Let's get 'Real' about "Postage & Packing"

Tojo_Ralph

BigDunc wrote:

When you are looking at a category listing you should see a 'Customise Display' link just to the right of the 'Sort By' option. You can add the Postage and Packing column, amongst others, to your default display.

What you cannot do however is have goods listed by a "PRICE" that reflects "actual" costs, i.e. current price + P+P.

lyniced

I never whack up the postage costs - I really do try to be fair to the buyer. Infact I occassionally lose money on postage (usually only pence) by trying to be too fair. Most of my p&p costs are within 20-50 pence of the p&p asking costs. I think buyers appreciate realistic costs.

balsingh

To attract buyers, I usually offer FREE p&p (obviously within the UK only). I work out roughly how much its likely to cost and then I bump up the starting bid a little bid. Buyers appreciate being able to pay the actual final bid amount.

jaffa30

balsingh wrote:

To attract buyers, I usually offer FREE p&p (obviously within the UK only). I work out roughly how much its likely to cost and then I bump up the starting bid a little bid. Buyers appreciate being able to pay the actual final bid amount.

Hi Theres no such thing as free P&P as you have said you bump up the opening bid to cover the P&P ( so hows it free then )


Imho if you charge a fair P&P price to cover whatever materials you have to buy to use ppl wont complain.

Jaffa

Tojo_Ralph

jaffa30 wrote:

Hi Theres no such thing as free P&P as you have said you bump up the opening bid to cover the P&P ( so hows it free then )
Jaffa

If there are no P+P charges, and the goods are shipped free of any additional charges over and above the final bid price, then P+P is effectively free. The fact that P+P costs have been factored into the starting bid price as an overhead, makes no difference to the fact that the goods are offered for sale and subsequently delivered, Free of P+P.

kingshir

Inflated P&P drives me nuts on QVC too. Sometimes they have an item at a reasonable price that I would really like and then there is anything between £3 to £5 added on for P&P which virtually wipes out any saving - then I don't buy!

Hermia

I wouldn't bid on something with a ludicrous postage charge. Generally I'll take the postage charge into account with the item price when deciding which item to bid for. The thing that really bugs me is when you pay high postage and then the packing is really shoddy. I won an auction for a CD where the p&p was £3.00 which is high compared to the price on other CD auctions. The CD was quite hard to get and I thought maybe the seller was buying new packaging so I was happy to bid. When the item arrived it was packaged in a jiffy bag that had been reused to many times it was virtually rotting. The CD was cracked because parts of the jiffy bag were threadbare and there was just a couple of stamps on the parcel. I mean, the guy could have bought a new jiffy bag and still had some money left to pay his fees!

jaffa30

Tojo


Adding the P&P to the starting price isnt really the same as free P&P the buyer is still paying the P&P its just hiden in the cost of the item.
It just looks good at the checkout stage of the purchase.


jaffa

s@sha

Personally, I would rather see P&P costs stated in the auction. I dislike auctions where the P&P isn't clear & it just says 'contact the seller'..call me cynical, but it makes me suspect that they will try to slap an unrealistic P&P charge on after the auction ends, especially if it's a small item that should be easy to calculate the postage for before listing. I don't bid if the P&P is not stated up front & I always include the P&P charge in my own auctions.

If a seller states free P&P then I don't mind that...buyers should be savvy enough to work out whether the price they are seeing is a ludicrous price that obviously includes an inflated P&P charge, or whether the item is still a good buy.

I thought it was pretty obvious to most people that you would factor in the P&P charge to what you are prepared to bid...and if you think the P&P is too high, then don't buy.

talksalot81

I have a couple of way of looking at this....

Handling charge, yes, absolutely! Postal insurance only covers a well packaged item, so doing a good packing job is part of the postage service. If I have to spend half an hour finding boxes and getting an item double boxed or whatever, why should i be expected to do that for free? If anyone else asked for my time, Id be charging them consultancy rates. If something is going to take me a half hour to package properly, id say someone is getting a bargain of my time if i only charge £10 on top of the postage fee! Im sure most professionals would agree that time should be paid for.

I also have another point of view which I havent actually ever tried to take advantage of.... If I buy an item from many mainland locations, I will get screwed because I live in northern ireland. I have had this happen on many times only for the item to appear with a service who actually dont surcharge for the sea crossing. Any time I have tried to bring this to a larger forum attention (not here), I have been shot down by those who dont have to pay such surcharges and told to shut up and accept it. Conversely im inclined to go along the thinking that, although i dont agree with it, it must be OK for me to charge an additional fee if im sending an item to the mainland UK as opposed to somewhere within NI.

Inspite of those two points, I only ever charge more than the approximate cost when the item is particularly troublesome to package.

I actually must admit I will avoid items with large postage, even if they do seem initially not bad in price. The first implication is that the seller is not really being honest which is all round bad for doing an ebay deal! Beyond that, like others, Im used to bidding on items with sensible shipping, it seems a trivial hassle, but having to calculate in a large postage fee just annoys me..... so i again avoid such auctions.

Adam