postage

[craftclearance]

if a buyer does not request combined post do i have to refund the excess postage?

[jellybirddesigns]

I use a few shipping profiles which covers the variations of the types of things I sell.

Normally I have the base postage, plus a little extra to cover the additional weight if a buyer orders more than one.

However, if they order items from 2 different shipping profiles, then I always refund the extra postage as a courtesy, excluding maybe one dollar to account for packaging and consumables. I do not wait for a buyer to request a refund - I contact them as soon as I see the postage total on the order and initiate the response myself.

[katistrophik]

As jelly has said, but be aware that you will not receive fvf or gst refund for the amount you repay the buyer, so always take that into consideration and deduct that cost to you from the amount you refund and you can explain the difference to the buyer in your message.

[digital*ghost]

Do you have to? No. 

Is it a good idea to if you combine them? Yes.

If a buyer pays the full cost including postage of more than one item, you have two choices at the start - post them separately, or post them together.

If you post them separately, job done. If you post them together specifically to benefit from reduced costs despite the buyer paying full price for two different postage services, and don't pass on even a little bit of that benefit to the buyer, you might be up an extra $2, but you increase the chance of the buyer being upset about it (even if they never advise you in any way, they could just never buy from you again, so that $2 could cost you a lot more in the long run since I notice you sell craft items. I do too, and repeat custom for such items is worth a lot).

If there are no savings to be had from combining, perhaps just consider sending a courtesy message to say the items are coming in a single package, but the postage service had to be upgraded so they could be sent together. 

[heihachi_73]

It's up to you if you want to refund some of the postage, but really it's the buyer's loss if they bought the  items separately and paid postage for each item (in this case, combine them into one package and save money at the post office). If someone wants to fork out $20 postage on two small items it's up to them!

I have to ask though, why are you charging the $9+ parcel rate on items like stickers when they would only need one or two stamps to post? You're kind of shooting yourself in the foot there, unless the items themselves are worth upwards of $10 each and absolutely require tracking for seller protection, or are actual parcels like the small bottles.

[curraone]

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@heihachi_73 wrote:

It's up to you if you want to refund some of the postage, but really it's the buyer's loss if they bought the  items separately and paid postage for each item (in this case, combine them into one package and save money at the post office). If someone wants to fork out $20 postage on two small items it's up to them!

In my opinion this is bad advice (sorry heihachi) :   at best the buyer will be cheesed off that you made no effort to save them any postage money.    Even though they should request combined postage beforehand, there are a lot of new buyers who don't know how,.    You will receive a much better customer satisfaction if you refund the excess, less the ebay costs.

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[jellybirddesigns]

Refunding the excess, even if less than $5.00, has always proved to be beneficial to my business model.

Firstly, buyers will always remember a seller who they feel "does the right thing" and secondly, I tend to look more at the bigger picture - by not keeping the extra postage, I tend to get more positive feedback from those buyers who I've refunded and also increase the chance that they will come back and repurchase.

Buyers will seldom return to buy from a store if they feel ripped off, no matter that they've agreed to the "upfront" postage costs. 

[heihachi_73]

I actually did intend to mention refunding the excess postage, and that eBay apparently doesn't refund the appropriate FVF percentage on refunded items (can't remember if PayPal does, but no such luck anyway if you've been forced onto Managed Payments), but I deleted the paragraph as I ended up rephrasing the entire post and forgot to re-add it.

I actually do tend to refund excess postage if it's a large amount like parcel post (even though my original post mentioned $20 postage), but on my letter rate items the odd case of double postage covers the costs of mailers/envelopes, tape etc. - if it comes to about $5 or $6 postage (e.g. $4.40 to $6.60 in stamps) on 2 games or DVDs most people don't think about it, and in most cases sending two games side by side is either $3.30 or $5.50 at the post office anyway due to the extra weight. If it's 3 games it's automatically going to be $9+ in parcel post costs.

For me, the cheesy way is putting parcel costs into a cheap letter rate item's price and offering "free" postage (since you can't combine allegedly-free postage) - kudos to the OP for at least showing the postage, albeit being a little misguided by postage costs. eBay even encourages people to offer free postage as it gives them more money in FVFs due to the higher prices (due to the lack of combined postage) and the assumption that every single item is going to be sent as a parcel and not with a couple of stamps.