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Summary: sandiego_livin, a retired senior, uses eBay to sell items inherited from hoarding in-laws but faces financial challenges due to USPS's pricing changes for lightweight items. They are seeking advice on how to inform buyers about the elimination of low-cost shipping options. jacbarcollectibles explains USPS's shipping rules and suggests manually adding information to each listing, as there's no permanent site-wide message option for this issue.
I do not own a "store". I am a retired senior on a fixed income and use eBay to supplement my income and simplify my life. My in-laws were hoarders and we have 1,000s (no exaggeration) of wonderful items to sell. Here is the delima: We use to list lightweight items with tiered pricing to minimize the cost to our buyers. $3.99, $5.99, etc as the weight went up. We were making tiny profits on West Coast sales (we're in San Diego), would break lose some on most East Coast sales, and hopefully break even on the rest. Now that USPS is prcing ALL items under 1 pound at the highest possible price, we are losing money on all lightweight sales. What to do? We eliminated tiered pricing and now let USPS establish the price.
Is there any way to post a Site Wide Message that reflects this issue to my buyers? "Sorry we've had to eliminate low cost shipping on some items..." similar to the time away feature? "We will be on vacation...".
Any advise would be greatly appreciated.
sandiego_livin
jacbarcollectibles
Mentor2 weeks agoActually the rules for ground advantage shipping of items weighing less than one pound is divided into two parts. For items being delivered to rural areas, Alaska, Hawaii and the Territories the weight will be calculated as 15.99 ounces. For all other areas in the USA the actual weight will be used. The problem becomes determining exactly what zip codes are considered as rural areas. The USPS does not tell us this information.
There is no way to place a permanent notice on your listings other than to add your information manually on all of your listings when making them.
sandiego_livin
OP2 weeks agoThanks for the prompt reply. My ultimate goal if to NOT lose money on shipping so we'll still revert to "calculated" shipping on all items. Why? You said it exactly right in your reply. We have no idea who will buy our items and listing our shipping at $5.99 because an item is 3 oz will guarantee me to lose money to rural / subburban / non-contiguous states. I can't afford to collect $5.99 and buy a lable for $8.40 which happened last week after the change.