There's no 'Free Postage' like there's no 'Free Lunch'
For a while now eBay has been pushing sellers to offer 'Free Postage'. Well actually, they are encouraging sellers to integrate the postage & packaging costs into the item price. So postage is still not free, it has just become a hidden charge.
Yes, we as a seller could just add £3 to each item we sell and only charge an additional P&P fee to international customers. But we see a few problems with this concept.
- All items would now be more expensive. On a high priced item this wouldn't make much difference. But would you want to pay £6 for a Skeleton Archer instead of £3?
- If you bought multiple items you would pay multiple (hidden) P&P charges, so your three £4 figures would not end up as £12 plus £5.25 P&P (= £17.25) but as £21. In the end you would pay an additional £3.75 for these three items. And the more you buy the greater this gap becomes. For 10 items you would pay an additional hidden £17.75 in P&P charges.
- And the big question for us: Would people still buy at these inflated prices?
eBay markets this concept as an advantage to the buyer. We think that charging P&P and giving a postage discount for additional items is much fairer for our customers.
Also please keep in mind that eBay is getting 10% of all our sales. So for them higher item prices mean a higher income.
For a little transparency on our P&P prices please see here: http://wargamingtrader.com/postage-and-packing - we had to raise our international prices this year to reflect the rise in Royal Mail prices.
Lele
