Simple delivery

[blueharrington]

I notice that from 26 Dec the only option to mail items for private sellers is via simple delivery. The problem for me here is that I send the vast majority of my items 2nd class Royal mail, I have thousands of 2nd class stamps which I use to send these items. I bought the stamps before Royal mail starting hiking up their prices every couple of months. Most of my sales are packs of guitar picks, which I send 2nd class in small envelopes. I have thousands of stamps and hundred's of pounds worth of stock, using simple delivery would put the price up to a point where I wouldn't make any sales. The only reason I can sell them cheaply is because I have a backlog of stamps.  I also have no printer, and  nothing to download a QR code onto, I'm an old age pensioner living in a 1 bed flat just trying to sell a few picks a week on eBay.

[jonatjonatjonat]

The obvious answer seems to be to upgrade to a Business Account.

The assumption there is you refer to stock, supply from a manufacturer etc. Which suggest you are buying the picks to sell, and they aren’t just a collection of guitar picks you are selling off.if you upgrade to a business seller account, you can choose your own postage.

[savageoi]

i am in the same boat and spend ages changing all my listings saying i combine postage , what i wondered re the new announcement is what does "eligible" mean ? Surely thats all listings? I don't want to spend ages taking listings off and adding messages to others only to find i can still use normal postage 

[sigsilver]

If your picks are priced under £20 they should be exempt but it depends which category you list them under.  Keep trying different ones until you find the which lets you choose your own postage.

    I don't understand why ebay are announcing simple delivery again.

[savageoi]

yes thats the rule they changed a few months back so i edited all my listings to say i combined postage, but it looks like from the 26th all listings will be simple delivery , which i assume means i can't combine postage so i will have to put ANOTHER message on at the start saying to ignore the other postage message - its already a mess as i had to add a message about royal mail delays , i wish someone frome bay would make it clear whats going to happen , i certainly won't be selling anything for £3 when postage is £3 

[dantwocats]

hold on  it says Starting 26 Dec ,it must be an old message resent from last year as we have been through all this already ?  but are all larger letters going to up graded to the small parcel recommended sizes ? ,they mess it all up last time and what about letters ? here we go again  

[25to4]

I remember that eBay stated they has "listened to their customers" and items valued under £10 with low postage costs ie stamps postcards etc would not now be subject to Simple Delivery...I'm assuming this is still the case?

Right Hand  Left Hand ?

[savageoi]

sadly this was todays email so it looks like they have changed their mind AGAIN , there's never anything in there you need to know like , can customers combine postage? How silly is it if a customer buys 3 small items you would have to use 3 labels or not get paid?

[savageoi]

yes the bit about parcel size is another mystery , Evri and Yodel have much more generous sizes compared to royal mail but email appears to suggest if they *bleep* up the size the PO will still have to take them whereas many people have been turned away

[blueharrington]

It would appear that eBay are perfectly happy to cut off their nose to spite their face. One minute they are dropping private sellers fees, the next they are making buyers pay a buyers protection fee... The items I sell are no more than £3 each, get shipped in a small envelope, and I doubt that I sell more than 10 items per week, certainly not enough to warrant moving to an ebay business account. I have heard that many sellers are simply closing their accounts altogether. Are there any other platforms similar to eBay where you don't have all these hurdles to jump ? eBay are just funneling down a route where we use either Royal mail or Evri but having to go through them to do it

[savageoi]

I do sell on other platforms as well, and while there can be issues anywhere, my experience has varied. I've also noticed changes on eBay recently, and it feels like non-promoted listings aren’t getting as much visibility.

[jonatjonatjonat]

I’d suggest you look up when a business account is required. How much you sell is not one of the reasons.

if you can’t make the right account work on eBay, I’d suggest closing the account.

[dantwocats]

being forced to be a business to avoid poor eBay practise  and avoid eBay over charging postage is a very poor solution for something that's easily fixed (letters and larger letters partly had been) but now going back to where it all started at the beginning of the year ! and reversing the changes they made with we have listened and!!  shows how much they think of sellers

[jonatjonatjonat]

Come off it - they are selling new guitar picks and refer to stock coming from a supplier.

They should be a business seller.

[savageoi]

its the chaos that gets me and the amount of time it takes to keep changing the rules in the listing , the find and replace only works sometimes so i have big blocks of texts where i have added messages at the start , and theres a block warning about postal delays last year still on that won't delete , looks a complete mess. And till the 26th i still don't know whether i have to add another block saying combined postage is no longer available 

[blueharrington]

In addition to my recent post.... I make about 8 to 10 sales of packs of 4 guitar picks per week, I doubt that this would warrant setting up an eBay business account, after the cost of postage there is a profit of a few pennies..  If it was a Hight street store I would be out of business by the end of the day.   An eBay business account  has a monthly starting  charge of £27, factor in VAT registration,  a registered business name, and a host of other fences required to be hurdled and the fact that I would have to charge around £7 for something I currently struggle to sell for £2.50..... Appreciate the feedback, but it would appear that there are some who have the notion of me running a multi million pound racket from the Seychelles.... Sadly eBay is no different than any other faceless organization, difficult to hold accountable, focused more on procedures than people... A sign of the times, no more no less

[jonatjonatjonat]

That just means your business isn't valid on ebay unfortunately.

[krafty-kreations]

I have just had a quick mooch at guitar picks and using the star wars guitar picks as an example, I would not buy from you, for an extra 5p I can get a pack of 5 from a correctly registered business seller who offers returns. 

Maybe buyers are now comparing sellers since the BPF came in and that is why you aren't getting many sales.

It can be difficult to run a online business, you have to work hard to get results, don't put all your eggs in one basket etc 

But that said if you feel it is okay to list on a private account then be happy to accept the stupidness they bring in to try and deter it, you are right they are difficult to hold accountable, they should put a stop to allowing business sellers to use private accounts making it fair for all business sellers instead of bringing in different measures to try prevent it and punishing the genuine private sellers

[dantwocats]

Its odd that someone can be a member for less than 10 years have no items for sale and have only 100+ feedbacks in that time ,spends a lot of time on the community and wanting sellers to go to a business account, (  if you are a business you should be ) to get round Simple Delivery problems which have been ongoing for 10 months and just going back to where it started  you then wonder who people are working for !

regardless to all that ,,, Simple Delivery has been a mess and a pain,,, and now going to get worse 

[crn303]

Hello .. can I ask where you and other recent posters mention that from 26 December it is to be simple delivery only ?  Where is this information from.  Not a criticism, just wanting to know if I have missed an announcement somewhere.   Thanks