eBay simple delivery (merged)

soolin

se2020 said:

soolin said:

These are the postage rates for SD. It’s worth noting that the postage goes up if one of the options is disabled.

How will this work with auctions that start low then end up over £100?

I can see buyers complaining if the postage price increases after they place a bid that takes it over £100!

There is absolutely no clarity around that scenario at the moment, I might even go as far as suggest even eBay don’t know the answer. 

My only thought would be that if they bid less than £100 then postage would be set for the lower price, but if they bid over £100 then the highest cost would be shown , if it ended up over £100 then obviously the buyer would have entered a bid of over £100 even if at the time of bidding the price hadn’t reached anywhere near that.

however, that seems a bit flakey, but being eBay, that’s what they will do. 

Spoonie_Turtle

soolin said:

Apologies for the influx of posts but I think this simple postage is a huge step by eBay and is likely to cause some sellers real issues. In fact, I think it is possibly the most disruptive change made by eBay in years.

Definitely. 

I used to buy more than I was actually looking for from sellers selling things that I liked or could make use of, because they could combine postage.  I have no doubt many buyers did the same, from the amount of listings saying to look at their other items and they could combine postage.  This is going to kill that completely for private sellers.

Green_hopeful

soolin said:

Green_hopeful said:

So i have some items which pre date the new fees thing. As a result the postage is included in the price. Is it worth me changing the postage to a more accurate separate postage cost to make it easier when it ‘automatically’ switches to Simple postage. I was going to list the last few items of a batch now but I am not sure if I should bother. 

It’s quite frustrating because there is quite a lot of nuance to posting random stuff from the house. I am quite often not 100 percent sure how I will post until i sell and pack it up. 

I took the decision to end and relist my very few items that were free post, and have added postage to them as my freepost assumed either a letter stamp or a large letter stamp, whereas EBay will charge me £2.70 minimum for a pre paid label. 

As for postage methods, you choose the postage method when you list , I’m not sure what you mean by choosing only when item is sold. In future assuming you have both RM and Evri enabled, you won’t know which the buyer has chosen until eBay send you the label. 

Thanks Soolin. Sorry I didn’t explain myself very well. I try to get items into a large letter envelope but sometimes when they are actually packed I have not been able to meet the size requirements so end up paying small parcel to make sure the postage is sufficient. I am only selling to get rid of things not to make big money. I mostly sell elderly books that charity shops don’t want but people seem to quite like. I just pod along selling a book or two a week. 

Green_hopeful

Well I have just spent 2 hours getting rid of the free postage listings and adding the postage to them. Mostly I think it’s made the listings marginally cheaper because I have reduced the price to take into account the postage. 

JWM

soolin said:
To confirm Simple delivery will be optional for items that are priced £10 or under and lightweight( 100g or under) so if your items are in this range then you should be able to continue with your own postage.

If true this would be great.....but let's see what happens. 

soolin

JWM said:

soolin said:
To confirm Simple delivery will be optional for items that are priced £10 or under and lightweight( 100g or under) so if your items are in this range then you should be able to continue with your own postage.

If true this would be great.....but let's see what happens. 

I'm still unable to find anything on the ebay help pages that states this categorically, there is some badly written nonsense with poor punctuation that mentions exemptions, but doesn't atate any limits.

However, I did end and use sell similar on quite a few of my items last night (and woke up to a little flurry of sales- hurrah!) and again on many of my listings,  LL ones under 100g and under £10 with postage had no option at all for simple delivery. 

coffersd

Under £10 and lightweight covers about 5% of my ebay stock and a lower percentage of overall sales.I am hoping there will be a way around simple delivery.If not the obvious place for the  majority of my stock is abebooks.I would miss the ebay global shipping programme but the hassle of having to print off labels or buy a  smertphone and hope the post office or evri will print labels for me is greater than the benefit of the ebay GSP.

soolin

coffersd said:

Under £10 and lightweight covers about 5% of my ebay stock and a lower percentage of overall sales.I am hoping there will be a way around simple delivery.If not the obvious place for the  majority of my stock is abebooks.I would miss the ebay global shipping programme but the hassle of having to print off labels or buy a  smertphone and hope the post office or evri will print labels for me is greater than the benefit of the ebay GSP.

There has been no mention at all of exemptions for parcel size items, except for briefly stating overweight or cheap and bulky items - but punctuation makes it unclear if it is an and/or situation. Ebay has been quite clear that simple delivery will be compulsory. You are not alone in being unable to use it through not having either a printer or a phone.

However, the parcel size rate appears reasonably competitive , with Vat I think my buyers were charged £2.70 - and as I mentioned above it has resulted in sales. Some of the items I have sold overnight have been listed for quite a while, but late yesterday I ended them and relisted as sell similar with simple delivery - and those are the ones that sold . My buyers seemd to be more willing to buy with the disocunted postage - but these were all cheap items , mostly around £10, so a 70p or so saving makes a lot of difference. None of my relisted LL items with my own postage sold at all.

Obviously if you have no way of using a QR code then no amount of benefit is going to get round that, but you may find going to a much less busy site where you are charging over market rate for postage will severely limit your sales. 

swingaloo

I have just listed 3 items, all ladies clothing and all with a starting bid of £2.99. 
Two of the listings allowed me to use my own postage but the third would not- no option to change either. So I decided to go with Simple delivery just to see how it worked out.

But- when I did the listing it quoted the postage as Buyer or Seller will pay £2.72, yet when I go into the listing to view it is showing the price for postage to the customer as being £2.28.

Is that just a blip or is it normal for the prices to be different like that.

soolin

swingaloo said:

I have just listed 3 items, all ladies clothing and all with a starting bid of £2.99. 
Two of the listings allowed me to use my own postage but the third would not- no option to change either. So I decided to go with Simple delivery just to see how it worked out.

But- when I did the listing it quoted the postage as Buyer or Seller will pay £2.72, yet when I go into the listing to view it is showing the price for postage to the customer as being £2.28.

Is that just a blip or is it normal for the prices to be different like that.

I think its VAT , I tried to work it out on one of mine and it does fit if it is postage + VAT on the postage. 

Again trying to find the positive in this change, the buyer sees a lower postage cost (they are shown it with VAT before they bid as I've just bought somehting myself) and from the seller point of view all you have to do is send it. After that it becomes ebay's problem. All those 'where's my item' isues can be answered by 'ask ebay' etc. Money to the seller is released quickly as well. 

I just want some sort of clarity around LL items that are low in value and under 100G.