02-06-2026 3:42 PM
I've just sold a big book for which I received £2.01 from Ebay, but now I've received a £1.66 charge from Ebay for underpaid postage. So obviously it was hardly worth the effort of listing it.
Yes, I fully admit the book should have been a small parcel not a large letter, hence the charge, but it's not practical to weigh/measure every book when listing, so my listings are typically set to the Ebay recommended Simple Delivery charge as generated automatically when I listed them.
Recently though I noticed you can adjust postage after the sale if the final parcel does indeed turn out to be wrong. So I tried to do that on an earlier parcel, but on that occasion it messed up the collection from home I'd already booked and caused a huge headache. I had to contact Ebay customer service to sort it out, and even then it cost me an additional 30p and a lot of admin time as I had to go to the Royal Mail website to re-book collection. The Royal Mail collection website requires entering addresses and a lot of faffing about, lol. I have to order a collection for every sale, so I certainly didn't want to have to do that every time--it's much quicker and easier through Ebay and it's free.
So I stopped adjusting the postage cost after sale and just kept on ordering my collection from home hoping for the best and figured I'd worry about what to do if this caused a problem. Clearly it now has. (Sigh). I can't have random £1.66 fees popping up when a lot of the time I'm selling items for a pound or two.
What I'm wondering is if any sellers have any experience with this issue. It's possible the problem with collection from home was only an initial teething problem and is now fixed (though I'm doubtful about that). It's also possible it only happened because I adjusted the postage size *after* rather than *before* I booked collection from home. Has anyone out there managed to successfully alter the parcel size and order a collection from home through Ebay on the same parcel???
Obviously I don't want to have to try to alter my listings. Frankly, it's not practical, as I said before, to go around weighing/measuring all the books I have for sale. Trying to go around lifting/weighing all those books in one go would kill me, lol. Collectively they're far too heavy for me--I'm very puny! If I really can't sort this out the only option would be to de-list all my low value books that might incur fees.
If anyone has any experience on this issue or suggestions, all comments welcome.
02-06-2026 4:00 PM
Most books are going to be a large letter or a small parcel, so it may be worth getting one of the Royal Mail templates that are the same as the Post Office has, or just make one out of the side of a cardboard box with appropriately sized cut out slots.
02-06-2026 4:15 PM
Thanks, yes, I have one of those. But it's only really useful once the parcel is packed. I recycle packaging so never know how fat the final package will be.