Ebay rant

[Ironballs]

Flogging a few things on ebay at the mo and it's been quite a few months since I've sold anything. One of the things I'm selling is a box set of series of a programme on DVD, it's about 20 DVDs and weighs almost 2 kilos.

Filling in all my details, got to the bit about postage and put in a fiver for P&P, hit the button and it said you have exceeded the allowed postage charge for that item. What is the allowed postage I wondered, went back to the box, £0.00 is the most I can charge apparently!!!

Investigated further and they have a little message about charges, which says they look at average charges for similar transactions and use that to set a cap. Apparently it's not fair if your prices are too high and more tellingly, it may put people off purchasing and they won't use the site....

So, max profit for ebay as they don't take a cut of P&P charges and max expense for me. So I listed and made it very clear what the real P&P was and that's what I'd be charging, don't bid if you don't accept it.

Whenever I sell I charge exactly what it costs me to pack and post. I'm not a shop and I can't afford to do free postage, are ebay deliberately trying to force people away?

Sent them a snotty email to complain and also point out that I won't be signing their petition they emailed me about.

Any alternative to ebay for flogging stuff? Especially DVDs as I've convinced Mrs IB to get rid of some of the DVD mountain she possesses

 

[RogerS]

eBay -

Expensive
Bellicose
Arrogant
Y? You-sless?

I also have a load of stuff to sell and much of it relatively low value. Just want rid and so I'm going to list each item for 99p which costs nada to list.

Other sites? Tazbar?

 

[andycktm]

Yes,

http://www.adtrader.co.uk/classhome.php ... obutt.y=10

I must have sold £1500 worth of gear over time..................for no cost to me
And bought loads of gear cheap, thing is most of the time if your quick you may be the only buyer unlike the 15 million other people after it on ebay.
Of course you can't "win" anything you just buy it!

 

[jasonB]

Its because people were putting high postage charges to avoid E-bay making a commision on the actual sale price.

I've bought things for £5 but paid £6 postage on them

Jason

 

[Peter T]

I bought a broken Record No. 5 for spares. Sale price was 99p but the postage was still £5.00 as it was a heavy item.

I don't think ebay realise that, just because something is cheap, it doesn't necessarily have to be light in weight

 

[wizer]

Is it just me or is this 3hp single phase motor only £30 ?

 

[Mailman14]

Wizer - which 3hp motor? Link missing methinks... :wink:

 

[ste_5150]

Hmm... I have some expensive music equipment to offload, and was thinking ebay.... Maybe I'll reconsider.....

 

[Ironballs]

You may be okay with that, provided you're willing to give them 10% of your price. When you go on though have a look at the list of items with a max postage price, CDs are something like 1.50 or 2 quid, which is fine, but demanding 0.00 for DVDs just got my goat.

We have about 60 to sell so I might just batch them up into 3 lots. Think I'm slowly winning, she's not bought any new ones for ages. Books on the other hand...... :roll:

 

[ste_5150]

You may be okay with that, provided you're willing to give them 10% of your price.

I'm not! :lol:

 

[yo_chuci]

why not just add the postage and a percentage (to cover the loss of the postage in the final price) to the start price.
if people aint gonna buy because its now £6 etc more to start with then they won't bid anyway...

or

advertise as pick up only. heavy item to post and ebay won't allow postage charge as its a dvd. can arrange own courier. pm me before auction finishes. etc

 

[wizer]

Yes I'd never really thought about eBay charges until recently. I think they took £120 for selling our car! Auto trader would have been £50 for 3 weeks! My fault for being lazy but I never thought it'd be that much.

It's hard because eBay is actually still the best place to sell 2nd hand items on the Internet. Purely because of it's users.