RE: Ebay Is Kind of Confusing

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killerwot in Rant, Complain, Talk • 6 months ago

I'll do that and send it over to you, I'd really like to get some advice from someone who knows what they're doing, and by the sounds of it, you're that person. Hopefully the Irish one isn't too different.

I really appreciate the advice and a lot of this makes sense. I think what I need to do is bring an item down to the post office and ask them to weigh, measure and tell me the price for sending to America, Canada, UK and Australia. Mainland Europe would be good too, and from there I can come up with a happy average where I'm not ripping buyers, or myself, off.

Luckily the only things I'm selling is games, and it seems to be about 160 grams, 18x14x3 CM, and those dimesions don't seem to change from item to item.

Good shout on the signed shipping too, I'd be much more comfortable for that being the norm when sending out items. I've heard of some scams, and makes me weary, especially knowing the price of some of the games I'll be sending out.

6 months ago in Rant, Complain, Talk by killerwot

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alonicus 6 months ago

Gotta be honest, 90% of what I send now is tracked.

Check the thickness if they have a "large letter" size. It can make a serious saving on post costs ! The UPU (Universal Postal Union, an international association of various countries' post offices) has set a 3cm standard, but Royal Mail makes it 2.5cm. It enables them to make extra money on international cross-charges for items from 2.5-3m thick.....

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killerwot 6 months ago

An Post has a size for a padded envelope, or large envelope and it actually mentions DVD/ Game as an example.

Luckily the calculations online seem reasonable. I just need to go through it again and figure it all out.

Am I able to set prices for seperate regions/ countries so that a potential buyer will see the relevant shipping price?

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alonicus 6 months ago

Yes, you should be able to, as well as picking which countries you do or don't ship to.

Below is the Account Settings screen. It's the UK version (my secondary personal account, not my main business one, which looks very different !), but hopefully the Irish one isn't too different ! I've ringed the interesting bits in red....

This is the Shipping settings screen accessed from the previous one;

You may not have Click & Collect in Ireland, but you may well have Global Shipping. It's an easy way to do international, but is expensive for buyers, so only worth doing if you're not that interested in international sales.

The "Exclude Postal Locations" setting takes you to a screen where you can select country by country, or for whole continents, where you don't ship to.

"Postage Rate Tables" is where you can set postage rates up country by country, although it's a pig to work out the fine detail.

But I spotted that they'd opened up Business Policies to non-business sellers. Although it's slightly less flexible in terms of individual country settings, once set up it makes the actual listing process a total doddle !

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killerwot 6 months ago

Thank you so much! I went into my business policy screen and set all my prices according to what the varying prices are, and to make things a bit easier I just excluded a rake of places but checked the option to let people contact me about prices to ship items.

Registered is the only way I'm doing it, and have priced according to that.

So, Ireland 9.50 - which I think is a bit high, but that's what it says. Unregistered is 2.95 in Ireland, so it's a steep jump. On top of having it registered though, my item is also insured, so at least there will be some fallback, should anything happen.

UK and Mainland Europe - 12.50

America, Canada and Japan - 16

Australia - 18

I wish it was a bit cheaper, but that's the price of registered post sadly, and it's the safer option.

To counteract the pricing, I may lower my asking a bit to help out the customer and make some sales.

Just in case I've messed anything up I'm only going to upload games which are less than 10 Euros in value, and I'll sell them at a lower-than-average price. Hopefully, I'll be able to unload some stuff, test the waters, and also earn a bit of positive feedback. I don't want to put my most valuable items up first, just so I don't unknowingly make any screw-ups.

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alonicus 6 months ago

Sounds good ! Another option to consider is selling small batches of two or three games per eBay listing, so that buyers look at the item cost in relation to the postage and think it's reasonable. There are so many different combinations of ways to sell, it's worth experimenting to see which get the fastest and most profitable sales.

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