduce the amount you pay overall? Or not at all?

RFW

Stoke wrote: »

The whole free postage thing might be a good shout in fact. Does it reduce the amount you pay overall? Or not at all?

No difference in fees. It's supposed to help your listings get a higher ranking, but that's debatable.

burnleymik

Some harsh responses in this thread.....

I think OP has a fair question to ask if eBay are ok to charge a premium on a service they have no involvement in and unfortunately they can. If you feel it's unfair all you can do is either offer free postage (add the costs to the item) or stop using them.

eBay have the competition crushed at the moment as the sellers are forced to go where the buyers are and there are so few viable, established competitors.

Hopefully someone will eventually get in on the act and we can finally have some competition for our business and stop being charged so highly.

vinylmusic

burnleymik wrote: »

Some harsh responses in this thread.....

I think OP has a fair question to ask if eBay are ok to charge a premium on a service they have no involvement in and unfortunately they can. If you feel it's unfair all you can do is either offer free postage (add the costs to the item) or stop using them.

I'm glad at least one person sees my point
Ebay pushed to have people use free postage long before they started adding the 10% to P & P just so they could get their 10%. Now it all amounts to the same thing, you pay the same either way.
The only advantage of choosing free postage is it looks better for sales but your only fooling buyers into thinking they are getting something for nothing when really your just adding it to the asking price.
This becomes even more unfair to international buyers because they are in effect paying the UK shipping plus international shipping.
I sell a lot of CD's and DVD's for around £3 each. It costs me over £1.70 to send them so I'm damned if I'm going to give absolutely free postage and only make £1 each sale

burnleymik wrote: »

eBay have the competition crushed at the moment as the sellers are forced to go where the buyers are and there are so few viable, established competitors.

I've tried out the competition (other online auctions) and never sold anything at all.
For large items which are expensive to send I use a number of free ad sites such as Gumtree (ironically owned by Ebay). I deal directly with the buyer and no one else gets a cut

burnleymik wrote: »

Hopefully someone will eventually get in on the act and we can finally have some competition for our business and stop being charged so highly.

I've seen others try and when they become too competitive Ebay just buys them out. They've done that in a number of countries worldwide. Now there is no real competition and it's unlikely there ever will be

mrs_sparrow

OP, they did this to try and get people to send things by free P&P as they made a huge thing of 'buyers like free postage' about a year ago. I, personally, choose to pay postage if I am buying multiple items as it means the items are cheaper if you buy more than one.

I think the replies were harsh too, some people do not use eBay all the time and might not have noticed the additional charge being bought in if they are occassional users. I've had 5 emails today and none of them have reached my personal email inbox, if I do not log onto eBay for some time they disappear from my inbox too, so it is possible that the OP overlooked the charges being bought in.

Sadly it is not illegal, it means the consumer, ultimately, has to pay more for their goods though.

lejog2003

burnleymik wrote: »

Some harsh responses in this thread.....

I think OP has a fair question to ask if eBay are ok to charge a premium on a service they have no involvement in and unfortunately they can.

Its a nonsense to argue that Ebay have no involvement in postage - they are providing a service for you to list items, for you to sell them and for you to charge for postage. They do not have any direct involvement in you listing or selling the item either, but they have always charged for these - they have to cover the multi-billion dollar costs in providing their services to sellers somehow.

The imposition of fees on p&p was just an increase in fees, it did have a minor positive benefit for sellers that those sellers who avoided Ebay fees by setting an artificially high p&p price and low sales price now pay their fair share.

vinylmusic

RFW wrote: »

You are well within your rights to take Ebay to court and challenge this fee. You'll need to take out a court claim for all your postage fees you want back, so if you've been charged ten lots of 20p that would be £2. Let us know how you get on.
Failing that, get over it. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs also receive a fee for a lot of the post that is sent within the UK,this is called VAT. Hopefully that's illegal too and I can get a few quid back.

VAT is legal and you know it and in my case it's not pennies. Their fees amount to quite a bit as I send a lot of packets abroad, Sometimes by international signed for and postage costs by themselves can be astronomical

RainbowDrops wrote: »

Why would it be illegal?

How can it be acceptable that they add a charge for a service that they are not themselves providing

ballisticbrian

How can it be acceptable that they add a charge for a service that they are not themselves providing

This is why I'm taking the micky, you just don't get it. The part where it says "postage and packing" isn't legally binding that's it's spent on post and packing. It could say "charge for lucy in the sky with diamonds."

lejog2003

ballisticbrian wrote: »

When you hand your money for postage over at the post office counter, some it it goes to the post office, some to Royal Mail and some to the shareholders, and presumably some on an office xmas party somewhere, but you don't say, "Hold on, this is purely Postage money and can't go on anything else!"

The subpostmaster who owns several of our local post offices seems to do very nicely thank you, he certainly hasn't worked in the post offices for years, owns a nice big country house and drives a flash car!

lejog2003

vinylmusic wrote: »

How can it be acceptable that they add a charge for a service that they are not themselves providing

You don't understand do you? They are providing software and web site services for you and support for these, they are charging for supplying these - it costs them several billion dollars a year to provide these services to their customers.

Part of the services they offer you is the facility to charge p&p to your customers.