@dazzledayz wrote:
The 6 week cycle is a trap for smaller sellers (and big ones too if they are near a cutoff point for volume).
You'll set your pricing according to your postage cost inputs and the last thing you need is for that to change every 6 weeks as your volume goes up and down.
For the larger volume sellers who post internationally; you would be badly affected by even a temporary slowdown as certain services would become unavailable as well as others dearer so profit margins would take periodic hits.
That more depends on who you allocate the discount to - yourself, or your buyers. I allocate it to myself, and use it to cover FVF, or delivery features if I want to add them.
Postage price fluctuations would be annoying for me, and confusing for my buyers, so I wouldn't go down that route (I'll raise them when the basic rates increase, of course). I know this would vary greatly between sellers, but the majority of my parcels (both local and overseas) are under 500g, and the difference between the min and max discounts on a 500g parcel in own packaging is only 60c.
So, on ebay (domestic postage only) I quote for normal postage prices on my listings that use parcel rates, and allow the 10% discount to absorb the FVF on postage. If / when I get a larger discount, then I might make an extra 30-odd cents on the sale, that covers a bit more of the packaging costs, or the odd PayPal flagfall I don't get back when i cancel a transaction, or whatever.
For international postage options, I still quote normal costs, and the $1+ difference again covers packaging and gives me more room to add delivery features on higher value orders without having to build it into the per additional item cost.
There was one day that I wasn't able to use the system last year, and on that day I used eBay labels for a couple of things, then paid over the counter for a bunch of others, still getting the discount as I had the QR code they could scan. International packages were processed the next day (just another reason for me to keep my 2 day handling time).
I know this won't be applicable or appealing to everyone - I was lucky for one thing, to have had the cash to pay for postage over the counter when the system was down, I don't always have that much cash on me since I usually use PayPal to pay online. It also assumes a guarantee of being consistently on at least a 10% discount, because otherwise (with the way I do it) you'd for sure either have to increase P&H, or take a loss on it when you're not getting the cheaper rates.
If your customers like express (as mine often do) Send and Save is a much cheaper option (if not considered a better one), because you pay full rates on eBay, and they only do assessed, not flat rate. ebay also charges the full $1.50 per $100 of extra cover, so it really does depend on individual circumstances and preferences. As mentioned before, though, I will always use eBay for BX boxes - $7.55 for a 1kg BX1 via eBay, and about $12 via Send & Save, after a discount.
