# please explain e-bay



## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

My #1 question is do I have to combine shipping? As far as I am concerned my e-bay fees are included in the shipping fees. so if I put the small item in the same shipper with the larger item, i end up paying the e-bay fees for the smaller item. 
The customer did not ask before bidding, instead e-mailed me after ward for the invoice with the discounted amount. My listing doesn't state one way or the other about shipping, except the price of course.
I've only been selling for about 6 weeks, so would appreciate any advice about this.


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## sisterpine (May 9, 2004)

Basically you can state that you do or do not combine shipping. putting your ebay costs into you shipping is not a great idea for the reason you mentioned. I do not sell anything on ebay that does not include a bit of a price increase to cover ebay costs these days. there are some on this forum who do enormous amounts of sales and they may see it differently. sisterpine


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

I would do it. It's a reasonable request and you want positive feedback.

Strangely, I offer free shipping and people still ask me if I combine shipping.


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## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

I have my shipping costs on _every_ page of my listings and I still have the regular question, "How much to ship this to XYZ, CA?" 

To the OP, it's entirely up to you. If you don't want to combine shipping, then don't. No where in your listing did you say you will. 
However, if you can ship both and still have a bit of the S/H costs in your pocket, you might consider combining just because it makes you seem generous. And people _appreciate_ a generous seller. 
Something else to consider is that a lot of people will look for other items from the same seller _because_ of getting a discount on shipping. 

But again, it's completely up to you. I buy from sellers who combine. I buy from sellers who don't. No big deal.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

The item is only .99 with .99 cent shipping. i don't see how I can take the fees from the/my .99 and feel like I am getting any where.
I am getting the insertion fees free.
If I add the fees to the starting price, I don't get free insertion fees. 
not so worried about this situation, because it is only a .99 cent lot, more worried about the policy when i get pricier lots going in the future. Don't see why the seller has to cover every thing.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

Nevada said:


> I would do it. It's a reasonable request and you want positive feedback.
> 
> Strangely, I offer free shipping and people still ask me if I combine shipping.


So it isn't enough to have a good product and fast shipping, I have to bribe people to give me good feed back?
Nevada, some times you crack me up.


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## lawman0252 (Sep 26, 2010)

SquashNut said:


> So it isn't enough to have a good product and fast shipping, I have to bribe people to give me good feed back?
> Nevada, some times you crack me up.


Unfortunately that is the reality of Ebay. My wife and I have been selling on Ebay for about 7 years now and have seen the trend change over that time frame. It certainly can be a pain in the rear at times, the customer is not always right IMO. Give fair pricing and fair shipping rates and you will have many repeat customers. I personally do not want to keep customers that haggle over $3 dollar shipping.


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## clovis (May 13, 2002)

I'm a top rated power seller, I always combine shipping whenever possible. 

Buyers tend to want convenient and cheap. I am the same way when buying.

As a seller it is easier and faster for me to combine shipping. Just one box or envelope, and I'm ready to ship. Customers appreciate it, and it pays off in spades. 

As a buyer, I recently shopped ebay for coupons. One seller had everything I needed, but said they did not combine shipping. I spent almost $19 with the seller who did, and she profited almost $3 on the shipping alone. Which seller made more money in the long run? 

Getting on a soapbox here...I refuse to buy from sellers who feel like they have to make a big profit on shipping. A $2 handling fee, added into the shipping cost, is understandable on a $40 item with $7 shipping. But these sellers who try to add a $4 handling fee to the shipping of a one pound item, and then cheap out when they get to the post office, just to save themselves 45 cents....I get very sick of that.

As an example, I just bought a manual from an ebay seller. His shipping was $4, even though the actual first class shipping cost was 1.56. I would have had it in 3 days, but the dude cheaped out on me when he got to the post office, and sent it media rate. How many pennies did he save while making me wait almost 2 weeks to get my stuff? How many feedback stars do you think he'll receive from me? 

My end thought: Give buyers the best price you can on shipping. Appreciate the fact that you have an outlet to sell your goods. Shipping is an important factor when selling. Make your money on the item, not on the shipping. Don't be greedy... always work in the absolute best interest of the buyer.


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## clovis (May 13, 2002)

Since I'm still on a soapbox:

I have a friend who occasionally sells on ebay. His attitude is "they'll pay what I tell them, or the deal is off."

He routinely marks shipping up in a big way, like $20 for a $7 item. "Those people _have_ to pay me for my time. I am _NOT_ giving this shipping away." It is like he has a mentality that people owe him something just because he has it for sale.

It's funny that he never sees the correlation between his poor sales, his AWFUL feedback scores and his crazy expensive shipping for poorly described, outdated items.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

OH, my, I don't think I am being greedy, What i sold them would have cost much more had they bought them else where. I would have appreciated them asking about shipping before they bid, however.
What I've been selling is going for 4-5 times the price else where in fact.
i won't bid on item that are highly inflated on the shipping, but there is no reason to con some one out of a fair price either.

I don't get the e-bay attitude about every thing for the buyer, i reciently had some one bid on some thing and not pay. i was shocked to find out i was unable to put that on their feed back, so now that person gets to do that to others? Make no sense.
I see now why some sellers are leaving e-bay.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

lawman0252 said:


> Unfortunately that is the reality of Ebay. My wife and I have been selling on Ebay for about 7 years now and have seen the trend change over that time frame. It certainly can be a pain in the rear at times, the customer is not always right IMO. Give fair pricing and fair shipping rates and you will have many repeat customers. I personally do not want to keep customers that haggle over $3 dollar shipping.


It's the haggling after they have won the lot that gets me, especially after they out bid some one else. basically they messed with the bidder before them and try to get it at the lower bid any way.


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## sunflower-n-ks (Aug 7, 2006)

Combined shipping does not necessarily mean "no charge" for the second item. Just a reduction in the second sometimes is great. So as an example, one item ships for .99, two items ship for 1.50 or 1.75. A savings for the customer, and something to help cover your costs also. When I think of "combined shipping" I don't expect the second, item free, I think in terms of a possible "reduction" in the price for the second item.

Here is my buyers shipping rant for what seems like a current fad for some sellers - the FLAT RATE BOX thing. Some sellers put EVERYTHING they sell into a flat rate box. That can be good if it is something heavy, but small. But for light weight items it is not. A couple of skeins of yarn - into a 12 dollar flat rate box? Won't get my bid at all. Those two skeins of yarn would ship for maybe a dollar at the regular rates and even adding a handling fee for the seller would not bring it to the $12. Without going on with the rant, if a seller can't be reasonable with shipping, plus a logical handling fee, I won't bid.


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## clovis (May 13, 2002)

SquashNut said:


> What i sold them would have cost much more had they bought them else where. I would have appreciated them asking about shipping before they bid, however.
> What I've been selling is going for 4-5 times the price else where in fact.
> 
> 
> ...


On the first point...it sounds like you need to raise your price of the item, especially if it will sell for 4 to 5 times as much. Why leave money sitting on the table, so to speak?

IMO, ebay messed around for years, not policing the bad sellers and the bad buyers. They allowed ebay to be ruined by these people, and many of the good buyers and sellers left in droves. If ebay would have taken care of the bad sellers long ago, we wouldn't have this problem today. 

Now, it seems, ebay is trying to lure buyers back...and have created a system where the buyer is never wrong. Not really always fair for the seller...but that is the system that ebay has in place.

I chose to sell at ebay, and understand I'm going to lose some stuff. As much as I hate it, it is part of the game. Today, I get to replace 2 items the buyer said they never got...wow...I hate having to ship two more items at my expense, just because the buyer said they never received them. Just part of doing business there, I guess.


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## sunflower-n-ks (Aug 7, 2006)

Does delivery confirmation help prove they got the items, or is that not of any value either?


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## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

If you ship out of your PayPal or eBay accounts, delivery confirmation is automatically added if I'm not mistaken. And yes, if something goes missing, that's what PP/eBay will use to determine if it left your hands. 



sunflower-n-ks said:


> A couple of skeins of yarn - into a 12 dollar flat rate box? Won't get my bid at all. Those two skeins of yarn would ship for maybe a dollar at the regular rates and even adding a handling fee for the seller would not bring it to the $12. Without going on with the rant, if a seller can't be reasonable with shipping, plus a logical handling fee, I won't bid.


This one makes me squirrely too. lol
I can't decide if it's simple laziness that they don't want to use, or truly cheap, that they don't want to buy, a POSTAL SCALE! :doh:



clovis said:


> As a seller it is easier and faster for me to combine shipping. Just one box or envelope, and I'm ready to ship. Customers appreciate it, and it pays off in spades.


Me too. 
And worse, if you put both items into the same envelope and DIDN'T combine shipping, people will be miffed that you didn't. 



> My end thought: Give buyers the best price you can on shipping. Appreciate the fact that you have an outlet to sell your goods. Shipping is an important factor when selling. Make your money on the item, not on the shipping. Don't be greedy... always work in the absolute best interest of the buyer.


Yeah, that's pretty much my business model, too. 
I always mark my shipping up about $.50-$1. HOWEVER, I also have an upper limit. I don't charge over $6.50US. Period. Even if they order $200 worth of fabric, and it costs me $18 to ship. I only charge $6.50.

90% of my orders will fit in a flat rate envelope or less. But that 10% that doesn't is because they've spent enough with me that I'm willing to kick in the extra as a thank-you.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

SquashNut said:


> The item is only .99 with .99 cent shipping.


I usually price my items so I can offer free shipping so I'm not up on all of the shipping price rules, but it seems to me that eBay was going to limit shipping price as a percentage of asking price. That was supposed to stop people from selling an item for $0.01 while charging $4.99 shipping, thereby almost entirely bypassing the final value fee. Maybe they never implemented that rule...


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

Are you saying my shipping is too high?

As far as raising my price, i cann't the price was set by my compitition on e-bay. they cut their price so far under what people can get the same item from on other on line providers it hurts.
i am coming to the conclusion that it's the e-bay sellers faults that they are getting ran over by the buyers. As much as the sellers would like to blame all the problems on e-bay, they own the product and allowing the buyers to bully you out of your stuff is wrong. You cann't work for nothing and stay in business. 
We calculated the price and if I raised the price, it would raise the e-bay fees, So i would have to raise my price again to cover that, which would raise the e-bay fees, repeat.....
Some where I got the idea it was shipping and handling, not just shipping. Which meant i could add a small amount to cover e-bay fees, time to pkg the item, and the cost of getting it to the post office, right. All of these costs would still be there weather I ship the items together or not.


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## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

Again, you can run your store however you want. 
We were just giving our experiences.

Me personally-- I'm a PowerSeller that's been selling on eBay for 12 years. I have nearly 5,000 transactions, (3 of which were negative) and almost a perfect 5* rating. 

My experience has been that if I make it obvious that I work to keep my buyers happy, they do me the honor of spreading the word and returning to shop with me some more. 



> We calculated the price and if I raised the price, it would raise the e-bay fees, So i would have to raise my price again to cover that, which would raise the e-bay fees, repeat.....


And this doesn't really make any sense. 
If this were true, why would anyone sell anything on eBay if fees took away all profit??
If you do indeed have to sell so low, you might consider taking your experience and putting it into a new product that has a little more potential...


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

Question:
If I offer the item for $2.99 with free shipping, do I have to pay e-bay fees on the whole $2.99?


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

ErinP said:


> Again, you can run your store however you want.
> We were just giving our experiences.
> 
> Me personally-- I'm a PowerSeller that's been selling on eBay for 12 years. I have nearly 5,000 transactions, (3 of which were negative) and almost a perfect 5* rating.
> ...


I sold every bit i had at a $100 profit for the week, if i had been able to sell at more realistic prices I would have done better, of course.
Since it is gone for the year, I will be looking for some thing else to sell.
I've been a flea market vendor for 20 some odd years and know if your going to make money you need to sell items in all price ranges. (Sell what you have.) i wish i could have waved a majic wand over the stuff while saying abrakadabra and poof they were diamonds. But it doesn't work that way.
I have also found out you sell better if your happy also. selling to low can make a seller resentful. i see that on here when people complain about e-bay.
Any way i split the .99 shipping with my customer. she must have been Ok with that as she paid for her items. I'll ship them out today.
I really wasn't trying to argue with my customer, more really trying to figure out what is the norm in this situation. 
i use the .99 cent with .99 shipping because most of what I make on e-bay goes to a food bank near here. I've only been selling for about 6 weeks. As I go along, I hope to get a better idea of what I am doing. But when the prices are set by other sellers on e-bay before you even get started, what are you gonna do?

The reason it looks like the e-bay fees eat up the profit is more because I would also lower the shipping at the same time as raising the price. Hey e-bay is the one that offers the .99 cent deal. if there was a problem with the shipping including some thing to cover handling I would think they would stop.
The product I was selling takes 2 stamps to ship, so it's not like I am making a fortune on the difference.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

Ok, when I hit 100 feed back points e-bay gave me a free down load of turbo lister.
So i used it to figure out different senarios of the item i was selling.
i tryed it with a buy it now listing, at $1.99 free shipping. The listing fees were 50 cents.
So by the time I paid the 61 cents shipping, the 50 cent listing fees and the final value fees, Bought the pkging. It would dig deep into my 99 cents.
Unless there is something I don't understand.
i hope this explains why I used the .99 plus .99 offer that e-bay offered for these particular sales. Like i said before if I had been able to sale higher I sure would have.
suprisingly with out the buy it now the fee went up to 65 cents


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

SquashNut said:


> Question:
> If I offer the item for $2.99 with free shipping, do I have to pay e-bay fees on the whole $2.99?


Yes, but eBay gives power sellers a break on listing fees when they offer free shipping.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

Well being a power seller is far in the future for me. That's why I gave an example of my sells item for those who may not remember what it was like when they started, or to show how much things have changed for new sellers, especially those that sell small items.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

SquashNut said:


> Are you saying my shipping is too high?
> 
> As far as raising my price, i cann't the price was set by my compitition on e-bay. they cut their price so far under what people can get the same item from on other on line providers it hurts.


No, I'm not saying that your shipping is too high. I'm saying that at one time eBay was exploring way to prevent abuse by charging a penny for a product and making it up on shipping. I just thought it was against the rules to have shipping that high of a percentage if the sales price.

I understand competition at eBay. Just a few cents one way or the other can make a huge difference in sales.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

Back when I was just a buyer, buying cents off coupons to use, I got an e-mail from e-bay that I could list 100 items a month for 99 cents with 99 cent shipping and pay no insertion fees.
So this is their idea not mine. At this point I think I use 50 auctions a month to resell the coupons. of course not all of them sell, some sell a little higher.
Yes, I know you know what competition is, just letting you know i understand it also.


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## featherbottoms (May 28, 2005)

sunflower-n-ks said:


> Does delivery confirmation help prove they got the items, or is that not of any value either?


No. Delivery confirmation only means the post office delivered the item to the address on the package. It does not prove the person received the item. 

A personal example. A few years ago I sold and shipped some books to a lady in San Antonio sometime around the 4th of July, with delivery confirmation. USPS said the package was delivered. We assume the delivery was left on her front porch - as was normal. However, she was out of town that day, and a couple more after that. She said she never received her package. The post office said she did. She never asked but I refunded her money.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

Just my opinion but she should have asked you to hold them for a few days. Since she knew she would be gone. That was way beyond nice of you.


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## featherbottoms (May 28, 2005)

Thank you for that but the way I see it the package is my responsibility until the customer receives it. I also take back books, within 7 days of delivery, with no questions asked if they are returned in the same condition as shipped.

My philosophy is to treat people the way I would want to be treated.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

There is such a thing as going to far, both sides have some responsibility, i think they do any way.
You have just as much responsiblity to stay in business to your self. 
Well any way since this thread has gone off the original topic, I guess I better start dinner.


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## clovis (May 13, 2002)

SquashNut-

Are you selling coupons on ebay?


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

yes, I do sell pot luck coupons on e-bay. I buy a few envelopes worth and resale any thing I cann't use my self.
I also have a few people donating their sunday papers to me to sell the clipped coupons from them.
I use the profit from that to buy more coupons i can use. 
When I need to I buy the bundles of 20 or so coupons of specific types. If there turns out to extras of those I resale them too.
i do this to buy food that I donate to our food bank here.
When ever i have built up enough profit from these trans actions I buy free product coupons on e-bay.You have to have some one you really trust on e-bay to buy them from as there is alot of fakes.
Our grocery store had 4 pks of activia yogurt on sale for $1.29. So I bought 40 $1 on 1 coupon for those.
My dh contributes $20 a month for this project in cash. i use that and multiply it with the coupons project. last month I donated $63 worth of groceries that cost us $20.
Of course I do also coupon to help our own grocery money go farther. But the food bank has become my real pet project. Selling the extra coupons on e-bay keeps my couponing cost down.


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## sunflower-n-ks (Aug 7, 2006)

This is off topic - SquashNut, have you checked out Ladycat's threads about couponing? She has some wonderful advise about getting and using coupons.


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## clovis (May 13, 2002)

Very cool, SquashNut!!!!

We are avid couponers too. I've bought lots of coupons from ebayers over the years. Never had a problem with any seller. I'm also picky about who I buy from. The seller needs to have spotless feedback.

You are in a super competitive field when selling on ebay. I think once you formulate your selling strategy, you'll need to post that in your listing, just like all of the other ebay coupon sellers. I think you are going to be forced to combine shipping due to competition.

You might strongly consider buying a postal scale. I would also encourage you to keep a stock of stamps on hand, including 17 cent stamps, or 10 cent, 3 cents, 4 cents, etc. These basically come in sheets of 20, so keeping them on hand won't cost too much.

This will allow you to affix your own postage without going to the post office for weighing when you sell lots of combined shipping. 

This will also save you money...no need to use two 44 cent stamps if it just needs 61 cents of postage. That is a 27 cent savings alone, and is an important savings in your competitive field.

HTH.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

Well then you probably won't buy from me. because I don't have a spotless record. And i buy from others who don't. There is always 2 sides to every story. i don't see how every one can complain about e-bays feed back policy and give so much credence to it.
When I first started i sent a batch of bonus coupons to some one. They were short dated and the person mixed them up to be part of the lot. She gave me bad feed back on the sale. needless to say I never give short dated bonus coupons any more.
i have weighed the lots of 100 coupons and they are always 2 stamps. I would combine shipping on the coupons, if I was selling several batches that would fit in the same envelope. But with the envelopes I am using it's pretty much 1 batch per envelope.
The original post wasn't about coupons, it was some thing else I was selling on e-bay. I am shipping them/it in the $4.95 flat rate boxes. The box is pretty full as it is.
If you look on the e-bay I am not the only one using the .99 plus .99 shipping offer it is every where. There is cost to the seller other than just the stamps. If you start deducting that from the sellers share, It gets so there is no reason for him/her to do it.
Now if I were selling the coupons for 5 cents with $4.95 shipping that would be different.
I won't buy from the people who are selling the coupons for .99 w/free shipping. Why? because they know they are selling so cheap they don't want to give you any thing. I tryed that a few times, but I would get envelopes full of inseticide, and hair color coupons. Basically the seller knows he is ripping himself off, and it shows in the product.


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## clovis (May 13, 2002)

Yes, I agree there are two sides to every story. "Spotless feedback" to me means that you don't have 27 neutrals and 18 negatives in the past six months. A few here and there is alright.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

Well, other than the one I do have excellent feed back. But I better becarefull that I don't jinx it by saying that. Ha ha.

i was so bummed over that. I asked her to return the pkg and i would replace it. But she refused. i didn't think i should replace it with out her returning it. She didn't want to resolve it through e-bay. 
It was alot of hassel over 99 cents, i can tell you that.
She ended up having her money returned, kept the coupons and gave me bad feed back. Long story on her keeping the money.
So now no bonuses sent with my pkgs. Which is a shame, as some times those short dated coupons are pretty good ones. Such as the P&G BOGO's that are only 30 days when they come out. Which is what I sent her.
But Oh well.


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## clovis (May 13, 2002)

There are going to be some people out there that can't be pleased, no matter what.

I just got a neutral feedback for content of a book that I didn't even write...I was just selling the book.

URGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

which just goes to show, e-bays feed back system is a sham.
they know it too.
i get notes all the time saying if i will give them good feed back they will give me good feed back. it should be enough that I bid, and pay for the item, with out causing any undo hardship on the seller. Now i have to say the stuff they sent was sent on time and all really good stuff. Even when it isn't.
or the the other way around if I happen to be the seller.
The ones who send me those notes are usually the ones sending the worst coupons.
On the flip side I love the ones who put their user name on the envelope. So i can give them feed back with out spending all day figuring out who they are.
Sorry to hear about your neutral feed back. When I got my negative, I put a note under it explaining what happened. But of course you know you can do that, right?


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