Ebay Question

abouttobebanned

I'm fairly new to Ebay and was just wondering something...

When a seller charges 5.99 for postage & packing and then when you see by the stamps that it cost 90cent....is this normal practise?

enfeild

When you bid on the auction you accept his terms. If the postage is too expensive, dont bid. You can only report him to ebay if he asks for more postage than is listed in the auction. However when you are leaving feedback you can click on the icon regarding postage that says he was too dear.
Regards.
Tom.

bladespin

5.99 is to cover post and packing, not just the stamps.

abouttobebanned

Yes, I know that bladespin, but it was just a small padded envelope that can be bought for €1. €6 to post a set of iphone earphones...

ttm

Depends on the rest of the service?

I wouldn't leave negative if the item was delivered quickly and everything else was OK (you can still give him only one star on the star ratings) but if the seller sat on the item for 3 days or more before posting I'd be starting to think about a neutral.

crótach

abouttobebanned wrote: »

I'm fairly new to Ebay and was just wondering something...

When a seller charges 5.99 for postage & packing and then when you see by the stamps that it cost 90cent....is this normal practise?

Yes, it's normal practice. eBay charge a commission on the sale price, but not on the postage. When you spend more time on eBay you'll find out tons of items that are being sold for 1 quid with a postage of 20-30 quid.

At the end of the day it's up to you to compare the price including the shipping, and all the seller is doing is minimizing the fee that eBay charge them.

snowman707

not too familiar with e bay these days but jacking up the p& P costs was a way of keeping the reserve price or buy it now [price lower

was also a way of avoiding fees as fees were not changed on p&p cost, don't know if this still applies , items listed at 1 cent with €15 P&P etc.

ttm

I think the answer to the OP's question is here in eBays on Seller performance standards web page.

Basics are if a seller gets hit with more than 4% of of one or two star ratings for postage then eBay gets upset and starts to take action. Good thing about using the seller rating system to nail postage scams is that the seller doesn't know who has done it.

I've reported a few scams where the price of the postage paid for the item and sale price was very little as Avoiding eBay fees and supprise supprise because it hits them in the pocket its one of the few cases where eBay seem to take some action. OP's case would be mild compared to some, this would be a good "bad" example here and got negative feedback as well.

PCPhoto

I've queried a few postage charges in the past:

things the seller will claim they are entitled to charge:

postage and packing materials (stamps, envelopes, packing materials - bubble wrap etc)
time spent travelling to post office (petrol etc)

(one seller a few years ago told me they had to send an employee 20miles to the nearest post office to send the package and that meant the employee wasnt earning them money while they were travelling to and from the post office)

citizen_p

i never have reported anything like this.....i just look before i bid. and factor it into the total im willing to spend on the item.

RasTa

It's to cover their ebay and paypal fees.

Naos

Some of the price of the item is subsidised by the higher p&p costs, this is done so the Final Value Fee is lower.

It's against eBay policy, items should really be reported and they can be subsequently removed.