50% off FVF for free shipping on eBay Aus
2/10/2008 at 10:06
eBay Australia are offering a 50% discount to PowerSellers who list with free shipping between Wednesday 8th and Tuesday 14th October.
The Aussie site has recently launched a new Free Postage Hub and qualifying items will be included in the hub.
eBay point out “We know this may not work for everyone, but if you’ve never tried offering free postage before, this is the perfect opportunity to test it out on a few items and see how you go. Who knows, you could just boost your sales and soon be listing all your items with free postage!”
Free post is definitely a selling tactic all sellers should experiment with, it can produce great results, especially if your competitors aren’t offering free post.
richard says
10:36 am on 02/10/2008
there is defo something in the pipeline as i noticed with our ebay invoice this keep cropping up
http://s21.photobucket.com/albums/b266/spattzzz/?action=view¤t=tamebay.jpg
So they are marking it out for a future promo etc
Mark Classic says
11:05 am on 02/10/2008
There is no such thing as free shipping…
Shipping is never free.
It has to be paid for, whether the buyer pays for it in the price or pays an up front postage charge, it makes no difference.
The only people that benefit from Free Shipping are Ebay in this scenario, as they can charge FVF on the postage.
It is a marketing term and I hope Ebay do not decide for the “benefit of the customer” to try to make it compulsory…
If you want to stop postage gouging, add FVF to the shipping cost.
We will then pass that on to the customer as a postage cost and the postage gouging will stop.
But please, let us not pretend there is any such thing as free shipping.
(Unless you are running a loss leader deliberately).
Mark
richard says
11:20 am on 02/10/2008
these no such thing as cost free shipping, true.
but more and more sites offer free-shipping as it says to the customer, no hidden costs etc and encourages easy browsing
the worst thing about ebay is its very hard to find the actual cost of anything with different rates all the time.
at the end of the day the punter wants one easy to compare cost, not lots of differing rates.
only a monkey would not understand the actual economics.
“free shipping” in ecommerce says,
easy, upfront, un-complicated, it is what it is.
Jimbo says
11:32 am on 02/10/2008
The thing is if I am going to have free shipping on eBay I will add it onto the item price.
I don’t know how many items a customer is going to buy beforehand so it may end up that if the customer buys 3 items with free shipping and ends up paying more than they would have on my present shipping policy (they will have paid 3 hidden shipping fees rather than 1 open, up front and straightforward shipping fee).
Whirly says
11:34 am on 02/10/2008
#3 Makes alot of sense to me put in that context but I only ship to the UK Ricahrd,
How could eBay design(god help us) an interface that could be used by sellers who ship all around the world, if you had to build in the cost of shipping into each item it would surely push the cost of the item up to high for same country purchases if that makes sense….
richard says
11:38 am on 02/10/2008
they did once in the heady days of Ebay Express.
when you put your various country shipping rates in it displayed the cost + shipping in to one total.
It only has to take the rate for that country to display the country specific cost.
Infact the sort by cost+ P&P system does this so a combination with best match would make the most sense for display purposes
Jonathan says
12:54 pm on 02/10/2008
Its pretty simple to add postage to an item cost, theirs a facility to add the 2 together on the search function: cost + p&p if your searching for the cheapest, its not rocket science.
The websites that do offer free shippig make you spend above a certain amount to do so.
If ebay wanted to make it clearer for those that cant add 2 numbers together, why not on the search viewing page put the 2 together as a whole number so when the buyer is looking, they can see the 2 numbers added together giving a total cost.
Ebay are trying to increase their FVF in the long run, they may do the promotion as a short term thing, but how long until its compulsory, or you get better search standings because of free postage, which looks like they are doing with “free postage hub”.
Itd make sense for ebay to reward the sellers who pay them the most money through FVF…
Free post does not exist, it is simply factored into an items cost on ebay, if 2 items cost exactly the same when totaled together one with “free” post and one without, then the only winners would be ebays profits to the detrement of a sellers
Whirly says
1:20 pm on 02/10/2008
380060446126
A full set of 5 stars, nice idea.
northumbrian says
1:25 pm on 02/10/2008
if this is on top of regular powerseller dsr discounts its a good deal ,if its not, its a bit of a swizz
Chris Dawson says
4:32 pm on 02/10/2008
#8 Don’t think a “generous supply of SEVENTY-FIVE (75)” would last me long :-p
#9 I believe it is
northumbrian says
4:45 pm on 02/10/2008
if its 50% on top of normal discounts Ebay would be paying me to send it free and owe me money
Chris Dawson says
7:32 pm on 02/10/2008
I think you’ll find it’s 50% off and then your discount off what’s left, ie if you’re on 40% it doesn’t mean you get 90% off, it means you 40% knocked off the 50% they’re charging
Judy says
1:14 am on 03/10/2008
Aussie PS don’t get any DSR discounts