Selling for 4.95 with free postage, but postage alone is $7.20!!!!

[aussie.grazing.boards]

Can someone please answer this, because I must be missing something.

I've been a seller since 2006, but have only just returned after travelling Asia for 5 years. Anyway, I've been selling off my Antique 1980's Table Top games (Pacman, Space Invaders)  to cash up and buy GoPro accessories in bulk from China, to start selling again.

For these vintage electronic games I've been using 500gm & 3kg Red Aus Post satchels  $8.20/ $13.00 ish and am totally out of touch with todays postage price on fiddly stuff (until now)

Anyway, while I was at the post office the other day I thought I would get a quote on postage of an orange float (about the size of a Zippo lighter, but a bit thicker) which sticks to the back of a GoPro. I'm thinking it would be about a $1.80 - $2.20 and I almost hit the floor when he told me $7.20 I politely asked for a senior staffer who confirmed, anything thicker that 15 pages or so of folded A4 paper is classed as a parcel, and their start rate is $7.20  (yes, I've even gone to their website price calculator and triple checked)

How the hell could my opposition sell this for $4.95? Including postage

$1.50 Listing fee/final value

$7.20 Postage

$0.50 Padded envelope

$1.00 Wholesale price of product

$10.20  Actual cost

That's a total loss of $5.25

How can sellers sell stuff under $8.00 including shipping, yet still make a profit?  If you can shed light on this I would love to hear from you

Regards

David

[lane-ends]

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@aussie.grazing.boards wrote:

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Small letters go through a sorting maching too don't they? Supposed to be flexible.

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I was told it could be no thicker than 20mm

cheers

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It wil be classed as a large letter which doesn't go through machine

I buy fishing lures from China. They are made, sold, processed, packaged, posted internationally with sign for delivery. They still make a profit..The whole lot for as little as $2.50 sometimes.. It would cost me minimum $7.20 just to post the same thing to my next door neighbour..Go figure

[cherry*135]

 I have heard of sellers sending t shirts, childrens clothes in paper envelopes and they have been shredded going through a sorting machine.

[platypus_australia]

Why not buy one and see how they post it?

At 22mm thick - it's right on the cusp of $1.40 postage.

I would depress the float in a sealable bag and close it, giving you a vacuum and putting you under that 22mm of doom.

[aussie.grazing.boards]

Yeah, it totally sucks.

I don't have a problem with these guys selling things at $1.00 But what gets me angry is offering free postage, its just not fair. Let them sell on their own ebay.com.cn

[digital*ghost]

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@am*3 wrote:

 I have heard of sellers sending t shirts, childrens clothes in paper envelopes and they have been shredded going through a sorting machine.

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It's because of the packaging - large letters in padded bags, rigid envelopes and tough bags don't go through the sorting machines (AFAIK) because they're not flexible enough, but if a thin paper envelope is used and the letter is flexible, they will (paper envelopes are designed for sending paper, and is what the machines are designed to sort, so AP presume a paper envelope has suitable contents unless the package is so rigid - eg contains a DVD  - they can't make that presumption). 

[zlockno]

Ive had one or two of these letters in the past. I sell Lego Minifigures and post as a large letter, most are under 20MM thick or very close to it. I pack them in a ziplock bag and tape it flat so the Minifigure cant twist or move.

Ive always put my eBay user name on them with the return address and not my real name. When AP have sent a underpaid postage notice they have addressed it to my eBay user name. How can they try and get money from a person that doesn't exist?

Each time Ive called the number on the letter and asked them to explain exactly why/how they have decided that I underpaid on postage as it isn't clearly stated on the letter. They have never been able to give a definite answer. They just say that "its to big to be sent as a large letter and needed to be sent as a parcel". This would take my postage cost from $1.40 to $7.20. I then get told something along the lines of "it must have been manually pulled out by someone in the delivery centre". I then inform the CS people that I send all my items at my local mail centre and that they are nazi's when it comes to making sure things fit through the sizing board, that I didn't understand how it suddenly got bigger while in transit and asked to provided with the actual measurement's they have taken. Each time I've been advised that "the staff at the mail centre most likely just had a quick look at it without trying to put it through the gauge and measure it and that I would have the fee wiped".

How is that right? How many people would just pay the extra money.

I spoke to a few people I know who either work for or used to work for AP including one of the nazi's from the mail centre and they have all said that I should just ignore the letters and even more so when they are addressed to my eBay user name.

I don't think id get away with it to often but so far I haven't had to pay any extra postage.

[x3n0m]

.The postage from China to Australia is HEAVILY subsidised by Australia (NOT CHINA) thus the Australian government is funding the entire rort .. this is yet another way that our own government places Australians  in an untenable position .. recently a free trade agreement was put into place by the Australian government with China yet we subsidise their postage???!!! what sort of idiots are we that we let ourselves be put out of business, ie subsidise the competitors and allow the multi-national  middle men (eg ebay) to dodge tax that Aussies businesses can't and then call that travesty of justice  free trade????!!!

The fact ebay is the indirect beneficiary of such an agreement and highly focused on exploiting this abberation against us Australians is just icing on the cake!!

It doesn't just suck it makes it near to impossible for Australians to run a competitive business!! and then our politicians intimate that the unemployed people are "the problem" after orchestrating the entire offshoring scam against us .. we are being screwed over BIG-TIME!!!!!

[x3n0m]

.. just shows how weary the defenders of freedom have become that no-one has corrected my post above .. understandably the ebay cheer squad don't want this near the top so have left it alone .. the correction is that it is we the average Australian who pay for the shortfall in cost for the Chinese who utilise our postal system for near to free and that cost is passed onto Australians via the post office which is another reason we pay such massive postal costs in Australia .. funny thing about auspost is that it was always (and still is) a highly  profitable utility for the government yet they went ahead and corpratised it and apparently it is for sale (if the price is right) .. and here is another little ditty the CEO of the post office receives $4 Million AUS per year as wages .. to put that into perspective thyat is 4 times more than the prime minister of our entire country .. not bad pay for a public servant huh?

WE ARE BEING PLAYED .. our childrens futures have been sold to the corporations who hide their money in Switzerland!!!

[lizzyamelia]

And parcel post prices goes up yet again on 3 March.

[i_got_dust-collectors]

"And parcel post prices goes up yet again on 3 March."

Ozzies are just Grist for the corporate machine and at this rate we are fast slipping to be a third world country as soon we will be completely under control of the corporates who run the Monopoly practices businesses that our government is handing to them on a silver plattter, the rich will only sqwark about it when the poor can no longer afford their product but by then it will be too late and we wil be selling our assetts for pennies in the dollar. This is exactly what the Swiss bankers and their mates want; a population that is completely at their mercy and when the time is right they will swoop in and demand Austerity measures and a whole gammut of draconian demands so that they can pillage and plunder your children's lives and turn them into their slaves and concubines!i