Rants

Posted on 6 Aug 2009 at 12:24

 

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It's well known in the Shopper office that I dislike Apple's tactics when it comes to squeezing its customers for money. Charging iPod Touch owners for firmware upgrades, for example, is despicable when iPhone users get them for free.

Now eBay is at it again. I was clearing out a cupboard over the weekend and decided to sell a few things rather than throw them away. One item was an old foldable keyboard for a PDA, which I thought might fetch enough to be worth the hassle. I set what I considered to be a fair price for postage and packing, only for an error message to appear telling me "P&P cost for this category cannot be more than £0.00".

I'd seen nothing to inform me that certain categories would switch to free P&P, so it was a nasty surprise. Searching Google revealed hundreds of angry forum posts on the subject.

No fewer than 39 categories now have forced free P&P, including clothes, shoes and accessories, video games, mobile and home phones, consumer electronics and computing.

EBay says it made the change because people now expect free P&P when shopping online in these categories, and claims that sellers will benefit because shoppers are more likely to buy their items if they don't charge for postage.

This is surely a thinly veiled way for eBay to take a bigger cut, as most sellers will have to find a way to increase the final sale price of items to offset postage costs. As one forum poster observed "there's no such thing as free P&P - if you don't believe me, ask the Post Office".

While this is frustrating for me, it's much more serious for businesses selling new items, especially heavy ones that cost a lot to post. Ebay already takes a big cut of the sale by charging a listing fee and a final value fee, which can add up to more than 10 per cent. Any business that uses PayPal (a subsidiary of eBay) to receive payments has a further chunk removed from the total. I won't be surprised if many sellers decide this is the final straw and find somewhere else to sell their products.

The final insult, though, is the way eBay tries to sweet-talk sellers into continuing to sell in these categories. As well as final value fee "promotions from time to time", whatever that means, "sellers should also bear in mind that the requirement to offer free postage & packaging applies only to the first domestic P&P option. Further chargeable shipping services can be offered in addition." I doubt buyers will opt to pay for delivery when they can get it for free. Plus, the onus is on sellers to ensure goods arrive safely, not with buyers, so there's no incentive for a buyer to pay extra for insurance when they can request a refund if the item doesn't arrive via an uninsured delivery method.

Author: Jim Martin