Hmm how much does "high" shipping cost actually dissuade buyers
Summary: The discussion centers around the impact of high shipping costs on buyer behavior. ricarmic raises the topic, prompting various participants to share their perspectives. Some contributors, including grann-4629 and marnotom!, engage in a back-and-forth conversation, highlighting their experiences with shipping costs affecting purchasing decisions. There is a range of opinions, with some emphasizing that high shipping costs can indeed deter buyers, while others discuss strategies to mitigate these effects. Overall, the discussion reflects diverse views on the significance of shipping costs in the decision-making process of buyers.
I've long believed, like I think most folks here that (relatively) high shipping costs will send buyers elsewhere.
My listing practices (.COM vs .CA) are complicated, but for the purposes of this thread, most know that I list stamps which can be very small, at one time easily disguised as lettermail items. As I migrated to the rules that they're parcels, I really can't list individual stamps on .COM because my stuff is free shipping and the tracked cost to the USA built in would mean I'd never sell to Canadians (or they'd be paying stupidly higher prices). So what I do now is list them all on .CA with shipping costs of $9 $C for an individual stamp (or a small set for example) to the US (similar idea for international).
What I expected to happen is that the US sales would drop off OR US folks would buy several lots (because with combined shipping they'd all still ship for the price of one lot).
This doesn't seem to have happened, which is very surprising to me. Today 3 out of 10 shipments were this kind of situation: US $10 item, $9 shipping, US $10 item, $9 shipping, Australia $12 item $13 shipping.
Some of the sales might be from items that are not available elsewhere at this moment in eBayland.
I've mentioned it before but I put nice stamps on my parcels, I'm sure that there are some regular repeat buyers who buy from me because of this (even buying only one item at a time) - if the stamps on the parcel are worth as much to the buyer as the price they've paid for shipping, they don't see it as a cost.
The combination of the two above might explain a chunk of these types of purchases, but I continue to be surprised at how many of them are coming through in the last year! As we all know the $10 even with them paying the high shipping are a lot of "paperwork" to get them over the border so I'm not nearly as fond of them as I was a while ago!
Anyway thought it was worth sharing....
femmefan1946
·6 months agoBO can be set up with an automatic Accept/Reject price.
Those prices can be within a penny of each other.
So If you are asking $100, would accept $90 happily and would be insulted by an offer of $50 (or less)., you can set an automatic Accept at $90 and an automatic Reject at $50.
The rejected offer gets a polite letter from eBay (the seller never sees it) encouraging the buyer to try again.
I often see that the buyer made two or three Offers before hitting my sweet spot and being Accepted.
I like to have a difference because my products are slow selling/long tail and sometimes I will say No but a year later accept.
sylviebee
·6 months agoI'm finding that shipping costs have almost nothing to do with the number of sales I get.
I want to move and sell as much as I can before the move, so I've been experimenting a lot with the cost of shipping, sales, promoting items, etc.
After the tariffs came into effect I raised my shipping costs quite a bit, and was surprised to find that it didn't have a noticeable effect on sales, but I wanted to speed things up so I changed everything to free shipping including overseas parcels.
Nothing changed except I got some sales from Europe that I might have not have had otherwise.
Now I'm thinking of changing things back to high shipping costs or maybe somewhere in the middle. The extra money is kind of nice.
EBay pushes free shipping but I haven't found it makes much if any difference at all.
reallynicestamps
·6 months ago@sylviebee
Should we assume that your Free Shipping means you added your shipping costs to the asking price or are you discounting your profit margin by your actual shipping cost?
sylviebee
·6 months agoI was putting items on sale and that had no effect on sales, so instead of discounting prices I'm trying Free Shipping for a while.
As an aside: I used to have BO on all my items but I removed it from almost everything. I received very few offers, and when I did they were almost always insultingly low. For me, BO has been a PITA most of the time and closely tied into the cost of shipping.
When people want something they almost always ignore the BO option and just buy it at full price.
femmefan1946
·6 months agoYou can also send Messages to other members through that page. You don't need to use the Offer to ask.
sapphyres-designer-jewellery
·6 months agoI think people look at the big picture of how much their item will cost once it's shipped. If they really want the item, my $7.95 USD shipping might not disuade them (like when a coin for $35 with 7.95 shipping usually sells for $50 without shipping). Other times with small value items, they buy lots of stuff to keep the shipping down. I have deals of 2 or more items with combined shipping that's advertised on my listings, that helps with selling multiple items to one buyer, and the shipping is known up front.
C.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·6 months ago@sapphyres-designer-jewellery
As an FYI eBay in some situations has removed the option for buyers to send notes with offers. Countering has also become challenging. Same goes for paying and adding special instructions or a note (Sending a revised invoice). It has to be done from the listings page or a separate dropdown. I would list all the situations but each new one just adds to users frustrations. This seems to be something getting done very piecemeal.
Regarding what the buyer sees for shipping, much of what is being observed is buyers just believing the shipping is high without knowing what's involved in the actual shipping cost. Item may be bulky, heavy, going a great distance, have limited shipping options available based on sellers location. Or they just have never tried to ship something themselves. When you throw in tax on Canadian shipping and fuel surcharges a seller can only do sooo much to explain to a buyer the real costs involved. Yes, there are sellers out there who use anything they make on shipping as a revenue stream but for most part sellers are thrilled if they break even when it comes to shipping.
Example: Discounted option
500 gram book Calgary to Calgary. 10.28 No handling added.
1 Kg book Calgary to Calgary 10.38 No handling
500 gr book Calgary to E. Ont. 17.27 No handling 800 km
1 kg book Calgary to E. Ont 20.01
500 gr book Calgary to Prince George BC 16.05 No handling 3600 km
1 kg book Calgary to Prince George 18.60
What the tweak did with eBay's new discounted "granular rates"!!
grann-4629
·6 months agoGood post lotz. I wonder why Seller A in Montreal wants $25 to mail a DVD to me, and Seller B, also in Montreal can mail the same DVD to me for $6. Same service, same distance, same packaging.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·6 months ago@grann-4629
It's possible seller A does not have shipping discounts turned on in settings and seller B does. Not all sellers are aware of that requirement. For some sellers they may sell something at crazy low price and then use inflated shipping as a profit stream. Really depends on how much wiggle room/profit margin they have what concept they use.
Other possibility is the seller just has no grasp on fair shipping. Going with it is what it is mentality. Buyer just deal with it or go elsewhere.
Personally when it comes to shipping I use EVERY tool in the toolbox to make sure my buyers get the most economical service to make sure they get item as it was listed. I even am not nervous to offer choice. One size does not always fit all.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·6 months agoOne other thing to consider when searching and finding insane shipping. It is possible seller made a mistake....meaning typo when creating the listing. It's very easy to happen. Decimal in wrong spot or comma used in error. You can always nicely message seller and hope for the best. Lastly there are sellers out there that sell the same thing over and over. When they run out they inflate shipping with thoughts no one will purchase. I've seen this techniques used with US mega book sellers. No name book with 200 + dollar shipping. Quite confident those books were not made of gold.
grann-4629
·6 months agoGood info ... thanks.
I have tried 'ask the seller' to confirm shipping cost when it seems abnormally high either intentional or in error, and I have never received a reply. I don't know if the seller actually knows what his/her buyer sees when it comes to shipping costs, and I am always respectful when I ask.
I asked a frequent poster here if he would give me an exception and ship a couple of items to me ... nothing about item cost or shipping cost which were OK by me. He is a US seller who does not ship to Canada. He responded immediately with a 'sorry' post ... very profesional and courteous. He is the exception to the norm and is sticking to his policy which I respect 100%.
The 'high price but really out of stock' thing would be fun to watch if some buyer bit.
Buyer pays.
Buyer files INR case with eBay when nothing shows up.
Seller gets dinged for listing an out-of-stock item.
Buyer gets money back from eBay.
Every seller gets 0.1% added to their fees to cover the cost of administrating the above.
ricarmic
OP6 months agoI actually have had "this" happen on another site my items are sychronized to. Their synchronization process can't replicate what is here, so it loses all the shipping prices and I have to pick "one" price for each country/group for each item (remember I sell single stamps to bankers boxes full). Of course with over 5,000 items synchronizing I have to do it with a general number across everything I sell.
The problem I have is I don't any longer sell to all countries like Germany, France, and the usual like South America, Russsia, China etc etc so I set the international (non USA) shipping price to $300 so that interested folks send me a message asking what the correct shipping price is. TWICE now this year (it's been like this for years) folks have paid the $300 shipping (against a $10 or $15 item too!). This burns me because I pay the fees to both the site and PAYPAL for the big number. The site has been kind enough to refund me so far, but PAYPAL does not - this means I end up losing significantly on them because the PAYPAL unrefundable fees are more than the item value was. To try to fix this I picked the usual suspects (GB and Australia) and changed the general shipping down to "$100" in the hopes that I won't burn as bad and that nobody buys a bankers box from Australia/GB that would need more than $100 shipping. Time will tell.
grann-4629
·6 months agoAs an FYI eBay in some situations has removed the option for buyers to send notes with offers
That explains what recently happened to me, I was looking at an item where the seller was accepting offers. The total, including shipping, was about twice what I thought it should be. I vet my buys thoroughly so I know what prices should generally be.
You cannot negotiate the shipping cost when making offer, so I added a note to the comments section 'Offer INCLUDES Shipping', and offered them 1 cent below asking for the item. eBay wouldn't let me offer the asking price,
My offer was turned down, either by the seller or eBay ... I don't know who.
I'm learning 🥸
grann-4629
·6 months agoI am responding to the topic, not the post. As a buyer, I expect reasonable shipping costs. When I am advised that the seller wants $25 Cdn. to mail a DVD from the US, d**n right I'm dissuaded! I have turned down many offers with really nice costs where the shipping killed the deal.
Sellers should make their profit on the item, not the shipping ... but ...
ricarmic
OP6 months agoJust to clarify a wee bit, my shipping pricing is quite complicated and flexible, just incase it seems otherwise, ie that I'm making $$$ off it, I'll explain a bit more.
As a stamp seller it's blasphemous to use labels of any kind, stamps should be on the packages.
I have two types of stamps I can use, brand newly issued stamps from the post office (nice ones not the kings heads kind of stuff) and older stamps which I acquire for 50% of face or less (remember I've been doing this for 48 years now so I have sources/connections).
So at the PO counter, today's US shipments actual postage coincidentally were exactly each $9 even after fuel surcharge, exactly the same as the amount they paid. For purchases like this when they've paid the, or close to the postage amount, I use ONLY the nice new stuff, for the stamp conversant folks, current souvenir sheets and the like. The used value of these retail is oftentimes the same as the postage price, assuming they survive the trip OK.
For the Australian one, (I've begun sending all that stuff tracked when possible), they paid $13, the tracking price was $27 so I used the "old" stuff, which still has collectible value, not the same nor the same desirability, but it brings the actual over the counter shipping cost close to the shipping they paid.
What I actually put on the parcels (new vs old combination) also varies a lot based on what the collector is purchasing, if they're repeat customers etc. It's too complicated to describe the various scenarios here but it allows me to also build in the "cookie jar insurance" to what they've paid as well.
When I set the $9 price, I set it that high for a few reasons, I wouldn't have to change it for some time as it gives me wiggle room with the new/old combo (I don't go back and change shipping costs on the 5,000 items when it goes up), it was supposed to dissuade single stamp purchases to the US/International, and it was supposed to create enthusiasm for multi-item "small" purchase groups for the US/International folks.
marnotom!
·6 months agoI thought we'd been through all this? A seller charging C$25 to ship a DVD from Podunk, Nebraska to somewhere in Canada is likely charging USPS counter rates, not trying to make a profit from shipping.
grann-4629
·6 months agoYes, and I understand what you said. The topic asks how high shipping dissuades buyers, and I am saying 'yes - it dissuades me' regardless of the reasons. I am replying to the topic.
I can buy my items from Canadians and save a pile of dough on shipping and that's what I do. In addition to the high shipping costs, that part about possible extra costs from the carrier scares me a bit too. It's a **bleep** shoot ...
marnotom!
·6 months agoOkay, but in that context, then, the editorial comment made at the conclusion of your post was not only unfair and inaccurate, but also unnecessary and irrelevant.
grann-4629
·6 months agoSorry, I don't understand who or what is unfair, inaccurate, unnecessary, and irrelevant in my post? Editorial comment? OK, I guess ...?
marnotom!
·6 months agoYou made a comment about sellers making a profit on shipping, and in the context of the rest of your post it came off as though you were accusing US sellers of making a profit off shipping when sending DVDs by mail to Canada when it's more likely that they're charging the actual USPS counter rate for First Class Package International.
How do you know the packaging is the same unless you've had both sellers send you the DVD?
Is the "service" being offered "Economy Shipping" or "Standard Shipping" or something along those lines, or is it a specific Canada Post service? (If so, which one?)
femmefan1946
·6 months agoSellers should make their profit on the item, not the shipping ... but ...
The point is that many buyers don't know what shipping costs are.
I sold on two different sites today stamps going to the same buyer.
One site has a fixed shipping cost of $3.50 the other (eBay) was $15.
Again each of these was a single stamp going to the same US customer.
I can't legally ship to the USA without a customs declaration, and that means a tracked service.
So the eBay cost was almost correct.
It would have cost me the same to ship the other stamp, so I packaged them together and bought the UPS label through eBay, thinking I would refund the customer.
Shockingly the price for the UPS label (which includes the import fees) was $19.00!
The customer is not getting the refund I had hoped.
I can't legally ship to the USA without a customs declaration, and that means a tracked service.
This is something that has been the law (or at least the rule of the Universal Postal Union) for many years but only began to be enforced less than five years ago.
And that tracked service is ten times the untracked price.
Shipping costs can be expected to rise sharply in the next few weeks, as the oil industry adjusts (upwards) the cost of the war on Iran.