eBay Postage Charges Rant

[slycat]

I've not had to sell anything on eBay for a while and so this is new to me. Basically I was putting an item up for sale, a Japanese copy of Katamari Damacy & case for PSP incidentally, only to find I couldn't sell it and charge for postage. I thought this was a bug at first but there was no way to overcome it. Turns out that eBay now have the ability to enforce maximum postage amounts for items based on their category. What's more, for PSP Games and Accessories, the maximum postage you can set is zero! This had be absolutely fuming when I worked out what was going on. For us mere mortals, postage is not free. I have to buy a suitable packet for the item and pay for the item to be shipped. What gives eBay the right to force me to charge nothing? I'm not a charity!

With no way around this other than putting the item in the incorrect category, I've had to give in and submit the item with free postage. I'm really not happy about eBay having this level of control though. I'm all for them ensuring that people can't charge too much for postage but forcing them to charge nothing is just scandalous...

And if you're interested, here's the item for sale.

Comments

[pippinbear.livejournal.com]

I need to stuff a few things on ebay sometime, too.

Of course, just because they require you to set the "postage" charge to 0 doesn't mean you can't charge for postage. You just have to set your starting price higher so that it includes the amount you would have charged for postage.

Anyone bidding should already be taking the postage charge into account when deciding how much to bid, so it shouldn't make much difference in theory. In practice, of course, a lot of people probably don't look at the postage charge, which is why, e.g., some chinese sellers charge 99p for an item plus £30 postage - they are just fiddling the system so they can pay ebay fees only on the tiny nominal item value and not the large "postage" charge - which is actually mostly the price of the item, not the postage.

So the way it works out, ebay's just fiddled the system the other way, so that you end up having to pay their final value fee on the postage element of your selling price too. In which case, you just have to bump up your starting price again to cover that too. It's not great, but... there you go.

[fyphfoko.livejournal.com]

was gonna say

what i would do is but the price a couple higher, and then i would explain whats going on in the descript. thats just me

[tktiger.livejournal.com]

I saw this on Sci's journal.

I was thinking about getting rid of some of my old games on eBay. I won't bother now, or I'll make them all "buyer collect".

[tilt-longtail.livejournal.com]

WTF I have never heard of that before....
but remember.....
there is always a way around EVERYTHING!

[slycat.livejournal.com]

Well yeah, either charge more on the minimum bid, or put it in the wrong category... but the bid will always be what people want to pay irrespective of postage and if it's in the wrong category, you run the risk of less views.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Bizarre! I'm fine with sane limits on P&P, to prevent the cost all being lumped into some ridiculous "postage" fee, but forcing it to zero?

Still, there are enough folks easily reachable for something like that as to render the matter moot, I'd've thought; do you actually need eBay?

[slycat.livejournal.com]

For stuff that's got more niche appeal like what I'm selling above, eBay's the only way of bringing it to the worldwide audience it needs to be able to find the right buyer.

Oh, and eBay try to justify the zero postage in this statement, however the reason why retailers offer zero postage is because they have to to remain competitive with other retailers. However eBay is not a retail site, it's mostly ordinary people just selling their crap. They have to pay for the postage and packaging...

[moshiicake.livejournal.com]

Take it down, because i'll buy it from you and I'll let you charge me postage :P

It's worth it for the Prince case at least.

[slycat.livejournal.com]

I'm aware the case is the unique item so I expect it to sell for more than my starting price. If you want it, you'll need to bid on it. At least you know you'll get free postage :P

[giro-batol.livejournal.com]

yes , I think the work around is to offer free postage on collect, and then offer a special delivery price. I just changed the price on my 99p with 1.0 postage items to 2.10 with free postage. After 30 days when everyone has had to offer under the same deal things should get back to normal, the extra 10p is because i didn't put the price up when the postage office put up prices, and once it goes past the magic 99p price there didn't seem any point to make the price seem cheaper. Again its the buyers that lose out.