What should I do if an item sells for more than I expected and is no longer covered by the postage?

[izzyfizzy95]

Hi, I usually start my items at £0.99 and offer to send them via Royal Mail Second Class post which offers compensation up to £20. Occasionally, I will have an item sell for over £20 and have always chanced it and sent it Second Class as this is what the buyer paid for so I presume they are happy with it. Is this correct? What would happen if the parcel went missing? Should I be using a higher-value service? If so can I ask the buyer to cover the difference? What if they refuse? Thanks!

[m25jet · Accepted solution]

If you've sold an item for more than £20.00 the best option would be to upgrade the postage to Royal Mail First (or Second) Class Signed For.  If you sold something for over £50.00 then you really ought to upgrade the postage to Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed by 1:00pm (or the 9:00am equivalent of this service, if you prefer).  Cutting corners with regards to postage is likely to backfire on you at some point.

If you were to send an item via an untracked service, whether it's of relatively little value or something extremely expensive, then without any means of being able to put a trace on the item you would have no means of being able to successfully defend yourself in the event that the buyer opened an Item Not Received case against you, the end result being that you'd have to refund the buyer in full voluntarily.  If you refused to do so and the buyer escalated the case to eBay to make a decision on then they'd just decide the matter in the buyer's favour and force a total refund and tell him or her to keep the item, in which case you'd not only lose both the money from the sale and the item you sold, but your account would be hit with an account-damaging defect for not resolving the case without eBay's intervention.  If the buyer subsequently left you negative feedback in relation to the transaction you'd get another defect as well.  Too many defects and you'd be finished as a seller on eBay.

Should you sell an item and post it via Royal Mail First (or Second) Class Signed For then if a buyer opened an Item Not Received case against you and you were able to prove successful delivery and receipt of the item to the buyer's address then you'd be able to blow the buyer's allegations of non-receipt right out of the water and eBay would decide the case in your favour.  In this instance you would not be obliged to refund the money, your account would not be hit with a defect and the buyer would be unable to leave you any feedback in relation to the transaction.

If you posted the item via Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed by 1:00pm (or the 9:00am equivalent of this service) then you'd get end-to-end tracking from the point of despatch to the point of delivery, a signature on delivery and in the event that the buyer opened an Item Not Received case against you then should you be able to prove successful delivery and receipt of the item you'd win the case with exactly the same results as described in the previous paragraph.

With regards to compensation for an item that has been lost or damaged in transit, if you just used a non-tracked service you'd more than likely find that trying to get compensation for the item would be like trying to get blood from a stone, as you'd have no way of proving that it got lost in transit.  With Royal Mail First (or Second) Class Signed For the best you could realistically hope for would be a book of postage stamps, whereas if you used Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed and the item got lost or damaged in transit you'd get compensation of up to £500.00, although you could get additional compensation cover for up to £2,500.00.

As far as asking the buyer to pay the extra on postage this is generally frowned upon, and the buyer would have every right to refuse to pay it if you didn't charge that price for postage in the first place.  Therefore, the best option would be to pay the extra cost out of your own pocket and post the item to the buyer.  If the buyer's under the impression that you've posted the item via Second Class post but the item actually arrives a lot sooner than expected due to the fact that you upgraded the postage at no extra cost to the buyer this is likely to go down very well indeed, and may well improve your chances of receiving some positive feedback from the buyer, certainly with regards to the question "How reasonable were the postage costs?" and, so long as you despatch the item quickly as well, also with regards to the question "How quickly did the seller despatch the item?"

Although I no longer sell on eBay I did have a few cases very early on when I'd started selling on eBay where I underestimated the postage costs and the item went for more than I was expecting it to go for.  The winning bidder paid up striaghtaway so I posted the item out the next morning via Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed by 1:00pm, as opposed to the Royal Mail Second Class Signed For postage option stated on the listing and I got some excellent feedback in relation to the item.

At the end of the day so long as you keep your buyers happy and provide them with a top quality service you really can't go too far wrong.  However, if you do get into any difficulties with regards to any aspect of buying or selling on the site feel free to post a query on the forums and somebody will no doubt post up some information that answers your query.

[rusticrye]

No, you can't ask the buyer to cover the difference. Well, you could, but prepared for a less than friendly response, and negative feedback...! Tracked services are for the seller's benefit anyway, so why would a buyer pay extra for something they don't need...?

Not sure why you'd want to ask them anyway.  If an item sells for more than £20, just use part or all of the difference to upgrade from Standard post to Signed For.  It costs only an extra £1.00, and covers you for up to £50 in the event of loss or damage in transit.

@izzyfizzy95 

[john1297576]

Apart from being rather foolish starting at 99p, if an item sells for far more than you have budgeted for in the Postage then you pay the extra. It is only just over £1 extra for signed for and it just comes from the money you were not expecting to receive.

Looking at your items, as I say it is foolish to start at 99p, then overcharge on postage.

This is already being reflected in your DSRs for Postage which is showing as 4.8. Much wiser to start at a realistic price and again charge a realistic postage. Many where you are charging £5 postage can be posted for no more than just over £2 signed for. Buyers don't mind paying the total price but do not like to feel they are being ripped off through the postage.

[61stephenuk]

Assuming you only send Royal Mail if you send standard 2nd class and it goes missing or gets damaged you would only be able to claim £20 compensation.

If item sells for £20-£50 you should change to signed for to be covered for compensation but you cannot charge the buyer anymore than is on your listing,so let them know you are sending signed for and will give them the refernce number so they can track delivery.

Anything over £50 must be sent Special Delivery if you want compensation