Fees on Postage Has to End!

[westcoastreuse]

For any item that sellers for $10 or less to an international buyer, the postage costs are high and therefore the eBay fees, Final Value and Advertising Standard, are calculated on the total the buyer paid and makes the sale worthless! Check out my last $9.95 sale from AU to the UK, ended up with -$0.12 out of my pocket not even including packing costs.

eBay Fees on Postage Needs to be Reviewed at best or removed completely, feels like a racket and not a service eBay is offering here.

The buyer is paying a huge price for an item like this and the only winners (other then the buyer) are eBay and Australia Post!

Fees on postage make selling some items worthless

[sandypebbles]

Not going to happen

Not going to be looking at the listing either, you know what the fees are before you list the item(s)

You chose the item price, and the postage price etc

And you, knowing those fees chose to sell overseas

Being out of pocket was entirely your choice

The fees involved in selling are nothing new and agreed to by the seller each time they list an item

And pointless to announce this on a member to member forum that is not going to be seen by eBay cs, let alone anyone who 'sets fees' 

[westcoastreuse · Accepted solution]

What you say is completely correct, I did choose to sell it and accepted that fees would be part of that.

This post was more to highlight just how much fees are taken on small sales that have high postage basically to inform other members, like yourself who appear to not be a seller, to take this into consideration before offering these sorts of items for international sale.

The fee structure is not easy to understand and most of us learn by making mistakes, so I wanted to share my experience to make sure others don't make the same mistake.

[sugar249]

I'm confused,  you set the sale and postage price,  now any good business person knows to factor in the purchase price of the goods,  marketing, fee's, etc, etc.  So you obviously did your calculations and decided that a 12 cent profit was sufficient,  but now blame Ebay for it.

[siddieswans]

I respect your decision to send by International Standard; I used to do the same whatever the value. Now for letter rate items up to $19 I just use airmail letter rate - $5 flat rate for 5mm Up to 50g; $12 (using AP prepaid envelope) for 20mm Up to 500g. This would be for postcards and ephemera. I use stiff card envelopes as my only packing. In the last year I have not had to refund any INR - I do make sure that buyers know their item is untracked and may take up to 30 days to arrive. 

I am sure as soon as I say this I will have to refund someone but that small amount would be off-set by the extra sales I have made by lowering the total price by using letter rate postage. My last letter sale to the UK arrived today and took 8 days (from Feedback left.)  According to eBay on this $10 sale I made $5.50 (after deducting my postage costs)  minus my stiff envelope which costs me approx 16c. So say $5.30, which in my world is better than throwing it away.

[sugar249]

---

@westcoastreuse wrote:

The fee structure is not easy to understand and most of us learn by making mistakes, so I wanted to share my experience to make sure others don't make the same mistake.

---

Not sure whats hard to understand

Selling fees without an eBay Store | eBay

Fees when you sell your item

You pay one final value fee for items you sell on eBay, with no third-party payment processing fees.

The final value fee is calculated as a percentage of the total sale amount per item (item price + postage and handling charges + any applicable taxes), plus a fixed charge per order.

[p9games]

never going to happen.  Thousand dollar items would be $1 plus $999 postage overnight.  I'd have my listings changed in minutes if they removed fees from postage.  

Key here is to price your product appropriately.  All part of the learning process of selling on ebay

[gutterpunkz05]

Has all been approved,is fully disclosed, and has been done to death.  It is not going to change, ebay is not going to revert to  99c sales with $999.00 post.

[davewil1964]

OP has been selling for 4 years, so should have learnt by now. Especially with the quantity of sales.

I certainly don't understand them. Why sell OS just to break even. Chucking it in the bin takes less time and effort for the same result.

[sugar249]

---

@davewil1964 wrote:

I certainly don't understand them. Why sell OS just to break even. Chucking it in the bin takes less time and effort for the same result.

---

The 12 cent profit will be gone on the trip to the Post Office.