ebay postage

[loocyloo]

Is it just me, or has ebay postage seemingly got much more?

it doesn't seem to matter what the item is, but the postage seems to be around the £5 mark !!

I was going to put a few things to put on ebay, but I know the sellers fees have gone up, so I am not sure I will bother, and just give the things to local charity shop! ebay do seem to be pricing themselves out of the market! I'm buying less and less from ebay.

[bunyip]

Depends when you're comparing with, I suppose.

Royal Mail changed its pricing structure a couple of years ago. They removed some weight brackets, so some parcels fell into a higher price band. They also introduced pricing points based on the dimensions of a parcel, not just its weight. This had a similarly inflationary effect. A friend of mine has a small home-based craft/modelling business and does a lot of mail order. He has switched almost entirely away from Royal Mail to the independent parcel companies which offer far better rates and will even collect from his door. I believe there are price comparison websites for delivery services, so do a search.

I've heard eBay have fixed P&P rates for some categories of goods, and a lot of sellers complain they are obliged to charge less than the cost of carriage for P&P.

Ebay have also begun to crack down on the unscrupulous sellers who claim all sorts of time/admin/petrol costs within their P&P charges. This is a breach of eBay's seller agreement. A seller may charge for the actual cost of carriage (ie. the stamp) plus a small amount to cover the cost of packaging materials. But there are still some sellers out there charging £5+ to shove an item in a 3rd-hand jiffybag and slap on a £2.80 stamp.

[loocyloo]

Depends when you're comparing with, I suppose.

Royal Mail changed its pricing structure a couple of years ago. They removed some weight brackets, so some parcels fell into a higher price band. They also introduced pricing points based on the dimensions of a parcel, not just its weight. This had a similarly inflationary effect. A friend of mine has a small home-based craft/modelling business and does a lot of mail order. He has switched almost entirely away from Royal Mail to the independent parcel companies which offer far better rates and will even collect from his door. I believe there are price comparison websites for delivery services, so do a search.

I've heard eBay have fixed P&P rates for some categories of goods, and a lot of sellers complain they are obliged to charge less than the cost of carriage for P&P.

Ebay have also begun to crack down on the unscrupulous sellers who claim all sorts of time/admin/petrol costs within their P&P charges. This is a breach of eBay's seller agreement. A seller may charge for the actual cost of carriage (ie. the stamp) plus a small amount to cover the cost of packaging materials. But there are still some sellers out there charging £5+ to shove an item in a 3rd-hand jiffybag and slap on a £2.80 stamp.

thanks.

it just seems that in the past year or so postage has gone up! I know royal mail has gone up, and I too, use parcel companies as it is much cheaper to post large items. I was talking about this this morning with a friend, and she said that ebay now take a %age fee of postage costs too, which is why they have gone up! ... just looked. fees are 10% of total selling price INCLUDING postage, so I can see why it has gone up some! and then there are the paypal fees of 3.4% plus 20p !
so ... if you sell something for 99p, and postage is £2.80 ... total selling price £3.79 ... ebay fees 38p paypal fees 33p ... so ... you have actually made 28p!

hmmmm, all that effort for 28p ... i'll give my bits to the charity shop!

[natlou82]

I've noticed lots of people are now selling through fb selling pages. Our local page must get around 100 or so items added each day and the beauty of this is that local people buy the items. There is also a page that sells childminding resources which I've also purchased from - worth checking out :-)