A 'please DON'T' request: mandatory free P+P = other site's greed. G&M, please don't

[JudesNiceThings]

#20 - I know about eBay - That's why I finally stopped selling there!

I was talking about here!

[marschenegger]

As usual, I can find something good about the unpopular idea. With free P&P, sellers will not only roll the cost of P&P into their asking prices, but they can decide what shipping method they want to use. So problems with buyers with unconfirmed addresses buying $500 items and wanting regular mail will vanish. The positive spinoff for eBay is, of course, charging FVFs on the full cost of the item plus the hidden P&P. It would also seriously undermine the auction format. You can't hide the P&P in the price of the item if you start the item at $1.

Since eBid doesn't charge much in the way of FVFs, I don't see the incentive for mandatory free P&P!

You can bet that, if FeeBay institutes free P&P policies, someone will suggest doing the same here. You know, because everything going on over there is so successful and we would be fools to not offer the same choices here. Oh, except that it wouldn't be a choice, it would be mandatory. A mandatory choice, ha ha.

[stevehills64]

well a way to get around those charges is to offer the free postage are local pickup

[rokins_toys]

If Greedbay continue expanding their mandaroty FREE P&P, they are going to lose even more sellers.

At the end of the day, Greedbay are wrong to force sellers to do free postage on selected items because at the end of the day, even the cheapest postage costs something and I don't consider Royal Mail's packet services cheap anymore as like Greedbay, Royal Mail keep increasing prices too.

I've seen 17p increase on one Royal Mail packet service I use, that's on top of something like 14p the year before and around 9p the year before that! Or around those figures anyway. 5p per year increase on packet services regardless of weight etc, like many sellers/buyers, I can live with, but Royal Mail prices are becoming like Greedbay's final value fees - just pure greed.

I doubt eBid would ever introduce such a mandatory free postage polciy as they have more sense and know postage costs sellers regardless of anything. So on Greedbay, if they were to make free postage mandatory on a single carded action figure, sellers over their will just add the postage cost to the figure even though most on Greedbay are selling the new figures for between £8.99-£20 anyway.

If anything, Greedbay needs to crack down on sellers selling a £7.99 figure for £20 + postage as that is a rip off anyway!

Anyway, introducing mandatory free postage will just drive sellers away to somewhere that doesn't have such a insane policy.

I just sold £60 worth of Star Wars figure to a collector tonight, he used my Buy 2 Get 1 Half Price offer so go those figures for under £50. And as he is a collector, he will tell other collectors about me. And all I charged postage was £4.95 1st class recorded signed for where most on Greedbay would charge £10+ postage on 10 action figures like that.

Anyway, mandatory free postage won't be happening on here.

[moonwitch]

Because it’s added to the item price you won’t be able to work in postage discounts for multiple purchases.

I have postage included in all of my listings...I do the same on my website.

I don't see a problem as I include a discount on all multi-purchases

[booksforsale]

Here is just one example where it falls down for the seller.

List a 500 gram Large Letter item.

Say it sells for £39.
Minus the 2nd class postage of £1.04 leaving you with £37.96 (before other fees obviously)

Sells for £39.01 minus the SPECIAL DELIVERY, you now have to use of £5.40 leaving you with £33.60.

So there is a price band (I can't do the maths, well can't be bothered) where the more you take the less you will make.

This currently falls apart with ebay's Max of £2.75 P&P you can charge on books, to a degree.

I hope the OP is just asking G&M not to consider this in general.

Should ebid ever bring this in I am offski.

[meebo1]

And I think you won't be alone then