Excluding Media Mail from Domestic Discounted Shipping Rates

Because of the recent shipping hikes, I decided to pass part of my shipping label savings onto the buyer by discounting their shipping, trying to make myself more competitive as well.

However, it also discounts Media Mail, which doesn't give me a discount at all, thus making me lose money on my book listings that already have higher fees. I've looked at Business Policies; is there any way to exclude Media Mail listings from the discount or will I just have to take the loss on shipping those if I discount. I feel like there has to be a way. It seems like it shouldn't give a discount on a service that isn't even discounted. 😕

tori_729

2032 View listings

Posted 4 months ago·Last reply 4 months ago

2 comments

tobaccocardyahoo

·4 months ago

5533 View listings

@tori_729 wrote:
Because of the recent shipping hikes, I decided to pass part of my shipping label savings onto the buyer by discounting their shipping, trying to make myself more competitive as well.
However, it also discounts Media Mail, which doesn't give me a discount at all, thus making me lose money on my book listings that already have higher fees. I've looked at Business Policies; is there any way to exclude Media Mail listings from the discount or will I just have to take the loss on shipping those if I discount. I feel like there has to be a way. It seems like it shouldn't give a discount on a service that isn't even discounted. 😕

That makes no sense.

Not only from a business point of view, but from a programming point of view. The actual discounted rate is based on the commercial rate table instead of the retail rate table for discounted services. It is not a fixed discount.

tori_729

OP4 months ago

2032 View listings

I'm sorry if I'm being confusing.

I just want to know if I can exclude Media Mail from my CUSTOM discounted rates, since I don't get an eBay shipping discount on those labels.

If I ship Ground Advantage, eBay gives me a discount on that label. So instead of charging the buyer the full retail price, I want to discount their cost down 15%, making me a bit more competitive than those who don't use a custom discounted rate.

However, this setting also includes Media Mail, which I DON'T get a discount for if I print a label on eBay. This causes me to actually lost money on my label and I don't want to do that. Media Mail is low enough as it is. So I want a way to exclude those listings from the discount.

After doing my own research, it looks like the only way is to add in a handling fee on my Business Policies to make up for it but since it's a flat rate, it will cause some people to pay more than they need to so it's not full proof.