Australian eBay Sellers Subsidizing Chinese Sellers

[waddingtonfirstaid]

It's about time Chinese sellers pay the proper cost of delivering their items throughout Australia. It's totally ridiculous for Chinese items of less than $5 to be sent free of postage to any destination in Australia, yet this is happening thousands of times over every week, if not every day! I can't send a package under 500g for less than $5, so how can a Chinese seller? ANSWER - Australia Post makes it's profits from Australian sellers like me whilst it makes a loss delivering Chinese imported parcels. It's about time the imported parcels pay their proper postage cost! When Australia Post lists a fall in profits or even a loss, they need look no further than all those millions of Chinese parcels being delivered for next to nothing!

[trishreid88]

I totally get what you are saying. Of late I have bought a number of items from OS, very cheap and $0 postage.
Good for me a s a buyer but not good for local sellers. Especially now buyers are getting used to having long delivery times.

Unfortunately I think the biggest issue all round is that buyers simply don't have as much money to spare as they once did and would rather wait a few weeks for an item rather than spend $5 on postage.
Also some local sellers haven't helped the situation by flooding the site with items they themselves have bought  cheap from OS and now selling for more plus postage. Once upon a time buying from a local seller meant you would get a better quality item than from OS.
Sometimes I think the old days of the OS postage pirates at least kept it a level playing field if buyers were smart enough to see what was going on. So whilst postage pirates were bad for buyers, they were in some ways good for the honest sellers.

[2106greencat]

Never going to happen.....

this is not a deal that has been decided through eBay or AP, but a Government agreement, as per the import/export arrangements whithin the two country's.

eBay sellers (in China) benefit from it, but they didn't make it happen.

[justcruising48]

Agree, but what can we do?

[phorum_junkie*]

We can do nothing, how could international postage work any other way? You pay what the cost is in the country you are posting from and if your government chooses to subsidise the cost then that is your good luck. There are countries where international postage is more expensive than it is here in Australia, if things didn't work the way they do then presumably you would be perfectly happy to pay more so the cost was as much as in the sending country?

[cmcoins2000]

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@trishreid88 wrote:

I totally get what you are saying. Of late I have bought a number of items from OS, very cheap and $0 postage.
Good for me a s a buyer but not good for local sellers. Especially now buyers are getting used to having long delivery times.

Unfortunately I think the biggest issue all round is that buyers simply don't have as much money to spare as they once did and would rather wait a few weeks for an item rather than spend $5 on postage.
Also some local sellers haven't helped the situation by flooding the site with items they themselves have bought  cheap from OS and now selling for more plus postage. Once upon a time buying from a local seller meant you would get a better quality item than from OS.
Sometimes I think the old days of the OS postage pirates at least kept it a level playing field if buyers were smart enough to see what was going on. So whilst postage pirates were bad for buyers, they were in some ways good for the honest sellers.

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Now  you 'bibbled a babful' - AND I totally agree.

At least in the 'good old' days we could give the $4,000 postage sellers a wide berth.

[mydiyau]

Economy of scale.

Not just postage, now a coffee cost around $4 in melbourne and properties prices have gone through the roof...

[1930.penny]

Ever wondered why it takes so long to get a parcel from China?

Its because they wait until all orders are complete so they can send all the orders at once using shipment containers.

This is why they can afford to post free, well its not exactly free but close enough when they share the shipping expense of the container among all the items.

[cq_tech]

That's correct, but they still all eventually come via air mail. It also explains why one seller's item may take almost 30 days to arrive while another's can be here in 10.

[norm2500]

One bright spot is that Australia Post seems to be trying to reduce costs by moving towards greater use of Australia Post box numbers to handle letter and parcel delivery. This would weed out those Chinese and other overseas sellers that won't post to a box number.