There are only so many hand-knitted hats that even the most ardent fashionista can accommodate in their wardrobes and drawers, so I decided it was time to sell some of my surplus if I wanted to continue with my hobby. The natural choice was eBay as I’ve successfully used it during the past year when I was clearing the house out. However I discovered that Free Postage & Packaging has been imposed in some categories, such as Accessories, apparently in reaction to customers being deterred by excessive P&P charges. Absolute nonsense! First, you have to increase your start bid to cover your costs. This makes your item less attractive at the start of the auction. It also incurs a higher insertion fee which you pay regardless of whether the item is sold or not. eBay also take a percentage of the final bid so you are effectively paying them a percentage of the overheads that you incur to package and post the goods. On more expensive items, this probably doesn’t make a huge difference but on items that are relatively cheap anyway, P&P costs are a bigger percentage of the overall final bid. I’m not averse to paying eBay a fair price for using their facilities but this makes me feel I’m being ripped off.
So what is the casual seller who wants to sell excess items to do? I’m not a sweatshop churning stuff out so the cost of hosting my own website just to sell the odd item is prohibitive, as is paying for a table at a craft fair to sell a couple of items.
I’d be interested in finding out what other knitters do because I’m sure I’m not the only person with this dilemma.
