Getting a start price to show as £8.99

[zoomingmouse]

I don't seem to be able to get a start price of £8.99.  It either shows as £8.98 or £9.00.

Is this amount not possible with the added buyer fee, is it a  glitch, or am I missing something glaringly obvious?

[wellingnorth]

I've found the same, some prices are not achievable, to do with how ebay are rounding the numbers I suppose.

[vinylscot]

Certain prices just aren't doable with BPF, because of the the way eBay deals with rounding involved in the calculations. At some points, adding 1p to the purchase price will cause the BPF to be rounded up by a penny too, so it has the effect of a 2p rise.

You can't set something at £4.00 either - £3.15 gives you £3.99, and £3.16 give you £4.01. (This is despite £3.15 equating with £3.996, so you would expect it to be rounded up - but it's not.)

Also bear in mind, that one day eBay may decide to correct their calculations so that the fixed element of BPF is actually 75p as advertised, and not 72p, as it is in practice. That will change all your pricing again.

[werew_16]

I don't think it's a glitch - just the rounding that happens when the 75p + 4% is applied. I found £6.50 was also impossible to get.

[dch2112011]

Is it such an issue over 1p !  It rounds up or down to the nearest 1p based on the percentages applied 

We deliberately avoid the old fashioned 99p deception that was prevalent years ago to try and convince buyers that it was less than a £1 

All of our prices are at the price they should be whether it is £9 or £12.67  buyers these days see through the 1p reduction and are more than happy to buy items realistically priced - it is off putting when buyers see lists of items ending with 99p - they quite rightly think that a seller is manipulating the price whereas when they see random prices they feel they are correct and as they should be.

Our sales increase year on year with this method of honest pricing and never once has a buyer commented on the prices not ending with 99p nor have our sales declined - 

Out of interest when you buy anything does it have to end in 99p - take a look at your supermarket receipt or your last 20 purchases and see just how few items end in 99p !

It is no longer a come buy me price draw !

[zoomingmouse]

No, it's not a big deal I'll just list at a penny lower.

I was just wondering if something odd was going on as I've not listed since Simply delivery was added, but this listing also wouldn't show SD <shoes, yet other shoes allow SD which is another confusion for me - don't take much> plus I had problems generally with it updating, so just wondered if something was wrong.

£8.99 to me just looks better than 9.01 probably because I've grown up with everything ending 99p 😀

I'm not a business so I don't think honest pricing even entered my head, I've always just done it.

[vinylscot]

A couple of rather odd assertions in your post. (Not saying they're wrong, just odd.)

I think you're correct philosophically with the 99p theory, BUT I don't really think that has filtered down to the general public's buying habits. Many private sellers have complained that the BPF is resulting in incongruous pricing, which draws attention to the BPF, and puts off some potential buyers. As a result, I believe many business sellers (especially smaller businesses) will stick to the round pound or 99p endings, to avoid being caught up in this assumption.

Secondly, your supermarket analogy doesn't really hold as the majority of items will be low-priced - my most recent £55+ receipt has only one item priced at over a fiver (and fifteen at under a pound), and six ending at 99p, from 31 items.

[dch2112011]

So 25 items are randomly priced and 6 end in 99p - does that not prove the point that the majority of items these days do not end in 99p  even in supermarkets where price point is everything ?

I know some people are price mad and will travel 20 miles to buy petrol at 1p less but they are the minority -   likewise most buyers will not in general these days buy an item just because it ends in 99p

[wellingnorth]

---

@vinylscot wrote:

I think you're correct philosophically with the 99p theory, BUT I don't really think that has filtered down to the general public's buying habits. Many private sellers have complained that the BPF is resulting in incongruous pricing, which draws attention to the BPF, and puts off some potential buyers. As a result, I believe many business sellers (especially smaller businesses) will stick to the round pound or 99p endings, to avoid being caught up in this assumption.

---

Many casual ebay buyers don't know about the Buyer Protection Fee, so the pricing looks odd and they don't know why. I was telling someone about the introduction of the BPF recently and they had noticed all the odd prices on ebay, but hadn't realised what the reason was for them. I wish they would switch it to work more like V*nted where you get a clear breakdown of seller price + fees at every stage of the process from search results on. (D*pop is worse - there they don't even show their fee until checkout)

[ruby*ryan]

I have gone for £x.95, if I can't get £x.99.

[vinylscot]

No, it doesn't show that at all. It shows that lower priced items will more than likely have oddly numbered pricing. If I buy 3 bananas, it will be 81p, not 99; my six eggs will be £1.45, not £1.99

As the price point increases, so does the frequency of the 99p ending.

[department28]

Sellers are used to being able to set their prices exactly as they want them to be, whether ending in 99p or not.

The BPF has totally messed this up - if you want to reduce or increase the price of an item, it's no longer a simple matter of adding or subtracting a £1.00 or whatever, because the BPF has to be taken into account for every adjustment.

It's fine if you don't care about this sort of thing, and are ok with weird looking prices, but I think many of us have not appreciated eBay tacking on these odd/variable amounts, especially if you happen to prefer tidy, round numbers, or the traditional 95p/99p ending prices.

[dch2112011]

---

@vinylscot wrote:

'As the price point increases, so does the frequency of the 99p ending.'

I thought you might be onto something  I randomly selected coffee machine so I searched ebay for coffe machine - sorted highest price  p&p  first  to fit in with your thoughts

I had to scroll through 700 items before finding a price ending in 99p - How does this fit in with your philosophy ?  

It seems that while some sellers  think 99p works those  with high prices  don't ! The price range was 10k to 1.5k 

---

[vinylscot]

You're better than this.

I'm presuming you limited your search to items located in UK, as obviously currency conversions will give odd prices. Almost the whole of the first page of results are items listed by so-called "private sellers", who are anything but. Most of these are just placeholder prices, some over ten times the usual price. Nonetheless, they do attract the BPF, so prices will still look unnatural.

I think you are taking my comment a bit too literally. Obviously, as you reach MUCH higher prices, odd pennies at the end of prices are far less common - most items are priced in round pounds. I'm not going to speculate where the cut-off point is, because you understand my point perfectly well; you're just being a little contrary.

[rigbyl01]

At the moment if yo7 list something for £6.99 it shows at £7.99 , not sure about what you are asking .

[craddockcourtsales]

For fun grandson looked at price of a 200g can Heinz Baked Beans onlne.

ASDA, Morrisons, Sainsburys, Tescos, Waitrose

All were £1.00 (or two for £1.50)

None were 99p

I think the supermarket marketing experts are going for round pounds.

[dch2112011]

---

@vinylscot wrote:

You're better than this.

I think you are taking my comment a bit too literally. Obviously, as you reach MUCH higher prices, odd pennies at the end of prices are far less common - most items are priced in round pounds. I'm not going to speculate where the cut-off point is, because you understand my point perfectly well; you're just being a little contrary.

---

No not contrary - just thought you might be onto something - I looked at a random common item - coffe maker (because I had just used a coffee maker no other reason) - general search starting highest price.

Nearest 99p ending item was at around the 700th item 10k to 1.5k  then looked at every 5th page down to £100 where the items ending in 99p increased to approx 10% of all prices listed 

I can make your theory fit better by filtering the search criteria but then it would be biased  !

Searching 'used coffee machines' produces approx 15% ending 99p on the first 60 search results  and when restricting to the UK increases to approx 20% ending 99p on the first 60 results

When sorting on price MIN - MAX first 60 results

0% end in 99p highest price UK only

Approx 2% when searching lowest  price UK only 

I used ebay for the search results as it is ebay that is members concern - using 'used coffee  machines'  should include all private sellers.

The point of the comments was simply that buyers no longer are drawn to the prices ending in 99p as they were when it was first used on the high street -

This may be due to the different nature of online selling and the ease of mass search which is able to draw advertised pricing together instantly in a biased manner (paid for search, manipulated search)

Seeing a list of items all ending in 99p dilutes the view -

I notice that when a common used coffee maker is sold by several sellers many list at the same 99p ending price -  I guess they just copy each other - the one that stands out and attracts is the 'odd' looking price