Offer free shipping, save 15% on .com, .ca FVFs

9 Responses

1. Why do they continue to insist this is the standard when I never receive free shipping from anybody online without either spending $x or more or tracking down a coupon.

   Okay, I guess it’s nice to give back a little something to sellers adhering to their strange new belief in free shipping, but they’re not covering what shipping’s going to cost me out of pocket, so I’m not interested.

   Check that, I have a few items I tested with the “Free Shipping” icon when it debuted, maybe I’ll try those in core. Most of the time when I “offer” free shipping, it’s after the fact of purchase on sales of multiple items when I feel like tossing a little something the buyer’s way.

   This is painted as another carrot for buyers by eBay, when all it does is cause sellers to raise their base prices and thus increase FVF in the first place. There’s your 15%. Buyers are given the impression of savings, while eBay increases its take and sellers break even.

   Obviously, this incentive irritates me a little 🙂

2. Buyers are running away from ebay in masses because the listing fees are too high.

   Sounds insane? Buyers do not list anything , right?

   well , think about that

3. An item is listed for $15.00 with $7.99 s+h, FVF’s are 15 x 8.75% = $1.31

   Change it to $22.99 free s+h, FVF’s are now 22.99 x 8.75% = $2.01

   Minus a 15% discount so 2.01 – 15% (30 cents) = $1.71

   Get a 15% discount and pay ebay 30% more in ebay fees 🙂

4. And moral of this story is…….

5. … don’t offer free shipping on baths going to Ireland? 😆

   Personally, I wouldn’t get hung up on “it costs me more eBay fees” *if* it also generates me more profit.

   I’ve done some experimenting myself recently with free shipping, and actually it does increase sales for me, quite spectacularly in some areas. Myself, I’d expect to have to spend a certain (high) amount of money to get free shipping from a supplier or another merchant; when for example I’ve said “free shipping across the board, no minimum spend”, that has resulted in very very few small orders wanting free shipping, and a lot of larger orders in excess of what I’d have expected normally.

   I’d say if you can make it work with your goods and your pricing, then trial it. Don’t let eBay get in the way of a good idea 😉

6. A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.

7. What I meant to include with my earlier comment was :

   I am an advocate of Free Shipping, and for some it works very well, very well indeed, but you have to start out with a Free Shipping model, it is not so easy to go from charging P&P to not charging P&P once established, as in most cases it requires a price increase to your buyers.

   To offer free shipping succesfully – you need volume, and volume then gets you a Royal Mail PPI account, so the FREE part doesn’t ‘hurt’ as much.

8. Free postage when buying just one item is fine but I can see those customers currently benefiting from free postage on additional items losing out.

   For example assuming free postage across the board…

   if a customer buys 5 items using a combined invoice then he/she will in reality have paid p&p + any one off costs such as Paypal transaction charge, 5 times. Also there is no incentive to buy more.

   A much fairer way to charge p&p for multiple items IMHO is to charge p&p for the first item with additional items free or reduced. And in this case there is an incentive to buy more.

9. Is a reasonable deal for Americans but this will work for very few Canadians dealing with among the highest postage costs on earth and a quriky Canada Post fee schedule where some package sizes cost more to ship within one’s city then overseas!