Ebay & “Free” Postage – Our Policy for our customers.
No doubt you will have seen that recently Ebay have decided to implement a “free” postage requirement in certain categories. These categories include the Accessory for Shoes and Clothing. This impacts on our Kiwi range of Polishes, cleaners and Sponges, some laces and a few socks here and there!
Let us start with a basic truth here. Postage actually costs money!
Sellers can’t absorb these costs and then include free postage. So inevitably the price of items will have to go up to include the postage charge. That is why we put "Free" in quotation marks, it simply isn't true! One way or another it has to be paid for. This new policy actively encourages sellers to hide their postage charges in the sale price. You have nothing to compare it to when you get the product. Before, if you were charged £2.95 for postage and it came in a plain envelope with a 1st class stamp on it then you could complain. Now, as the actual service level and price is hidden you have nothing to pin a complaint on!
This change to policy meant that we had to make a choice about offering certain items that are lower cost and yet highly popular. We decided to continue selling the items and to simply increase the cost to cover the charges we get hit by on Ebay, Paypal and the Royal Mail.
Most Polishes go by either Large Letter or Packet rate costs. These cost a bit of money now, after Royal Mail have recently put their service charges up. So once Ebay have their 9%, Paypal take their % charge as well as a flat 25p charge per transaction and the packaging is bought and the postage paid there is sometimes not a lot left.
Don’t feel sorry for us, we are a business and are here to make money! The simple fact is that the margin on Polish etc is not huge and we do it more to offer the goods than to buy a Porsche or anything.
What we have done is calculate these costs and charged accordingly. Remember, with “Free” postage, Ebay get a Final Value Fee of the total amount, so where a Polish was £1.20 and they got 12p, it is now £2.30 and they will get 23p. I think this shows the real reason that they have decided to make this change! A nice doubling of the fee they generate per item makes the customer pay slightly more.
Anyway, we thought we would put this out there so that you can understand why there seems to be a price increase on some of our products.
One more thing, for inland UK deliveries, you will never, ever pay more than £6.95 for a delivery from us. We use a courier and will combine any multiple sales into one delivery and have capped that at £6.95. Of course, non-mainland deliveries we will let you know, but we will always do our best to keep them as low as possible.
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