Firstly I'd just like to express a few feelings about all these new rules coming in soon before asking the question I would like to know.
I've been selling on eBay for well over years now. I'm a genuine private seller & I sell my own things from around the home & also my wife's things from around our home. We have had a LOT to sell, especially over the last few years where we have both had a huge clear out. So the number is well into the hundreds (feedback numbers are not accurate as most don't bother to leave it any more). But still, a genuine private seller as I've never bought to sell. I'm a good seller too with 100% ratings & I don't want to stop selling our things on here, but these new rules coming in might be the death knell for me & just make it not worth the hassle like so many of you are contemplating. I don't sell on Vinted, clothing items anyway, as I don't like their business model which eBay will shortly be turning into! I don't like buying from them much either as you get something for £1 but pay over a fiver to receive it. Which now will happen on eBay! The fact we won't get paid for perhaps 2 weeks on non-tracked items is bad enough, & I KNEW that the zero fees would be leading up to something bad as I'm not deluded that eBay were just being good to us. Then you have the fact that now buyers just won't buy the lower cost items from you if you put your reasonable low price, then they get the buyers tax added on. So they'll just go elsewhere unless you undercut yourself even more when you make a loss anyway....
eBay used to be somewhere where people just sold their 2nd hand things. eBay's greed in allowing businesses to flourish as their main money maker has ruined things for everyone else. I think that there should be 2 site options, totally separate. Separate rules. Then that would be fairer & people could make a more informed choice instead of everyone being mixed up & you don't really know unless you go & search it out. Myself, I buy a lot off of here too & I always try to buy from private sellers rather than businesses unless I have no choice in the matter.
So to make a long story shorter & to get to the question I'm wondering about, I live on the Isle of Wight & we are classed as mainland postage for most operators. The costs are no different. It winds me up no end when people won't send items here, especially through RM or Yodel/Evri/DPD etc as they think it's an extra cost & it's not. Even when you ask them to amend their settings most won't... There are some couriers who don't come over here but they are in the minority. We have all the usual large ones.
BUT we do have a difference in sending things off of the Island. Number one, we do not 'yet' have any Inpost lockers over here. Certainly that I'm aware of. I always look on the official site, but so far, the nearest ones are on the mainland. So that option is out for me. Plus, the driving around to get to these sites if we did have them could be miles & miles away from each other over here. And number two, although we receive Evri deliveries we cannot send ANYTHING using Evri over here as we have no drop off points & they won't collect. It's stupid & we all have said time & time again why not as you are over here? But they just will not provide the service. We can use Yodel, RM, DPD, Parcelforce, the obvious ones, but we do not have the range of the mainland. So I always use RM Tracked 48 personally which works really well for me. Occasionally for very cheap items I'd used 2nd class post. But on the whole it's always Tracked. Occasionally the parcel is not scanned as having arrived like so many of us, but not that often.
So does anyone know how if we are forced to use eBay combined shipping rather than choosing ourselves, how does this work for someone like me who cannot use the options available to send? I doubt eBay would even know & assume we are all on the same footing... Why are eBay not being more transparent???
I used to use Yodel, but it just got too time consuming to deal with all their tracking & delivery complaints so I gave up using them in the end as they were too unreliable & a lot took forever to arrive when I had paid for a certain time limit. Half the time if you spoke to anyone on the phone you'd just be fobbed off... So RM it is for me. With these new buyers taxes added on, a lot of people will just not want to buy the lower priced items with the higher postage costs that I have no choice but to use...
But yes, any ideas from anyone if we are going to be forced to use eBay's shipping methods & choices & if so, any ideas on the rules of it all? Will we have our own choice if we can't use certain delivery options? I think if we are forced I'll have no choice but to stop selling on here. As it would be either impossible & impractical. Which would be a huge shame as I've been doing it for so long now. Genuine private sellers are being shafted by eBay when we were the ones who started the whole thing off when it first opened up. I know a lot of private sellers are actually businesses in disguise but eBay could easily sniff these out but they won't as they make money out of them. HMRC shouldn't be policing these sites. The sites themselves should be the ones forced to make sure they're not allowing illegal selling activity when it comes to tax. Sad times.
Currently, I've decided to take everything off of here on the 2nd Feb of what I have left to sell & I am going to watch & wait to see what everyone else is experiencing before I consider relisting anything again. In the mean time I'll try to shift the other bits we have on local selling sites. But then you have all the time wasters! eBay why did you do this to us? Why not just bring the fees back?! Anyone selling lower priced items will be so much worse off. It won't be worth doing it any more.
Cheers then.
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