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@aussie.grazing.boards wrote:

Hi Digi, it's been awhile.

 

I didn't have time to read all of the posts on this topic, so could you give me your insight?

 

Like the original poster of this topic, all of a sudden I'm getting people purchasing express post for $4.00 and I charge $10.95 for express post. If I honor this $4.00 express for eBay plus members, am I out of pocket to the sum of $6.95?

 

Thanks in advance for your help 

 

David 

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Hiya - hope things are well.

This is currently applying to Plus listings, so is only available to Plus members who live in a metro area, but it applies automatically to all plus members in metro areas.

Basically, they are now getting free upgrades to express post, and eBay are only covering up to $4 of the listed cost - because Plus listings have to have free post to qualify as Plus, I gather eBay are presuming the difference in cost is comparable to the difference between (for example) a regular 500g satchel and an express 500g satchel through Australia Post, and the regular postage cost is built into item price, therefore an upgrade would only be a few dollars (this, of course, fails to consider many other situations where the difference between regular and express is a lot more than $4).

If you have free post, and then charge $2 to upgrade to express, eBay will cover $2, if you have free post and $11 to upgrade to express, eBay will only cover $4, so for each Plus order that has qualified for the free upgrade from eBay, you'll potentially lose money on postage if the difference between regular post and express post is more than $4.

If you want to keep your listings qualifying for plus, I'd take a look at the cost of express upgrades and try to average the ones from Plus members out, to a small price increase on your items. 

The scheme is poorly thought out, IMHO - I did suggest ages ago (just casually on the forum, not to eBay) that most Plus Members would get no benefit out of the program so maybe eBay should offer a couple of free upgrades a year (funded by eBay), but only if they didn't get any of the other benefits during their membership (like, all their purchases were for items that had free post anyway, and / or they never utilised the free returns- the system they came up with benefits only metro people, so if you live in a certain area you get more value out of the membership than someone else who pays the same amount, and it's either at the expense of the seller, or at the expense of everyone as sellers try to recoup any increased costs, which is usually done by the method above and increasing all prices for everyone, unfortunately).