PayPal shipping has launched in the UK giving the ability to purchase your postage with payment from your PayPal balance. Options are available for both Royal Mail services and for ParcelForce courier deliveries. For Royal mail deliveries you will need to drop your parcels to the nearest Royal Mail drop off point, and for ParcelForce you can either drop your parcels off or book a collection for the next working day.
There is plenty I like about this, such as the ability to print postage labels and customs forms, and the ability not to show the actual postage cost on the label. However currently the only options for printing is inkjet or laser printer – it would be nice to see support for common label printers such as Dymo, Seiko, and Zebra / Eltron.
For many eBayers it also gives easy pay-as-you-go access to couriers without needing a contract. ParcelForce deliveries are available to all at £11.99 for twenty-four hour services and £10.99 for forty-eight hour delivery. How this will be received by the many sellers already offering one off courier delivery services on eBay has yet to be seen, but doubtless it will not be great news for their businesses.
The really good news for the casual eBayer who may have cash flow issues is that once the customer has paid they can purchase postage using the buyers funds without a delay waiting for them to clear into their bank account!
For more information there is a demo of the service on the PayPal site.
One Response
This seems like very good news for the low volume or occasional eBay seller. Nice to see something positive from eBay/PayPal.
For the volume seller though it’s just so very much slower than simply printing an adddress from the payment notification and then adding the postage stamps.