You are utterly wrong there. The beauty of ebay is that the market is far larger than one magazine, it is international and it can cover many different but over lapping areas of interest.
Paul
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A lot of things have changed, mostly for the worse, but it's still a useful marketplace.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I agree on that. I've bought a lot of stuff, useful and otherwise, at what I considered reasonable prices.
I've wondered that about some of the sellers. Just recently a lot of sellers seem to have switched to 'priority mail' here in the US. I think this is because they get the box free and can even get it picked up at their door. Problem is the fees for priority mail put some items out of the range of reasonably priced!
It's even more expensive buying from outside the US. Most retailers insist on shipping by UPS or FedEx, even to Canada. It can be cheaper to buy small items from Europe.
I've bought recent issues of 'Railway Modeler' from e-bay sellers in the UK and got them cheaper and sooner than my local Borders (chain bookseller)! The November 2009 issue being one example.
If you decide to buy a newsletter or magazine subscription from the UK, be sure to select the Surface Mail rate, if they offer one. They still come by air, and I receive mine in Canada a day or two after British subscribers receive theirs. Why pay double for Air Mail?
Great, thanks for the tip! I've been thinking of doing that, as I like the quality of modeling I see in the mags. Also brings back childhood, teenage, and adult memories. Born and lived there as a child, worked full time in a tourist town in Scotland when I was 15, and served in the USAF at a base in England for three years.
On some items (on UK Ebay at least) you no longer have the option to charge for basic postage - it has to be offered "free". I haven't come across it on Model Railway items - yet.
MBQ
"LDosser" wrote
My guess is because it's a 'signed for' service and consequently the seller KNOWS the buyer has received the parcel, and cannot subsequently claim non-delivery.
Apparantly there's been an upsurge in the latter happening, and under eBay's terms the seller is responsible for safe delivery.
John.
It's specific to certain items where the costs of postage are both easily known and relatively cheap compared to a typical product price. The intent is to prevent people evading eBay fees by selling at a very low headline price but adding on an unrealistically large amount for postage in order to inflate the total paid.
Mark
Except that they've applied fixed P&P to books. A "book" can be anything from a thin paperback to the Encyclopaedia Brittania. Yeah, I know, higher starting price to cover postage. I know that Amazon also cap postage so this isn't specifically an eBay issue.
The intent is good, but I can't help thinking that there must be a better way. Like idiot buyers refusing to buy where postage is obviously inflated :-) Don't forget though that eBay, via Paypal, profit from postage charged although sellers are quite rightly not allowed to.
According to , it only applies "books and manuals" within the computing, video games and photography categories. So it isn't all books, just some of them. Books sold as books, rather than accessories, don't require free postage.
The problem is that buyers don't care that much whether they're paying a tenner for the item plus a quid for postage, or vice versa. The reason eBay started to clamp down in it was because buyers were effectively colluding with sellers to help sellers avoid fees.
Mark
Ah - OK. You sure though? I can read what the page says, but just searching through the books category (I searched on "great western" amongst others in the UK only) showed that virtually every single book is marked as "Free" postage. Those few that aren't are marked "Freight", whatever that's supposed to mean.
The point I was making is that eBay do collect fees on postage when a buyer pays by Paypal. Ok, the final value fee is less, but the Paypal fee is based on the total transaction value including postage. (I'm assuming you know that eBay owns Paypal)
I see a lot of inflated postage on the US e-bay. Six dollars to post a magazine, for example. Three of that is profit and free of e-bay fees.
The priority mail is not signed for. They dump it on my doorstep with other parcels. They do get a 'delivery confirmation' that is also available for any other type of postage.
I think most small books are generally free P&P because that's what sellers think will attract buyers.
Yes, but PayPal fees only apply if the seller is using a business or premier account. A lot of small traders use a personal account, which is fee-free.
Mark
"Mark Goodge" wrote
The cost of posting books is horrendous because they are so heavy. That alone pretty much stops me advertising books for sale on eBay and the like.
John.
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