Royal Mail price increase coming October 2025 could be the final straw.

[sanzibar17]

Let's face it. Small sellers are doomed and have been since eBay decided to concentrate and subsequently bend over backwards for their larger seller's needs.

Those that are barely hanging on in this unequal system, with its flawed fee structure and monthly shop subscription, which is on average about 18% to 22% of sales have probably just been handed a death blow from non other than Royal Mail.

I'd just like to thank RM for its decision not to increase the price of letters of which I send 2 a year and instead put all its price increase into parcels which is 99.99% of my business and if you're reading this probably yours.

eBay could help by either not passing on these price hikes or giving us smaller sellers some cut in fees, but I'm not holding my breath. 

[tribalgiftsuk]

Im feeling your pain and annoyance too. On my last accounting round i paid 25% in fees to Ebay (thats without promotions and includes shop fees and VAT) and 20% in postage to Royal Mail. Im working for pennies profit on some items and anything at the £10 mark going as a small parcel is now going to be a waste of time. So some of my stock will have to be taken off and some prices increased where i think it is viable to do so.

Its becoming so difficult to sell low priced items now and we will all be affected even private sellers will find customers having to pay at least £1 more per item as the buyer protection fee will also increase to cover the increased cost of postage.

I think its time to put the postage fees on instead of saying fee postage as things are going to look to expensive. I always liked saying free postage but those days are over.

[tribalgiftsuk]

I just realised what i said and i cant edit it now for private sellers it will probably be about 25p more on a small parcel not £1 and if you use Evri or any other non royal mail service it wont make a difference to you at all.

[sanzibar17]

Yes, but Evri are the worst of the worst.

[tribalgiftsuk]

I agree with you about Evri but i am sure they are going to lap up a lot of work with the new RM price increases. I personally wont be using them anytime soon. Would rather find a way to cover the extra charges with RM where i can. But im on the verge of throwing in the towel anyway on here anyway, selling gifts is not what it used to be 😄

[sml192]

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@tribalgiftsuk wrote:

Its becoming so difficult to sell low priced items now and we will all be affected even private sellers will find customers having to pay at least £1 more per item as the buyer protection fee will also increase to cover the increased cost of postage.

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The Buyer Protection Fee only applies to the item price, not the postage, plus Simple Delivery prices won't be directly affected by the increase to Royal Mail's published prices. 

[tribalgiftsuk]

Thats good that at least private sellers wont be affected by the price increase. Just bad news for business sellers ☹️

[sanzibar17]

Yep. I'm scaling down my business by about 60-70% and partially retiring. It's no longer worth the hassle just to make peanuts. We small businesses made eBay what it is, not the conglomerates on here today who have priced us out of the market, and all the vultures have swooped in to take their cut of our hard work.

[sanzibar17]

What do you class as Simple Delivery prices?

[style_wise]

The most insidious price increase is the International Economy one - again! You can see the new owners preparing to get rid of this service all together as they bring Economy and Standard prices closer each year. Not that this affects eBay 😉 but I just wish they were more straightforward about it. Same with the T48 insurance cutting in half. They do these things so quietly they would be easy to miss.

[messier44000]

Just to let you know, the NT 20-60x80 spotting scope you have shows the old discontinued 

version on the listing photo, but the new version which is completely different is in the description.

Would not wanting you getting an item not as described.

The old version has 2 year warranty with the new one warrantied for lifetime which you 

would need to honour.

[insidethe93]

I agree re eBay but Evri, at least for me, seem to deliver successfully when I buy from non-eBay sellers, both large and small businesses all running their own websites. By "successfully" I mean parcel undamaged, to me (not left in a hedge, say), on time.

I've been using such non-eBay sites a lot in the past 18 months (and using eBay correspondingly less) = a lot of Evri experience. I ended up having 12 consecutive non-eBay days earlier this month - a year ago that'd've been unheard of, and I'm no longer worried by (non-eBay) Evri.

I suspect it's because eBay allows Evri to get away with it. I doubt non-eBay firms would tolerate Evri's eBay-style behaviour for long, and would dump them. Two firms I buy from are very large, and Evri would notice it if they lost their business.

In short, eBay, you've got the size and leverage so please sort out Evri - any delivery problems, support your sellers!

[4_bathrooms]

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@insidethe93 wrote:

I agree re eBay but Evri, at least for me, seem to deliver successfully when I buy from non-eBay sellers, both large and small businesses all running their own websites. By "successfully" I mean parcel undamaged, to me (not left in a hedge, say), on time.

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Evri (and most couriers) seem to handle account and brokered items differently. Businesses with direct accounts and items sent after being booked directly on the courier's website rarely experience problems. However, items that have been sent through parcel brokers usually take longer to arrive and are more likely to be dropped in the recycling bin on collection day when they do arrive. There also seems to be a hierarchy when it comes to brokers with (eBay Delivery Powered By) Packlink sitting squarely at the bottom of the pile. 

I can only assume this is because the courier is paid less to handle brokered items as the broker is able to negotiate a dirt cheap rate based on the volume of parcels they send as a single customer. Whilst it might not be the company's policy to treat such items differently the zero-hour contract warehouse staff and self-employed drivers probably have little incentive to take much care of the brokered items they handle.