What went wrong?

[janet8758]

I recently posted a small thin book after changing the postage option to Royal Mail 2nd class letter at 87p. Buyer selected this option. Book sold for £3.00 but I only received £1.18 as eBay charged £2.69 postage taking the shortfall of £ 1.82 out of my order earnings. 
Can someone shed any light on this? Thanks.

 

[wgwillia]

It's called Ebay robbery.

[janet8758]

They stitched me up like a kipper!
 😞

[style_wise · Accepted solution]

This is my best guess, and it's an easy mistake to make! When you sell a Buyer Pays postage item with Simple Delivery you press the tile for 'Get Prepaid Postage Label'. When you sell the same item with Custom Postage if you press the tile for 'Get Postage Label' then you are choosing to buy postage from eBay instead of going to the Post Office to buy a 2nd Class stamp. eBay postage is always tracked and costs more.

[jonatjonatjonat]

You listed with custom postage.

you got 87p as per your listing to buy postage.

with custom postage there is no obligation to actually buy your postage from eBay. Unfortunately you did and chose a postage method that cost more than what you charged.

[*vyolla*]

I can't see a book being sent as a 87p letter, to be honest:

Thickness up to and including 0.5cm. Weight limit: 100g

[pillarboxred]

A letter is a couple of millimetres. Even a booklet should go Large Letter if not Small Packet. EBay encourages us to quote very low or free postage: they make money even if we don't. You should also charge for a Tracked method. If something isn't worth anything,  isn't worth paying for Tracked postage, don't bother selling it, bin it. We're wasting our lives listing stuff that doesn't even bring the minimum wage per hour for the hours spent dealing with it.

[sml192]

When using Custom Postage and buying the label through eBay, you need to ensure that you select the correct item size as the eBay system will ignore the postage on your listing and default to 'Large Letter Up to 1Kg' (the minimum size for the Tracked services) and the cheapest option for that size.  If you change the size  then it will give you the correct postage options.

[janet8758]

Yes I get it now, thank you for your message

[janet8758]

Ah yes, that is very helpful,  thank you!

[janet8758]

Yes that’s what I did! Thank you for your help.