talkmagic.co.uk

There are two things. If you did not specify that your auction was only open to UK bidders, then you should take his bid. It's not his fault you screwed up.
Secondly, you should not use postage to bulk up the price. Someone did that to me (£25 for postage on a video game for my kid that I know could have been posted for £3. I cancelled the payment and left him horrible feedback.) However his offer of £5 was out of order too. And I don't see what the problem is with combining the postage. That's just common curtesy. Charge him what it costs to post (including cost of the envelope) and leave it at that.

Tony

It is specified as a UK only Auction and I've now even gone to the trouble of weighing the combined package and calculating the costs by making a trip to the postoffice the amount I've gone back with is not bulking up the costs or anything, to be fair my nearest post office is a £2.40 tram ride away and I wished to get back to him with a quick reply. Postage was clearly stated at the start of the bid and for the UK winners of my bid this amount didn't even cover my actual costs of the stamps and packaging.

With a UK only bidder as I wished to have hence listing as UK only I would have had to make only one trip to the post office and it was done! The other 4 winners have had zero complaints.

From some of your comments, such as, 'I really don't need to sell these items I'm just clearing space' and that you stated that you feel the items went to cheap. It sounds to me like you put the items up for bid but are not happy with the final bid and you are now looking for a way out.

Really it is very simple. Explain to the seller that the shipping was intended for inside the UK, the shipping charges to Germany are 'whatever' and that he can either pay those shipping charges or void the sale.

However you should not be padding the shipping price. Find the most economical shipping price and charge that. Ebay charges so little that trying to re-coup the ebay fee through postage is just cheap. Next time set a minimum bid on your item for whatever you want and charge for shipping exactly what the shipping costs you. If you are planning on more ebay sales then go in for the long sale, not the short sale. You always want to give good customer service especially if you are selling to a small community, like the magic community. Believe it or not magicians talk, and talk, and talk. Get a bad rap and you won't be making much money at all.

You ask why somebody would give you a bad score? Because they feel like they are somehow being ripped off. And all they really have to do is be lurking on this post and report it to ebay, and ebay will see how you are trying to get around their fee's and then guess who is going to come out ahead.

Like everything else, be clear and honest and it will all work out.

It's funny how you react different to someone query like this when you actually know the person

Agecroft, to hell with the German! He can't read!

Agecroft, as you specified that it was UK only, then you are fairly much in the right if you reject a non UK bid. I didn't realise you had specified that.

I think sticking to the facts here.

I listed the item at the lowest price I was willing to accept for the item, I said that I could maybe get more but I said that was my problem and not his in a previous post.

It was a UK only auction

I never offered to combine postage

The initial postage per item was £2.00 per item It actually costs me £1.69 in postage costs plus £1 per envelope to post to a UK address and £2.40 to get to a post office in the first place.

A german guy won the auction and asked me to combine postage for 4 items to Germany for £4

I went to the trouble of going to the post office and discovering that it's going to cost £9.21 in postage alone, £3 for packaging and £2.40 additional in tram fare (argue what you want about that as a packaging cost but I'd say it was fair especially as you can see that I've not in general bulked up on the postage costs in my other auctions) I offered to post to germany for him at £14.21.

He came back with a offer of £5 combined postage.

This has been goin on for over 11 days in which I've had no payment and could have run the auction again, got the same amount and still had less trouble.

I tried to cancel the auction on the basis that he lives in a country I don't post to.

He declined and offered me a UK address and could I combine the postage for £5 again.

It still costs £3 for packaging and I even went to the trouble of calculating the postage at the post office to the UK and its in the region of £5

It affects my life not one jot if I get a bad reputation for selling on ebay. It's not where I earn my money and I do well in other aspects of my life.

I think I've been more than polite with this guy up to now.

I'd rather cancel on principal and give the DVDS away for free than sell them to this guy now, it's not about the money, I just want shut of the transaction but not at his saving

He miss read the listing or chose to chance it and has been nothing but a pain since

Sounds like the buyer was just pushing his luck and trying to get the P&P for less than cost - if he checks the same weight with the German Post Office he'll see that the cost from there would be way above what he's offering. Suggest you just politely decline to ship at the price he's offered but happily would do so only if he pays the true cost.

If you have a UK address for this chap now them just put everything together in a box/bag, weigh it, get the price from royal mail to post and charge him that figure. The most you could legitimately charge for postage would seem to be 4 * £2. The trouble is I think these days on Ebay your have to list DVD and cd's with an all inclusive price.

I recently sent a package weighing 2.5 kilos via courier with collection from my office for about £7.50. There is no way 4 DVDs will cost any more than that.

MyHermes the courier company I used.

Sorry if I am am wrong here, but if you chose UK only then surely the item would not be able to be purchased by anyone outside the UK. My conclusion is, that you didn't specify a different delivery price for orders outside the UK. This woudnt be the customers fault so the transaction should still go ahead.

Also, I believe their is a big misunderstanding regarding the cost of shipping and packing. Yes, I fully agree that this figure has to be reasonable, however, the shipping and packing doesn't only include the actual price of the stamp and envelope. What about everything else that is included? The cost of printing the invoice or label. What about the staff that are hired to pack orders. Were does that money come from? If the actual price of the stamp was £2 would it be unreasonable to charge £2.50 - £3.00 postage and packing?

Sometimes we forget the other factor. Many websites and ebay sellers have a fixed amount for shipping and packing up to a certain value and then offer free shipping. An example is, you buy something for £10 and pay £2.99 shipping and packing. You complain. You buy something for £50 and get free shipping. You don't complain and think that's ok. BUT, the actual shipping for the £10 item was £1.50 and the £50 was £6. Shipping is a difficult thing to factor in a business, so you set criteria that will benefit the customer and make your life easier. Just because you have been charged a but extra for shipping on your small order doesn't mean the seller is making money on it, as he is making a loss on the free delivery charges and the items that you paid less for postage than the actual cost.