Take The Guess Work Out Of eBays Shipping Costs & New Limitations
If you’ve ever found yourself guessing what postage amounts to charge your buyer, then eBays postage calculator might be just the thing you need.
With smaller items, the pre paid postage bags are going to be the quickest way for you to determine postage and the post office have now even got pre paid bags available worldwide!
But if you’re sending items that are heavier than 3kg, or quite bulky, the postage calculator automatically calculates postage costs based on the seller’s and buyer’s locations and the dimensions of the package.
The cost is then displayed on your item listing and charged to your buyers when they pay with any of your payment methods.
All you have to do is enter the information about your item and the calculator determines the postage cost, but keep in mind that eBay can’t guarantee that calculated postage costs will always be correct, especially if posting to a remote area for example.
If you’re worried that the cost will be too low, you can enter a handling cost to increase the postage cost displayed to buyers. The handling cost will be included in the total postage cost, but don’t get greedy; buyers know what they’re prepared to pay for postage.
You can also use the handling fee to add on insured or registered post and then the calculator does the rest, including providing the buyer with regular and express post rates.
You can list your items using the postage calculator when listing items for sale through eBay, Revise Your Item form, Relist form, and Turbo Lister.
Unfortunately Auctiva does not support the postage calculator at present; however you can still list your item through Auctiva and revise the listing through eBay to add on the postage calculator.
When you revise your item through eBay, (your listing must have no bids and more than 12 hours to go) scroll down to the postage details section and you’ll see a calculator logo next to the services/ research rates tab.
Simply click on the calculator, enter in the widgets weight, dimensions and packaging details. Remember to allow for the weight of the box and other packaging materials, as well. The max weight for Australian services is 20kg.
When you use calculated postage, a calculator displays to your buyers in the “Postage and Payment Details” area of your listing.
eBay have also introduced a new system to stop sellers charging too much for postage by putting postage limits for domestic postage.
Currently these limits are in place within a small number of categories and are selected in categories where the posted items are a standard weight and size.
Some of the products include books that now have an $8 maximum postage cost, CD’s with a $5 maximum postage cost and DVD’s with a maximum of $8 to $10 ranging on the type of DVD.
Even though eBay currently don’t have any other plans to limit postage amounts within other categories, it’s vital to your eBay business to be fair with the postage amounts.
This includes a reasonable rate for your buyers, but also a fair amount to cover your costs and time involved with posting.

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