I just got the notification of how simple delivery will become the only option for private sellers like myself from 6 Aug. However, I feel like this policy in the current form makes no sense and will greatly harm private sellers running on thin margins.
[Copy-pasted to this board from another board]
Problem 1: Minimum postage cost is ~2.4 pounds per item. Pretty self explanatory, this makes selling anything worth less than 10-ish pounds pointless. Which is even more annoying than the original £0.75 starting buyer protection fee, making the price + postage price extremely uncompetitive.
Problem 2: Unable to merge orders. Many times my buyers purchase items in separate orders and I greatly enjoyed the "Combine Orders per Buyer" function on the page for getting postage labels, then refunding the excess postage. With the new system it is plain stupid to force a new label to be bought for every transaction.
I understand the intention of eBay setting up simple postage as a mean of protecting both sellers and buyers, but the current form is simply offputting to both parties - you don't protect people by driving them away. I'll offer my few cents on the issue as an active seller selling mostly low (<£10) valued items.
Suggestion 1: Make simple delivery only mandatory for items of value higher than a threashold of £20 (or similar). It makes no sense to pay £2.4 on postage for a £2 item, both for the buyer and the seller. Alternatively, make simple delivery only mandatory for sellers with frequent issues with deliveries. Personally I send off all items, tracked and untracked, at my local post office with receipts, and in previous cases was able to locate items claimed to be missing buy buyer even for untracked 2nd class mail through Royal Mail online claims centre.
Suggestion 2: Refund unused labels. This is mostly targeting to solve the inability to merge orders. To my knowledge Royal Mail Click & Drop would automatically refund purchased postage label if not used 1 week after purchase. Simple delivery could very well refund the party who paid for delivery (either buyer or seller) after 1 week if the label has not been used. This is the logical option since in my experience, not all buyers are familiar with the site enough to request combined invoice, or even to place all items in one order before checking out. This could ensure efficiency for both sellers and buyers as well as saving on unused postage costs.
If you resonate with the problems and suggestions, please leave a thumbs up so hopefully the eBay team can see it before they drive most of the private sellers away. There is not much time before they will impose the utterly nonsensical policy on us.
