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I don’t want to be a downer here but I have just got done packing and printing labels for everything that has sold since Sat. About 10 items. I had heard postage was going up and it did. I had also got a vague email from ebay about international postage discount changes. While packing up my 10 items (all domestic) I noticed that I was not only paying more for shipping but getting about 5 to 10 percent less of a discount on it at the same time. I’m not happy. If ebay had something to do with this they should have waited and not did it on the same day sellers got hit by USPS. They already charge us a percentage fee on postage. I know I know if you don’t like it sell somewhere else. I get it. It just frustrates me that I do all the work and my big partners just keep taking a little more every year.
PS Probably will not be listing anymore items with free shipping. Haven’t seen the boost in sales and now just more out of my pocket for past listings bc of rate hike.
Sorry for the rant!!!
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Good point Jay. Maybe when ebay negotiated about the postage increase USPS also lowered the discount. You are correct I am referring to the final value fee. Which is about 11 %. When I printed my labels I was getting a discount as low as 7%. In the past the discout was always large enough to cover the fin al value fee. Not anymore.
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Yeah, I think USPS negotiates the discount it gives eBay sellers.
It’s certainly not great that USPS prices seem to go up every year, but I have to remember that its mostly much much cheaper than fedEx or UPS.This is why we think free shipping is so silly. Just charge the price of shipping because it’s an actual cost, not profit center.
Good news is that we all still pay much less than people who go to the Post Office.
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Yeah, I got zinged by the increase this morning. I offer free shipping on my t-shirts since they are mostly under the 8 oz weight. That rate was up $.17 so not much, but when the package comes up at 8.4 oz, the overall increase and then additional cost was a bit of an “Oh crap” moment. I am contemplating charging a flat $1.50 shipping fee for my listings at this point.
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I believe the rates are set by USPS. Several years ago, ebay negotiated with the PO so that ebay sellers using ebay labels would get the Commercial Rate discount, and ebay TRS sellers using the labels would get the Commercial Plus Discount (none of us would be eligible for that discount on our own, we don’t ship nearly enough items individually). Until this recent change, the gap between Commercial and Commercial Plus was pretty large, which made the TRS discount a really nice perk for TRS sellers. The USPS (not ebay) closed that gap considerably with this recent change. That is what we are seeing now.
As Jay says, we are still doing a lot better than if we paid for our postage at the counter. And if you are TRS, you are getting the same rate many much larger sellers get from the PO, which helps the little guy stay competitive, thanks to the deal ebay cut with the PO.
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Basically to summarise my new game plan while sourcing, I used to factor that 10 percent of an items sell price went to the MAN (ebay/paypal) before you consider the real “Man”. Now im goin to assume that 15% goes to them. Also another reason to find higher price items so postage doesn’t cut into the overall paypal payment from the buyer. Sometimes easier said than done 😉
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Non-TRS sellers do get a discount for using ebay labels. I think it is basically the same, or perhaps slightly more, than what you get for printing USPS labels online through USPS. So printing your labels online is cheaper than buying postage at the counter pretty much no matter what. Also, I want to add , for those TRS sellers who ship internationally, there is still a pretty big difference between the discounts for non TRS and TRS. So, if you do a lot of international shipping, the TRS shipping discount is still a pretty big benefit.
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I might be missing something here, because I am a new seller and still learning the shipping ropes, but I know that Priority limits went from being 16oz or under to 13oz or under. So if I had something listed for First Class shipping and it was a 14 oz item, Ebay did not automatically change that in my listing. It still charged the customer the original First Class shipping cost, and it ended up having to go Priority. I had to go through my listings in the bulk editor and make the changes, one by one. 🙁 I was kinda bummed about that.
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