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

[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.