Ebay New Postage Policies

[custom_cables]

I am really concerned with Ebay's push to make all sellers use tracked postage with penalties for those that don't.

I am sure there are am sure that there are a multitude of sellers out there that have a lot of items in the sub $20 group and sending by tracked parcel ($9.15 the cheapest ebay offers) means they would be working for absolutely no profit. Many items it is not feasible to just bump up the price as  people simply wont buy.

I am posting here as there is no other way to give ebay feedback on how they are performing. If you are in a similar situation were increased tracked postage just wont work please leave a comment here and maybe ebay will get the message. It is fine for ebay, they get a percentage of everything including postage. In the long run they will loose sellers who cant sell profitably under these new policies and in the long run loose profits as well.

[katistrophik]

Not a seller, but have a read here, one of the sellers are trialing tracked/non tracked postage for low value items.

https://community.ebay.com.au/t5/Selling/Tracked-Postage-on-Low-Value-Items-Experiment/td-p/2399667/...

eBay really don't read here and honestly I don't think they care about any low value items sellers especially here in Australia

[wide-world-of-stamps]

We rarely use tracked postage as most of our items are under $10, and go as untracked letters.

If there is a sale for a large amount, or we have concerns with the address or the buyer, we use an Australia Post envelope with tracking.

As most of our competitors use similar postage methods, we're not changing anything.

We'll see how it goes, but don't really expect significant changes with our sales.

[imastawka]

For a start, sellers won't lose money by using tracked postage - the buyer pays for postage.

In my category, no one uses tracked postage.  It's all letter rate.  Buyers won't pay for more.

If we get penalised in searches, then nothing really changes, does it?

I use tracked when they spend $50 or more.

And ebay don't read here. 

[digital*ghost]

I'll just add this here.... 🙂 One thing that has surprised me very much since I re-opened on Monday, is that the opposite of what I thought would happen is currently happening.

Most of my sales, which are admittedly lower than before, but currently higher than everywhere else where I still offer untracked options (which is actually unusual, usually my sales are pretty even on all platforms), and the majority of them have been under $10 orders, with many of the ones going out today containing only one item (the cheapest single item order is $3.25, the most expensive is $6.95 - my current postage costs are based on domestic letter with tracking prices, so over $6). 

I expected that the sales of single-item orders would tank, and I'd just start getting the high value (multi-quantity) orders. I've still had those, but single item orders are still quite steady. 

[countessalmirena]

I’ve pinned (aka “floated”) your experiment post, digital*ghost. Without that, I’d have considerable difficulty in finding it on this new design forum.

[digital*ghost]

I'll probably just post new threads for updates now so that it's easy to spot in the forum, but I'll update the original thread with them as well, so they're all in a single thread either way 🙂 

[hunterinitial]

Yes I certainly agree, between the new design which is time consuming, ebays new payment platform and now making mail cost more expensive I thinking my business/hobby is becoming more pain than gain, I have beenan ebay seller long before there was an Aussie ebay