Is selling with ebay plus worth it?

[dresstopia]

I'm not convinced.

I sell womens clothing and a few months ago I started making my listings fit the ebay plus rules. It seemed like a good idea to sell with included postage and ebay plus gives free returns which in theory could increase sales as buyers have more confidence that they can return an item that doesn't fit.

However it seems to me that if a listing says Free Postage, that buyers think it's free for the seller too... I've had plenty of low offers that are even less than the postage cost (I now set an offer minimum) and on a few listings where this has happened I've edited the listing a few days later to match the low offer and put the postage charge back and the same buyer has bought the item! So now I only offer free postage on higher value items.

I've decided that it's more profitable to sell with the additonal postage charge and cover the cost of free returns myself.

Has anyone else found this? or am I missing some other ebay plus benefit?

[patrickandreas-qualitybooks]

I have been selling books on eBay full-time for over 10 years, and have had the eBay plus badge on around 20,000 listings since it was introduced.

Lately, I wanted to slow down a bit. The 1 day handling times were a killer and had me chained to my desk daily packing orders. I just wanted a day off here or there so I moved my handling time from 1 day to 3 days. This disqualifies me from eBay plus.

It has now been 8 weeks since the change and I have noticed a 40% decrease in sales. During this time we also had a federal election, interest rate hikes, US fears of recession and a mini-stock-market crash, so there are other financial factors at play here.

Can't be 100% sure, but I conclude that the eBay plus badge is attractive to buyers and therefore beneficial to sellers.