Don’t be tempted to post your eBay items at work

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So you’re in a full time job and work in a post room, but you sell in your spare time on eBay – How tempting must it be to post all of your eBay sales at work and save on the postage costs? That’s apparently what’s happened in the US over a two year period where over 1600 items were posted racking up a bill of some $13,000.

If you do run an eBay business as well as working elsewhere make sure you keep your eBay trading totally separate. In this case in the US, if convicted, there could be a seven year jail term as a consequence.

7 Responses

  1. I had a friend who used to do this all the time and it always bothered me. Forget the edge it gave her in profit since she never had to pay for the postage on her items, I could never bring myself to do it from a moral standpoint.

  2. Not just sellers but buyers do this too. I once had buyer mail me a $8 MO by Registered Mail – no reason to do this unless someone else is paying the postage!

  3. When I used to accept paper payments, many an envelope arrived having been franked by a workplace. My ex sister-in-law even sends Christmas and birthday cards & presents to her nieces, sisters and brothers via her work postroom!
    I have had buyers return unwanted goods to me via their work postroom too. One was from a well known yoghurt factory in France via International Signed for and cost almost £6.
    A lot of employees see it as a perk. Like photocopying your CV on the office machine in your lunchbreak.
    It doesn’t really surprise me that pt ebayers do this, eventhough it’s technically theft. Maybe the UK workplaces should start to think like the USA ones ….

  4. I worked for a large university and had ample opportunity to send out my ebay packages on some other department’s bill. To the tune of $100,000 in 8 years of working there. Never got caught.

  5. and of course no one ever uses the works paper or pens,
    never makes a personal phonecall or email ,never logs onto facebook while at work

  6. About two years ago when I was an auditor, one of the branch employees got talking to me about our mutual interest in selling on ebay. Turns out he was quite a high volume seller of car parts.

    Bad move. Part of the audit I undertook was analysis of the franking machine reports…

    So why would a business that only ever sends invoices and small documents have such a high ratio of packets, when every other location only ever sent Letters and Large Letters.

    It didn’t take much more digging to find out the exact details, and I had no hesitation in being part of the disciplinary hearing that saw an employee of 13 years service lose his job, company car, healthcare benefits and most importantly, his reputation for future references. It was only his former line managers intervention that stopped a criminal case being pursued as well.

    Pens, notebooks, personal phonecalls are one thing, over £8k worth of “stolen” postage is another.

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