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Would you really sell on ebay ?
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Syntax Error:
Ebay charging a fee on postage - a service they do not provide - was a response to some sellers charging pennies for their items but having stupid postage rates. It meant ebay was missing out on a big cut of their customers' trade. Ebay is not Amazon; it stocks nothing, sells nothing, ships nothing.

The ebay system was designed for domestic/national sellers, but does not scale for global drop-shippers who have the resources to bot-spam listings with identical items at anti-trust prices. Ebay is trying to be another ali-express? Of course, China has long profiteered from the (non-reciprocal) universal postal agreement. This has led to the crazy situation where domestic ebay sellers find themselves unable to compete with their own suppliers on their own national platform, because it's always cheaper to ship from China than from the next town.

Would I sell on ebay? Yes I do. Do I offer free postage? Only when it's built into the buy-it-now price. Have I dealt with idiots? Good customer service goes with the territory.
Do I make enough profit to retire? Are you kidding :horse:
Simon:
I can see why they did it but of course whilst closing a loophole it put the price up for everyone which they can do, still amazon charge 18% or actually once you factor fees of fees 22% and that's to use them as ebay.
SilverSolder:

--- Quote from: Syntax Error on October 12, 2020, 08:44:37 pm ---[...] Of course, China has long profiteered from the (non-reciprocal) universal postal agreement. [..]

--- End quote ---

To that point, I think our (Western) postal services are used to loading the price of sending anything with all kinds of costs that are nothing to do with the actual, real distribution costs.  That's why it costs us $30 to send a package to China, whereas our Chinese friend paid sub-$1 to send it the other way (i.e. one envelope in a container going over on a ship just doesn't cost that much in real terms, before loading the costs...)

Shipping container rates from the United States to China begin at $277 for a 20 foot container.  How many envelopes/small packages can you fit in a container?  -  you see the real price is only pennies, and the Chinese sellers get to pay the real price....    we don't.    Yet many will tell us that we are the ones living in a free market system, while the Chinese are stuck with inefficient communism!

Our postal costs are high enough that Amazon thinks it is worthwhile to hire their own drivers and buy their own vans instead of using the existing "shipping mafia", that ought to tell you something.
james_s:
The cost of shipping out of the USA went up dramatically around 10 years ago. I used to send quite a bit of stuff and as long as it wasn't huge or super heavy there were economical ways of doing it. Now all of the low cost surface options are gone and USPS only offers the high priced premium airmail services. Shipping even a small package to the UK for example will cost over $50 now, they charged me over $7 to ship a small packet weighing a few ounces (blank PCB) that could have been sent as a letter for under $1 but the clerk said it was rigid enough to count as a package. People get upset with Americans for refusing to sell international but it's not our fault, it's just that it is such a hassle compared to domestic and the cost is so obscene that it's not worth it.
Simon:
As far as i am aware the Chinese government subsidizes the shipping. It's also a quirk of an agreement between countries to no charge each other.

I can ship in the UK for about £5 an to Europe for £12 which is pretty much as expected. Our letter costs have skyrocketed though when Royal Mail was sold off the first thing they did was start putting the price of stamps up for letters even though they were now turning a profit from the ecommerce world.
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