Postage costs and hiding VAT

bartelbe

This is mainly about car parts but it applies to other UK internet sellers. I really want to buy direct from seller/supplier sites rather than sending money to Amazon/ebay. That way they don't have to pay fees and hopefully I get things cheaper. Except it doesn't work out that way.

For example I just priced up the parts for an engine rebuild from a UK supplier, on their own site. The postage charges and VAT were hidden till just before checkout, at which point I went how much. I then proceeded to price exactly the same parts from ebay and even using three different sellers, paying for three different delivery services, the postage was half as much.

One of the sellers I am buying from on ebay is the same supplier I originally tried to buy from and the postage they charge on ebay is lower than their own site. This sort of behaviour from UK sellers drives me up the wall, it is obvious they are making extra from postage and think if they hide the true costs of things till just before checkout, they can get away with charging more. It is as if they are unaware of the existence of big online selling platforms.

Yet the same sellers involved in these sharp practices are the first to complain about fees from the likes of ebay and are annoyed that people don't buy direct from them.

TripleH

With eBay you aren't paying them but a separate seller. EBay is just a platform, the only issue is making sure where the parts come from.

With the car parts, if most of their customers are businesses who reclaim VAT it's not unusual to quote the net price.

jon81uk

The eBay prices will be retail.
Direct from their own site might be designed for business to business sales, hence the VAT not being included.

eBay also set maximum costs for postage in some categories, so it is possible the business wants to charge more but eBay won't let them.

Andy_L

Sometimes when you buy a company's stuff from amazon they may be using amazons warehouse and delivery services so are leveraging Amazon's economy of scale. If you go and by direct from them they aren't & thus the higher cost

RogerBareford

bartelbe said:

This is mainly about car parts but it applies to other UK internet sellers. I really want to buy direct from seller/supplier sites rather than sending money to Amazon/ebay. That way they don't have to pay fees and hopefully I get things cheaper. Except it doesn't work out that way.

For example I just priced up the parts for an engine rebuild from a UK supplier, on their own site. The postage charges and VAT were hidden till just before checkout, at which point I went how much. I then proceeded to price exactly the same parts from ebay and even using three different sellers, paying for three different delivery services, the postage was half as much.

One of the sellers I am buying from on ebay is the same supplier I originally tried to buy from and the postage they charge on ebay is lower than their own site. This sort of behaviour from UK sellers drives me up the wall, it is obvious they are making extra from postage and think if they hide the true costs of things till just before checkout, they can get away with charging more. It is as if they are unaware of the existence of big online selling platforms.

Yet the same sellers involved in these sharp practices are the first to complain about fees from the likes of ebay and are annoyed that people don't buy direct from them.

People have already given good reasons why there is a price difference from eBay to their own websites but in addition to that they also have a captive audience on their website. So if someone is going their direct they may find they don't shop around so they can charge more without losing any business.

But in regards to your final statement where are these sellers complaining about fees and getting annoyed that people don't buy direct? I've never seen any complaints from any businesses about this and any decent business will recognise that the fees are worth it to reach a much wider audience and to use their system to manage sales.