how long before free shipping becomes compulsary?

Brooker_Dave

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y08/m04/i22/s02

"eBay Encourages 'Free Shipping' with New Features"

"eBay is introducing two new features on its site to make the offer of free shipping "even more effective in attracting buyers." When sellers select standard free shipping in their listings, a new "Free Shipping" icon will appear in those listings."

tomstickland

They've probably done an analysis on how much they lose from shipping not attracting any fees.

RFW

tomstickland wrote: »

They've probably done an analysis on how much they lose from shipping not attracting any fees.

That's doubtful, they've been surveying non-customers and ex-customers. One of the main reasons buyers stop buying or never buy on Ebay is given as postage charges.

Customers much prefer a standard postage rate, that's why many of the larger companies offer it.

Brooker_Dave

RFW wrote: »

That's doubtful, they've been surveying non-customers and ex-customers. One of the main reasons buyers stop buying or never buy on Ebay is given as postage charges.

Customers much prefer a standard postage rate, that's why many of the larger companies offer it.

Just like customers prefer the security of paypal so thats why its being made compusary?

(nothing to do with profits or anything like that - honest)

RFW

Brooker_Dave wrote: »

Just like customers prefer the security of paypal so thats why its being made compusary?

(nothing to do with profits or anything like that - honest)

So if you were Ebay, what would you do? Look after your customers and look after profits or not?

Ebay is a business, not sure why people expect them not to look after their own interests.

vaio

RFW wrote: »

So if you were Ebay, what would you do? Look after your customers and look after profits or not?

Ebay is a business, not sure why people expect them not to look after their own interests.

Ebay is also an effective monopoly and as such should be regulated to prevent abuse of its monopoly position.

TKPeters

We offer Free P&P on all our items on one of our eBay Shops & our DSR's are on 4.6 for P&P charges, yet on our other 2 shops we charge P&P of £2.95 to £6.95 which have 4.8 & 4.9 on P&P.

So Free P&P may costs us FVF Powerseller discounts

RFW

vaio wrote: »

Ebay is also an effective monopoly and as such should be regulated to prevent abuse of its monopoly position.

As has been said elsewhere it isn't a monopoly. No one has to use Ebay as a buyer or seller. They monopolise the online auction market and for sellers the costs can be considered high, they are quite small in comparison to other auction houses. Ebay's charges for buyers (unlike the majority of other auction houses) are nil.

Unlike companies that are considered monopolies (utilities suppliers, airports, etc) anyone can open in opposition to Ebay, it isn't directly Ebay's fault that none of them are successful.

tomstickland

RFW wrote: »

That's doubtful, they've been surveying non-customers and ex-customers. One of the main reasons buyers stop buying or never buy on Ebay is given as postage charges.

Customers much prefer a standard postage rate, that's why many of the larger companies offer it.

Anyone capable of adding two numbers together should be able to cope with the concept of postage charges. When I used to sell things on Ebay I discovered that some buyers were exceptionally tight and expected to not only win a 99p bid but then that postage should be only the royal mail charge, seeming to forget that I had to wrap the parcel up and then take it to the post office at lunchtime.

Furthermore, I regularly buy at chain reaction cycles, screwfix and amazon and they all charge for postage. How else do I expect them to ship things to me. Or do I want free postage with the money coming from magic bean trees or something?

RFW

It's just a matter of perception. They're showing postage as "free" as a marketing exercise, it should really be "Post included".

People like things straightforward, so a 'free' or standard rates would be the way forward the rest should be included in the sale price.

However sellers justify 'packing' charges (travel expenses, time, staff, etc) we see on here every week cases of buyers not being happy that someone has spent £1 on postage and charged £1.50 for it. The more that can be incorporated into the sale price the happier the customer is. I find it baffling too, but that appears to be the case, although bizarrely it would appear that some buyers think that 'free' postage is somehow not quite right (sellers being marked down on DSRs).

soolin

I wonder also whether the rise of sales in DVDs and other small media is at part to blame for this idea? We are all being encouraged to treat Ebay like any other online retalier, even Martin said to do that in his last TV programme. So when people search for say a DVD they usually get the big players on the shopbots first so we get Play and Blah and HMV all of whom offer postage included in price, same for books, Waterstones give free postage as do many others. Maybe ebay are looking to take them on?

The other big player for media and books is Amazon and they of course have two ways to purchase either through their shop where free postage can be obtained once you spend over £15, or through marketplace where postage is a fixed amount per item and set by Amazon not the seller on media items. Amazon have already started to show the postage on the buying pages when they rank how much someone is going to have to pay.

Being ebay maybe they started with an idea of free postage on these more popular items and forgot about all the huge amount of other things that people sell?

Normally I don't listen to rumours but just recently within a few weeks of someone on here hearing something about ebay it seems to have been out into plan, so now I do take notice to some extent. Also as a US registered user on my main account I have been getting some weird and wonderful emails about postage already from ebay.