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AdventureE, Sorry for the confusion. I wasn’t planning on passing along names or IDs, I asked permission to pass along the comment….was planning on keeping the source anonymous, just mentioning that I’d asked some friends to add their comments. I figured I’d edit them if there were duplicates etc.
I just think it’s a good opportunity to get some viewpoints in front of ebay.
Do you have any comments you’d like me to include?
I sell mostly used stuff, antiques, collectibles, some clothing (mostly mens)…I’d say a fairly typical scavenger assortment. My rate of return is less than 1%. Not a problem means, well, just what it says. My returns did not increase after I went to free return shipping, (just as they hadn’t increased when I went from 14 days to 30 days even more years ago). Because my margins are good, and flexible, I don’t even factor in the return shipping cost when I price stuff. If my margins were tighter and my return rate higher, I probably would. The one place it can be a factor is international: I will sometimes not offer international (I don’t use GSP, maybe I should, but that’s for another day LOL) because of the potential cost of return shipping. But once the new rule goes into effect I will finally be able to limit my free return shipping to domestic, and even that concern will go away.
But again, I stress: your mileage may vary. My post wasn’t designed to push people to do as I do, each seller must decide what will work for him or her. I was just suggesting a few more factors people might want to consider.
1. Free returns will have a filter, just as free shipping has a filter. That will negatively impact you if you are not in the filter, BUT ask yourself: how often will MY potential buyers actually use that filter?
It will not be a factor in Best Match/Cassini, but to some extent, with ebay moving to Product pages, the importance of that will diminish anyway.2. Just want to affirm what someone has said: free return shipping has NOTHING to do with your TRS status. TRS Plus is NOT a seller status, it’s a badge that either appears on a listing or not, depending on whether the LISTING qualifies. If you want the badge and the FVF discount on an item, then going forward you will want to include free return shipping on that item. You can do it for one item, all your items, or ANY percentage of your items. eBay doesn’t look at the percentage of items you have that meet TRS PLus, it only looks to be sure that a particular listing either qualifies or not.
3. A consideration I don’t see being mentioned here, but one that loomed large when I decided to add Free return shipping to all my listings several years ago: this one act will eliminate or drastically reduce the number of false INAD claims you will get on returns, as the incentive to falsify the claim (in order to get free return shipping) is eliminated.
4. Also, keep in mind that on those items for which you offer free return shipping, you will be able to refund a partial (up to 50%) in the event that item is returned in less than original condition. No appeal to ebay, no fighting about it with the buyer. I like to reduce my potential aggravation, and that’s one way to do it. I can’t assign a dollar amount to that, but it has value to me.
5. Given the kind of stuff I sell (and most of us sell, I gather), I think it’s pretty hard to prove the impact on sales of adding free return shipping, since so many factors can be involved in the ups and downs of sales, especially for long tail items.
6. Finally, with the standard “your mileage may vary” disclaimer, I’ve been offering free return shipping for several years now, and it hasn’t been a problem. The addition of the partial refund ability and the fact that I will finally be able to offer it for domestic shipping only (currently, free return shipping means domestic and international)….that just sweetens it for me.
Thanks Malinda, that confirms what Brian Burke told me earlier today, as I mentioned above. My question is: where do we go to set up our policy to either include or exclude the original shipping from our refunds?
And, to reiterate what Brian said, and what maybe should be included in the revised Help pages: If the seller offers free shipping on an item, then the refund must be for that amount, with no deduction made for the shipping cost.
I asked about the need to refund original shipping on Weekly Chat. THis is the answer I received from ebay’s Brian Burke:
“If you offer free shipping then there is no ship cost to withhold from the buyer. So you must refund the full amount.
If you did not offer free shipping, and the buyer paid a separate ship cost, you can withhold the original ship cost for buyer remorse.”I did not have time to ask just what we must do to set this up, nor did I get to point out that this seems to conflict with the new “Help Pages”. Maybe I’ll get a chance next week to explose this further.
One of those pages references restocking fees, so they are current, and will need to be revised when the new policy goes into effect (no restocking fees).
I, too, thought sellers have an option to refund either the item price or the item price plus original shipping. My partner says No, it has always been that seller is supposed to refund both.
I have to do some running around now, but if I get back in time for ebay’s “Weekly Chat”, I’ll ask about it there.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing! How did you arrive at $18 as the cut off for Offers?
MrsKensington, Not that I know of. I do wonder though, if enough sellers use this, will they start putting the info in Sellers Hub? I think it’s possible, but not sure they will. First, because judging by many posts I’ve seen on the ebay boards and FB groups, a lot of sellers will refuse to do it. And second, because , on the opposite end, some sellers might go overboard, discounting again and again so that ebay keeps sending the emails, but buyers can get tired of that sort of thing. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Jay, I think as long as you sign up for it, you’ll be able to watch the replay later. I’m signed up but not sure I’ll be able to attend on Wed.
Jay, that’s correct, something like 60+% of ebay items are sold with free shipping. I agree, the free shipping is probably concentrated in certain categories and primarily new items. But then, ebay has said many times ( statements usually ignored by , say, Ina Steiner of ecommercebytes), that free and fast shipping are not as important for things like antiques and collectibles. So the numbers I provided don’t surprise me. As I said, when I get time I’ll run them for some other searches. I’m also going to run some searches for free return shipping numbers (which I would expect to be pretty low in almost all cats)….but I’ll run them and post them here so we can compare them in a year—should provide some idea of how successful ebay’s efforts to encourage free returns will be.
When I get a chance I’m going to do some more of these, but for now, and with no claim that this is a large enough sample to mean much, a few numbers:
Searched : “vintage trucker cap snapback hat” in all cats 17,798 listed, 5937 with free ship (FS). 5854 solds, 1831 FS.
Vintage real photo postcard in all cats: 32.958 listed, 7758 FS. Solds: 7304, 1639 FS.
Polo Ralph Lauren Shirt in Mens Clothing: Preowned: 70,859, 22,976 FS. Solds 48,714 13,831 FS
Same search, but “new with Tags”: 58,749, 34,237 FS, Solds 29,815, 14,333 FS
Thought the numbers were interesting.
Jay, I agree to some extent it’s a question of philosophy. I don’t use it much, for a number of reasons, but I might start using it more. I wish we had more data from ebay on this. For example, what percentage of clothing buyers routinely use the free shipping filter? What percentage of book buyers, or antique buyers do? What percentage of clothing items are offered with free shipping? If I knew that most people searching for mens ties, for example, use the free ship filter, I might decide to list all my ties with free ship. But I have no way to know that, so I have to guess.
I also consider that for some things, like mens ties, would it be better to charge shipping on the listing, but run promos (Buy 3, get free shipping)” to encourage multiple purchases? I have a huge backlog of ties, if I ever get them all up, that might be the way to go….
For most of my stuff, I am guessing buyers aren’t using the filter, and are less worried about free and/or fast shipping. It would be different if I were selling mostly new stuff….
Jay, Yes, people brought up that hack on the thread, some seemed to think with Amazon especially, that if they just wait they’ll get a discount. I think this may be different in that only some ebay sellers will actually take ebay’s advice and reduce, so buyers really won’t have much assurance, any more than Put it on a watch list and wait for the price to go down. For our kind of stuff, buyers know there’s a risk: wait too long, and maybe someone else buys it. If it’s the only one on ebay, buyers may learn not to wait LOL
