ebay fees on postage charges

[everton4]

I guess people already have spoken about this but i am not sure ... can ebay or anybody tell me why they make money off postal and shipping charges !!! i get that they have to make money on the product as they are advertising it for me , but why on postal/shipping costs when then do nothing for this ... its really annoying me and other ebay users that i talk to 

[2763barryd]

they could've easily have stopped that by putting a value on the article but why did they charge us a percentage of the money we have to spend to post this has got to be wrong this cannot be right because the postage you are paying is not part of the fee for the article you are selling, so you're losing so you should have to put 25% on top of the postage to make anything out of it. Otherwise you're paying your own money and it's not worth selling anything. If this is the case I found this the other day they are making millions they can stop this but they don't want to stop it because it's all going to them isn't it your money is going to them. Your postage is going to them and it's not right it shouldn't be surely it should be looked into into the consumer rights  because nowhere, I have found charges a commission on your money, you have to pay to post 

[2763barryd]

but it's still not right that they should charge you on the cost that you have to pay to send the article totally unacceptable because they should be a separate charge so you are losing on your postage so if you sell something for £40 +£6 on top postage it's £46 that the percentage is taken off of notches to £40 so you've lost straight away on the postage. This has to be some form of scam because no way can you possibly have to be charged on a separate postage. You are paying twice you're paying once on the article you've sold and once on the postage and this cannot be right there must be consumer laws against this 

[*help_no_brakes*]

The FVF on the TOTAL Transaction has been in effect for 10 years.

Were you ok with PayPal charging their fee on the total transaction?

[stebin_4]

The problem with inflated postage to the buyer is that in case of a return they get screwed over by not getting the postage cost refunded.  I never buy from sellers who inflate postage, I report them to ebay. 

[kath3735_wxmjn]

Being a private seller I only do returns for faults etc and in that case i have to pay the return postage if i want the item back so it would cost you nothing and i would be out of pocket!  Doubt very much if e bay will ever do anything about your reports anyway as they are benefiting from the situation so do keep on wasting your time!   When i buy something i just look at the total cost and if it is within what i want to pay i actually do not care how much is postage or how much is for the item.   Who decides what is inflated postage anyway?  It is for postage and packing as well and i actually use new bags, address labels, brown tape, sellotape and for clothes tissue paper and often bubblewrap, none of which is free to me.  

[stebin_4]

They do I reported a seller charging £12 postage last week on his entire store that would cost £3 by RM, the next all the listings were gone there were pages of them.  

[papso22]

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@stebin_4 wrote:

The problem with inflated postage to the buyer is that in case of a return they get screwed over by not getting the postage cost refunded.  I never buy from sellers who inflate postage, I report them to ebay. 

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Totally incorrect.  In all return situations the buyer gets the outward postage refunded.  The return postage is decided by ebay and only paid by the buyer in change of mind cases.

[papso22]

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@stebin_4 wrote:

They do I reported a seller charging £12 postage last week on his entire store that would cost £3 by RM, the next all the listings were gone there were pages of them.  

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Can you prove that they were removed as a result of your report?

[insidethe93]

Good point but "walk around to a post office"? - even in the glory days of many post offices few people lived close enough to walk to it without needing to take a car or bus first.

Rural areas seem the least well served by post offices as regards actual existence or opening times e.g. part-time and closed at lunchtime, leading routinely to long queues. For instance, for nearly 2 years while they built a Co-Op with post office, my area's nearest post offices were 28 and 44 miles' round trip respectively (so you'd take neighbours' parcels as well). I and many tried Royal Mail's collect from home but too many problems ruled that out.

If you prefer to ship parcels by non-Royal Mail couriers, it's still worth supporting your local post office as there are so many kinds of useful transactions you can do there e.g. banking, renew driving licence, passport docs, buy stamps or packaging, AND it's an alternative parcel service.

[insidethe93]

Borne out by a news report 5 or 6 days ago:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67726537 Parcel firm Evri admits it has earned its poor reputation: "Evri has admitted that it has "earned" its poor reputation for customer service, but claims it is turning things around. The parcel delivery firm was forced to apologise last Christmas after people complained of delays or not receiving their packages at all.

Evri is also consistently ranked near or at the bottom of customer satisfaction league tables..."

[stebin_4]

It would have been a mightly big coincidence, they had one listing left unrelated to the model cars they sold by boat load. 

[keeptheroof]

This has been a big bugbear for me for years. And I'm not sure it is even legal for eBay to take money from buyers without informing them of that fact.

It makes selling the sort of items small-value items I sell very hard as the postage is often more than the item itself is worth. So with eBay taking money from the postage people like me have to decide do we should increase the postage quote or keep it at a reasonable level for the buyer and increase the selling price.

And believe me, the buyers don't realize this goes no. Time and again I get people contacting me saying postage for this item should only be £1.70 !! well, add 20p for an envelope & printing costs. Then eBay comes in and takes 20p so your quote has to be around £2.50 and you can see why they think sellers of profiting from postage.  Bad for sales imo.

I'm sure eBay would be a far bigger market for collectibles if they didn't take money of the buyer like this. 

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

Ebay decided it was more profitable to take a cut of postage than stop exhorbitant postage charges.

[keeptheroof]

Our post office is only open 3 mornings a week. I print the labels but still walk down the road to post them to get the receipt. But also if the post office goes then so does our only shop. And like many things you don't know what you miss till it's gone. We just went 3 years without having a pub in the village. This country needs to sort itself out and get a government that works for the people, not themselves & big business.

[everton4]

I agree that people where trying to pay less on commission by advertising for 99p and postage 50.00 but surely if u r an honest business seller they know you and know how u operate ..Ebay excuses yet again to take more money off us !!! they are only interested in taking the money and running off with it as usual !!! they surely have a system where they can sort this BUT they wont MONEY MONEY MONEY !!!

[keeptheroof]

They do have a system, it's their own postage system. What's the problem with simply merging that with the seller listing form so sellers tick the boxes of service they offer and add in the packed weight/size of the item? That sort of system would also solve another seller problem - that is,  dealing with combined postage and issuing refunds.

There you go 3 big things that would benefit sellers. eBay if you want any more solutions I only charge £32k for a year's retainer.

[megan1512]

Hi
isnt it about time ebay stopped charging private sellers fees on postage
on most of my sales 40 % of ebay fees are on the cost of postage
just sold 4 books
£5  + £3.89 p+p
£1.48  ebay fees

getting to be its not worth it

[plpmr]

Then you could do what numerous seller did to cause this fee -

4 books total £0.04p  + postage £7.85..

[megan1512]

Would it have made more sense for ebay to monitor sellers for excessive postal charges and sanction them
Rather increase fees for those adhering to the rules
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[dch2112011]

The only way Ebay could change would be to force all sellers to buy postage from Ebay and not charge fees on the postage, in theory they could make their margin from the negotiated bulk discount from the carriers leaving the sellers to pay standard rate.

Of course this is flawed as are all systems that are designed to be one shoe fits all !