topic Re: Sellers with high postage in Selling

Sellers with high postage

taipan_qld — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 04:10:13 GMT

I see people selling small items for say $30 with a large postage cost of like $500 (item located locally) which I think should not be allowed , its almost ripping people off, I know you dont have to buy it but even if its worth $500+ if it was faulty then they only have to say they have no more stock and only have to back the $30 and keep the $500 postage as they dont have to reimbust the postage?

Re: Sellers with high postage

sydney-diecast-kingdom — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 04:22:40 GMT

eBay used to charge you a fee of just 7.9% on the item and nothing on the shipping. That's why you wuould see items listed for $20 with $400 shipping.

eBay changed this to charging us 9.9% on the price of the item AND the shipping. Maybe some people don't realise it''s changed. 😄

Re: Sellers with high postage

beautbots01 — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 04:44:10 GMT

Report the item in question. I believe there is still a requirement for sellers to charge reasonable postage, regardless of whether eBay collect fees on postage or not. And what you are suggesting could be an underhanded way of sellers getting out of refunding full amount for faulty goods.

Re: Sellers with high postage

digital*ghost — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 05:02:17 GMT

@taipan_qld wrote:
if it was faulty then they only have to say they have no more stock and only have to back the $30 and keep the $500 postage as they dont have to reimbust the postage?

Both eBay and PayPal's buyer protections include the original postage cost when dealing with a faulty item. I'm not sure what amount eBay would refund if a change of mind return was accepted and eBay had to force the refund, I have a sneaking suspicion it would be the entire amount, less any restocking fee the seller had in place (which, aside from not being implemented on the Oz site, can't be any more than something like 15% or 20% of the item price, so max the seller could keep on a $30 item is $6).

Re: Sellers with high postage

horizon1907 — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 05:06:42 GMT

@beautbots01 wrote:
Report the item in question. I believe there is still a requirement for sellers to charge reasonable postage, regardless of whether eBay collect fees on postage or not. And what you are suggesting could be an underhanded way of sellers getting out of refunding full amount for faulty goods.

Or better still, call ebay directly and report it. Reporting an item IMO is a waste of time ! Nothing ever seems to be done ?

Re: Sellers with high postage

phorum_junkie* — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 06:09:40 GMT

The most effective sanction is just to not buy from them, not because of the high postage cost but because they are obviously grade 1 numpties.

Re: Sellers with high postage

beautbots01 — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 06:26:16 GMT

@phorum_junkie* wrote:
The most effective sanction is just to not buy from them, not because of the high postage cost but because they are obviously grade 1 numpties.

There are unfortunately new buyers who are lulled by these type of "cheap buys" so to do nothing is allowing it to continue.

Or, like Sweet Bea suggests, you can stick your head in the sand and do nothing.

Re: Sellers with high postage

ozstockman — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 06:34:14 GMT

$500 for postage is very unreasonable cost for $20 item but please keep in mind that it is not only postage cost, it is Shipping and Handling.

There may be an item that requires to be packed in a secure way, may be a seller needs to build a wooden crate or even a box for it.

That may take a lot of time and material.

I pack my big products on an MDF panels and wrap them in a few layers of cardboard. Only material cost for some of them can be up to $10 not to mention that it can take 10-30 minutes to pack. Would it be unreasonable if I charged extra $10 for packing?

And yet I charge only $3-4 for packing no mater if I can pack it in a stock box or in custom made packing.

Re: Sellers with high postage

lane-ends — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 09:03:11 GMT

Its marketing only.

If its faulty you get full postage refund

If its change of mind they are not obliged to refund.

If it genuinely was worth $30, you wouldnt sell it if it cost $500 to ship, as the profit vs $ at risk factor is too high. These days with ebays buyer return policy you always risk loosing initial shipping cost as a minimum if buyer raised not as described claim

Hence the only reason is to catch your eye and make you look at the listing. Often these stores have the same item properly priced. If you then buy the reasonably priced one, the dodgy one worked by grabbing your attention.

Re: Sellers with high postage

colic2bullsgirlore — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 09:53:34 GMT

@taipan_qld wrote:
I see people selling small items for say $30 with a large postage cost of like $500 (item located locally) which I think should not be allowed , its almost ripping people off, I know you dont have to buy it but even if its worth $500+ if it was faulty then they only have to say they have no more stock and only have to back the $30 and keep the $500 postage as they dont have to reimbust the postage?

gotta luv the report report report daleks

(item located locally)

Maybe the seller does not know how to list an item as local pick up only and the item is delicate or maybe an unusual

shape and they would prefer not to post it so they have listed the item with skyhigh postage to discourage distance

purchase.

I SEE THAT WITH LARGER CAR PARTS A LOT.........

@20kgs of feathers @ $1 per kg would require two pallet spaces to freight at $220 a pallet space and a forklift to,load

same

Did you ask the seller/s whether you could pick up the "small" item and thereby negating postage costs?

Re: Sellers with high postage

jamesheagles — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 01:59:41 GMT

I think its a tax thing, they claim the postage as a tax deduction. Also an incentive to buy from them as its also a tax deduction for the buyer.

Re: Sellers with high postage

joz15au — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 03:45:40 GMT

Not legally. Tax deductions have to be substantiated. In the event of a tax audit they would get a rude shock if claiming $500 for postage and couldn't provide proof of expending that amount.

Re: Sellers with high postage

daydreams_12 — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 03:49:21 GMT

Did you bother to look at the date of this thread? Ebay introduced fees on postage many years ago to eliminate just this problem. I very much doubt you will find the same thing happening today.

Re: Sellers with high postage

heihachi_73 — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 03:53:46 GMT

eBay ended that loophole long ago, this topic has been lying dormant for five years.

The total item value (price + postage) is used for tax purposes (both eBay's cut and GST). So in other words, $11 + $8.95 postage is exactly the same as $19.95 with "free" postage. eBay won't actually allow people to list items with significantly higher postage than the item price, it comes up with an error message and won't list at all.

Re: Sellers with high postage

cezm — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 05:08:10 GMT

@heihachi_73 wrote:

eBay won't actually allow people to list items with significantly higher postage than the item price, it comes up with an error message and won't list at all.

Postage cost has no correlation to item cost so I'm not sure why they do that.

I've sold a $10 book that cost $60 to post overseas without a problem

Re: Sellers with high postage

south.coffee — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 02:54:55 GMT

2020 is 'The Year of the Recycled Thread'.

Thanks for rehashing a 5 year old problem, fixed long ago by eBay. Move on...

Re: Sellers with high postage

heihachi_73 — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 05:13:44 GMT

I had an old LCD handheld game at $2 a couple of years ago and eBay wouldn't let me drop it to $1 as long as it had $8.95 postage attached to it. The game was 3cm thick so there was no way it would have passed as a large letter despite weighing about 30 grams. I ended up just cancelling the thing as no-one was interested anyway.

Re: Sellers with high postage

davewil1964 — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 05:48:22 GMT

@heihachi_73 wrote:
I had an old LCD handheld game at $2 a couple of years ago and eBay wouldn't let me drop it to $1 as long as it had $8.95 postage attached to it. The game was 3cm thick so there was no way it would have passed as a large letter despite weighing about 30 grams. I ended up just cancelling the thing as no-one was interested anyway.

Makes sense. Especially when the fees would be at least $1.50.