O/T postage costs - ebay versus online shops

[Roger Ford]

Ordered some M4 washers from ebay at a cost of 99p.

 

They came today, in a nice new ziploc bag, inside a nice new jiffy bag, with a 76p stamp on it.

 

And a PayPal note to the vendor showing a payment of 99p, minus 22p in charges, giving a final total of 77p.

 

There seems to be a real disconnect between ebay sellers, who must be making a loss on stuff like this, and the bigger online places who usually charge fixed postage of something like £7.95 per order. I feel almost guilty about buying low-value items on ebay now, but on the other hand I'm not going to pay 8 quid postage on something worth only a few pence.

 

Can we have somewhere in the middle, please? Charge postage at cost, and I'll happily buy from you.

 

 

 

[TobyCoulson]

It is amazing how some postage charges vary for the same item from different vendors. eBay do charge their commission on price of item and P&P but I can't imagine that would have much of a bearing on the disparity between postal costs.

[Guest]

As an online retailer I have to agree. Ive bought stuff that comes in a Jiffy bag, that I then re-use... the Jiffy back probably cost more than the item I bought (small electrical fuses etc)...

 

BUT the Royal Mail dont help here... they brought in pricing by weight AND size. The new Medium Parcel size is just too small for Helmets, which is annoying. And sometimes Special delivery is cheaper than First Class as there are different size restrictions.

 

It also means that its almost impossible to show the true cost of shipping, so we offer a range of options. If the customer has bought a combination of goods that fit in a smaller price bracket for shipping we refund the difference. when we do this our customers are very surprised.

 

Some of our competitors offer 'free shipping', but raise prices to cover this.