How to know how much to charge for postage?

[schnapps]

Do you all weigh your items on kitchen/bathroom scales? How do you know if your scales weigh items the same as the post office scales? How do you then work out how much to charge?

kitchen scales then theres a postage calculator on royal mail website.

I'm confused by the post office prices. It says standard parcels up to 1kg is £3.85. So, even really light item with cost at least £3.85?

No...ill have a look BRB..

What about a really thin book that weighs just 200g?

www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?mediaId=51000697&catId=400030

A thin book, weighing 200g IF it fits through the little letterbox type thing at the P.O will be under a pound, a DVD is.

It used to be simple, now its not.
The P.O have a sizer to see ifs it abig envelope, little envelope bla bla PITA.

Thanks charliecat

Once you have done a few parcels you get rough idea BTW..

you can get a chart/leaflet from the PO that gives prices for letter, large letter, packet, standard parcels etc. also prices in 1st and 2nd class/
Weigh your item including the packaging on kitchen scales, use the chart/leaflet to determine whether it is letter, large letter, packet or parcel, add an amount on to cover the cost of packaging and then you're done.

Remember to add 70p for recorded delivery - this is for seller protection not buyer protection

Should I be doing recorded delivery then??? Have listed 6 items and not calculated recorded delivery in, would I be being a bit foolhardy not to send items recorded??? Haven't had a problem so far.

I don't use recorded deliver if it's an amount I can stand to lose. On lower priced items the higher P&P can put people off.

You have to remember that a buyer can claim to have not received an item and simply get a refund via paypal and there is nothing you can do to contest this if you don't have tracking proof.

If one of my auctions goes higher than expected I pay the extra for rec del myself - rather than risk losing the lot.

Thanks for that Six