eBay

nikonitis · ‎29-09-2025

Am I reading this right, that I now cannot set the postage charge? Having sold an item, the system is charging me a lot more than what I paid to send the item from my local post office. Is there a way to avoid this. Why should I pay eBay from postage? Is their way of extracting money from you when the selling is free?

**peaseblossom** · ‎29-09-2025

As long as you use the ebay Simple Delivery postage label the buyer pays for it, not you. If you've bought postage yourself from your post office you cannot get that back. The buyer will automatically receive a refund for the unused label in 30 days.

If you used Free Delivery - Seller Pays then you did pay for the postage label and you can cancel it here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/claims/simple-delivery/refund/seller

But you will only get a refund if the postage you bought is tracked.

style_wise · ‎29-09-2025

So it looks like you are offering Free Delivery on most of your listings so, yes, you have to buy Simple Delivery postage from eBay. In account settings you can choose from several couriers. When you use Royal Mail the SD label is actually cheaper than over-the-counter, offers up to £750 coverage, plus if an item is lost/damaged then eBay pay the refund and you keep the purchase price. Also they protect you from Negative/Neutral feedback related to delivery issues.

That said, a lot of your items are £20 or under. eBay just changed so that you can choose Custom Postage for most of these. Do do this list with the correct price, make sure your Simple Delivery is set up for 'Large Letter' size, then CP should activate. Once you choose CP you can choose any size/weight for these items.

As for why you (or your Buyer) should pay for eBay SD, because eBay require it of Private Sellers now. I think almost everyone would agree they would like the choice, but if eBay hadn't made SD obligatory I would never have tried it. Now I miss it in the Categories where it is not yet offered, which is a complete 180 and makes me laugh!