Free post with simple delivery

[honeymonster007]

Just wondering how it works.

If  someone buys an item listed with free postage and the seller doesn't have any funds available how's the postage paid for? 

[wintersdawn1]

If the seller selected 'free postage' when they listed the item, when the buyer purchases the item ebay takes the bpf and the seller is forced to buy the postage label from ebay and the seller gets the item price.  Not 100% on this but would think the seller would pay for the ebay postage label via cleared/pending funds from other sales or from the bank account/card that the seller added when they signed up for ebay/managed payments.

If the seller does not use the postage label that ebay forced them to buy and instead arrange their own postage label, the unused postage label they bought from ebay *should* be refunded back to the seller after a certain number of days has elapsed.

[edwardian-dreams]

Yes, It will be either from pending funds or claw it out of your bank 

don’t think there’s any other option 

hopefully eBay take it from pending funds but who knows 

[honeymonster007]

Thank you. Did wonder if it would come off a card but wasn't 100% sure.

Wonder if its worth keeping some kind of slush fund to cover free post items, although the ideal way would be to pay for it on a credit card I'd imagine.

[edwardian-dreams]

No the ideal way is for eBay to allow sellers to  charge and pay for post as they see fit 

Not  to have a slush fund for ebays fanciful ideas 

just thought I’d add that in lol

[honeymonster007]

Seems postage is taken out of funds even if they are pending!

Think mixing free post items with + postage items could end up very confusing 😱

[vinylscot]

I believe this is the way to force eBay to change tack.

If a huge number of private sellers changed to "free postage", and dealt with their own shipping as they always had previously, eBay would have a huge amount of admin involved in refunding all the unused labels.

Yes, it would all be automated, but it would still have a cost, and it would severely impact the amount eBay profits from SD, if they were processing fewer items via SD.

I imagine that's what most of the large "pseudo-private" sellers will be doing, as, apart from annoying eBay, it will make processing their mail so much simpler.

It certainly seems like the most sensible way forward, until eBay sort out this mess. I know it will involve having some money tied up in eBay for a time, but perhaps that's a price worth paying. 

[wintersdawn1]

Sounds like a good plan, the only downside I can see is if a private seller puts free postage so the postage is built into the item price the BPF will be slightly higher but from my calculations for a low price item its only a  few pence.

Although putting free postage on a simple delivery listing, ebay will still force me to buy their label initially, which I resent, but as long as its eventually refunded, some say 30 days, not too bad.  At least I can do my own label and make sure it's correct as I'll never send anything with an incorrect sd 'marketplace seller' label on it.

Also, as you say, it will impact ebay's sd profits if a lot of private sellers offer free postage so they won't make anything out of us, will have to maintain the system to keep track of unused labels and will have to refund the unused label back to the private seller.

[honeymonster007]

Figured it out. It looks like the postage cost comes out of the funds from the sold item rather than touching any other funds.

That makes things a lot easier to keep track off. 

On to combined and global shipping next 👀