eBay newbie - postage and packing costs

[FoofyShmooffer]

We have sold a couple of things on EBay before and found ourselves at a loss regarding P&p.

We ended up losing out money wise.

So if anyone wouldn't mind, as if you're speaking to a small child, how do I calculate P&p and ask an appropriate amount? We are trying to raise some funds and have loads to sell.

TIA

Grab your item or bundle - add some approx packing material, weigh it, go on the royal mail website, find out price for that weight and then do the next size up just in case (unless it's far more expensive) I always underestimate the packing material and also, it costs money too.

Excellent.

Thankyou penfold I didn't consider the packing material. Never occurred to me. RM website, next size up.
Will do

Pleasure!

You can give people a couple of different postage options on eBay too say special delivery (express) or second class signed for (economy)

Alternative method once you've done a few: look up Completed Listings for similar items to ensure you get all the key words in your title, and charge the same as most of them, bearing in mind plastic mailing bags + bubblewrap are lighter than jiffy bags, which are remarkably heavy.

Thankyou both. The very idea of working out the P&p without leaving myself short or swindling folk just baffled me.

The new prices for royal mail mean that any item up to 750g costs £2.70 First class, £2.20 second class, unless flat enough to go as a Large Letter. So that will cover all clothing unless a large coat or similar, and most books/toys unless very large.
So all my listings are now set to £2.90 (that's first class plus 20p for packaging). When I post, if it goes as a large letter instead, I refund the difference (unless I obviously could tell it would be LL in which case I set postage as that upfront).

DON'T go next size up though because the difference is £1.60 and that would be enough to piss most buyers off.

Ah Thanks Flouncy. That makes sense. Yes, £1.60 is quite a hike up isn't it? It would be the difference between buying or not.

Yes, and a lot of buyers will check the price paid/ weigh it themselves when it arrives and be very narked if they've been overcharged.

Ooh, I dunno flouncy, the stamp price alone isn't the p&p though, is it? If I had postage charges queried I'd explain that the p&p charge covers stamp, packaging (I recycle), time to list and pack, and for some people the petrol/time to get to the PO. So just charging £2.20 for that can be unfair on the seller IYSWIM. There will always be some buyer with unrealistic expectations....

(and OP, I usually weigh the goods plus what I want to pack them in and add 50p or £1 to cover the packaging/fees cost. Another thing you can do is search for similar items and see what everyone else is charging.)

Also if something is v heavy it can be more economical to offer courier delivery, but that's not a route I have taken, I tend to say cash on collection for large things.

But it doesn't. It covers POSTAGE and PACKAGING. The rest - no. You don't get to charge for that. I charge actual price plus 20p for packaging. You don't get to charge for your time, you're selling an item not a service.

I went with (as suggested by various people) the p+p others had charged for the same items. This meant that I received £25 for postage for the various items. When I got to the post office the actual bill came to £43 .

The maximum suggested by ebay wouldn't have covered it, and I'm sure that if I'd put the actual cost of postage there wouldn't have been any interest in the items.

So once ebay fees are taken into account I might as well have saved myself the effort and just chucked the stuff in the bin.

do use this: www.royalmail.com/price-finder as opposed to the ebay estimated postage costs as I have ended up out of pocket a few times on international sales using ebay's version!