Are you ready for the significant Royal Mail price hikes that come into effect on 30th April? The countdown is ticking for eBay sellers and other ecommerce SMEs.
If you haven’t take the time to examine the price increases and made changes to your postage charges (if you use the Royal Mail) it’s well worth doing that right now. It wouldn’t be surprising if you hadn’t had opportunity to digest them. They were announced less than a month ago.
You attention is now urgent though. After all, if you list a ten day item from now on, and will be despatching your items from the Post Office, your despatches will be under the new price structure, which includes increases to First and Second Class well as huge increases in Airmail prices. If you list a 7-day sale over the weekend you will also be under the new price structure.
Are you prepared? I’ve had a quick look on eBay today and I’d say it’s striking that plenty of sellers and the like who haven’t changed tack in light of price increases. They’re going to see a dent to margins, expecially lower priced items.
What changes have you made? Have you been stockpiling stamps?
30 Responses
we are now only using the Mercedes to save on fuel, to compensate for the RM price increase
As it is now cheaper for buyers to collect all my listings will in future be collection only. Gets over all the Paypal and DSR issues also.
The real issue is that ebay makes a dogs dinner of displaying shipping savings for multiple purchases focusing and showing only the “one off” shipping price.
If alongside this ebay also showed the savings that can be made if the item is combined with another (ie “free shipping for subsequent purchases from this seller if items are shipped with this first purchase”) then shipping would suddenly look a lot cheaper and buyers would look a lot harder.
But of course ebay focus on the shipping cost for one item in all aspects of visibility and so the impression is given that things are expensive when in reality if buyers are sensible and make multiple purchases from one seller shipping can be cheap.
Postage was a bargain until someone invented ‘free’ postage.
“They’re going to see a dent to margins”
More likely a black hole in their cashflow. Expect a massive rise in buyer complaints about sellers not honouring sales.
Paypal won’t loose out as they now keep 20p for every full refund given. And ebay won’t loose out as buyers won’t agree to cancel sales so fee refunds will not be granted.
So no dent to ebay’s or Paypal’s margins.
There is going to be a big change with the Packet format, there will only be 2 categories up to 1kg, 0 to 750 grams & 750g to 1000 grams,
So a 1st class 100 gram item will now cost £2.70 instead of £1.58 and a 2nd class 100 gram item will now cost £2.20 instead of £1.33,
This increase is 1/2 my profit margin on some lines, the only option I can see the first item at £3.00 each additional 50p or free, to offset the additional postage cost, I think it will go up again next year by the same rate and keep going until Royal Mail becomes a viable business to sell it off,
I think this year is the year to sell off any low profit margin items before it goes up again and there is nothing left in some lines.
We are going to default all our items to 2nd class, with no price rises [from 1st class] and give the buyer the option to upgrade to 1st class.
We’ve a notice on all of our listing regarding pending increases.
There has been alot of publicity regarding this issue, so it’s not as if the buyers do not know it’s coming [this of course excludes all the ebay buyers, that don’t even know there is 5″ of snow outside].
The minimum packet post cost of 750 grams will kill so many items on ebay, as it won;t be worth sending them.
WE are all in the same boat, so no one is excluded except of course the sellers that say NO increase IN AN ATTEMPT TO CORNER THE MARKET, BUT AS SUE ALWAYS SAID ‘there ALWAYS SOME EBAY SELLER THAT WILL CHASE THE PRICE DOWN TO THE BOTTOM’.
99% of my current ebay offering is under 1kg so the only sensible postage route is to adopt the same method that the the website has always enjoyed which is the single shipping price model for the UK regardless of basket value.
I promote this on the home page of the website so UK visitors know precisely where they stand with shipping before they start filling their basket. Overseas visitors have to enquire about shipping.
As for ebay the promotion will have to go at the top of each listing so a slight template revamp will be required. I’ll use turbolister to do a template edit.
As for buyers outside the UK prices will be altered by a percentage with lighter items suffering a large percentage of maybe 80% and heavier items suffering a less large percentage of maybe 45% and thats that.
Now how all this impacts sales is anybodies guess. All I can say is that I am taking an extremely cautious view right now with regards to restocking and incoming stock is purchased at rock bottom prices based on offers made, or passed over, using the uncertainty of the marketplace post April to squeeze those who want my money. Simple as that really!
I wonder if some of the alternative services on offer(non Post Office) which we have heard about over the months and years will now be attractive after the 30th April?
After all ebay sellers represent a large number of packets/parcels etc every day. We are all going to see our postage costs go through the roof. So perhaps now is the right time for an examination of the alternatives.
It could be that if there is an alternative service that meets our requirements that the Royal Mail/Post Office could see their price hike actually represent a loss of business and loss of income as we all(or a substantial number of us) all switch to an alternative(if an acceptable one exists)
royal mail knows it has most of us by the cobblers
thats why an open market is the way forward
I noticed my pricing was higher recently on Royal Mails website when doing my postage, so when I looked at my individual prices i’m paying per item, Royal Mail are already charging me the new higher prices. This has been through most of April. I’d suggest others check theirs as well.
Can anyone confirm if one purchases 1st and 2nd class letter stamps, and large letter stamps under 100g, before the price rise, can we then use those stamps at the higher value after april 30th ie. to send international letters for instance? or perhaps to pay for other services eg. Recorded, Special delivery etc.?
Or will royal mail clamp down on this?