Free Shipping & High Shipping Prices because of Buyer Location - Question

[AwakenYouthful]

Hey guys, how is everyone doing?

I have a question. I've been doing free shipping recently for everything I'm selling and I want to continue doing it. But I have issue with selecting the carrier before the item is purchased. I'd like to ship the packages for the absolute cheapest price for myself, and not have to guess before hand which carrier may be cheaper based on the weight and where the person might live who ends up buying it.

I know you can select two shipping methods or more during the listing. When I do free shipping I always just select one, as this is the only one I think is "safe and cheapest" to ship with for that item. If I were to list two shipping methods, in the end, it is the buyer who gets to select whichever method they choose for shipping. Correct?

So if I was to ask the buyers, in the listing, to please select cheapest shipping option for me during checkout, they could easily pick the method that would cost me x4 more because of their location.

I shipped something that weighed around 5 pounds UPS today to Washington, DC. It cost me about $12 to ship from pennsylvania. If I were to have used USPS priority, it would have been only around $6. I would have shipped this item USPS, but because I had selected UPS in the listing, I had to use that carrier....at least if I had wanted to ship using ebay print labels....which is always a great discount.

If that buyer were in western continental USA, UPS would have been only a little bit more than the $12, and the USPS priority would have jumped up to $25+!

So I'm wondering how you guys work with this and get around it. I want to choose the shipping method, after the auction ends, based on where the buyer is located. But I just don't see how I could do this while offering free shipping.

It seems logical then to just not offer free shipping for heavier/bulkier items, and allow buyers to pay shipping based on calculated prices based on locations. Yet I see a boost in my sales using free shipping, and I prefer having this method overall as a seller.

Is there a way to select shipping after the sale ends? What do you guys do in these situations?

Thanks for the help

 

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[GibH]

Just choose "Flat: same cost to all buyers" and "standard shipping (1-6 business days)", or "economy shipping", then click the free shipping. You should be able to choose your carrier then.

 

[deserdog]

You could always list standard shipping free, and expedited shipping set at the cost of your standard shiping that you have built into the listing, plus the difference to the furthest zone. Many times though, especially in zones 1 through 4, expedited shipping is cheaper than standard shipping. For instance, I recently mailed an item from CA to Co, 10 lbs. priority mail. $11.06 in my listing for priority, but parcel select was $19.50!!

The only time you will have giant jumps in priority is when dimensional weight comes into play.

 

[AwakenYouthful]

Just choose "Flat: same cost to all buyers" and "standard shipping (1-6 business days)", or "economy shipping", then click the free shipping. You should be able to choose your carrier then.

The problem seems to be, still, if I select USPS, with flat, calculated, standard or expedited, I still cannot ship using UPS after the listing has ended, if USPS was what I originally picked as carrier in listing.

I suppose if an item has been listed as USPS carrier, and it sells and I see it is more than I want to pay, I could just not print the label off ebay and ship directly from UPS and update the shipped to and tracking information thereafter.

But if I select UPS in the listing, I cannot then switch back over to USPS after the listing has ended, if I want to print my shipping label through Ebay.

So I guess if I just always select USPS, in the end after it's sold, if it's too high shipping cost, I could just ship UPS and then update the shipping information and tracking for the buyer?

I wonder if there are penalties on ebay for switching shipping providers. It seems to me a buyer could raise an issue if they buy an item thinking it is shipping through one carrier and then I switch it to another carrier. I could see that being a problem, especially if the newely selected carrier loses the item or if the item takes longer than the originally selected carriers expected shipping time.

Yuck so many details. Just not sure

 

[AwakenYouthful]

You could always list standard shipping free, and expedited shipping set at the cost of your standard shiping that you have built into the listing, plus the difference to the furthest zone. Many times though, especially in zones 1 through 4, expedited shipping is cheaper than standard shipping. For instance, I recently mailed an item from CA to Co, 10 lbs. priority mail. $11.06 in my listing for priority, but parcel select was $19.50!!

The only time you will have giant jumps in priority is when dimensional weight comes into play.

Yeah, I'm still pretty new to selling and shipping with ebay. I have yet to ship anything parcel, though I do use Economy for media mail. It seems priority is usually really reasonable, so I haven't messed around with the other USPS shipping options. And i guess that is the other thing...I don't want to select a shipping method, have the item sell, and then ship it another method via the same carrier and piss off the customer. Because if I select priority and I decide then to ship parcel, it could take much longer to reach the customer, and since they bought the item with priority listed, they would expect to get it in that time.

These are the little things I'm caught up on.

 

[AwakenYouthful]

I also found, just tonight, that if you sign up with UPS online, link your account with paypal, and print shipping labels through ebay for UPS shipping, you get something like a 30% discount on every package you ship.

Now that is a big deal, and would make UPS shipping much more economical. But, of course, I cannot for the life of me find my account number anywhere in my account on their site, and it seems other people have an issue finding it also. Seems the only way to get it is when you receive your billing statement, and I can't receive a billing statement if I can't ship anything because I don't have my account number! lol

 

[jerseyben]

I get what you are trying to do but...

Unless you are selling massive amounts of items, why not just use the method described in posts 2/3 above and then if you need to ship UPS, just take the item to the UPS store. Problem solved?

 

[trdhrdr007]

I offer free shipping on a lot of things. Most of it is stuff that fits into a flat rate box/envelope, a regional box, media mail, or first class. It's easy to build that cost into my asking price. I try to stay away from items that are large/heavy due to the wide variation in shipping costs & packaging hassles. When I do sell those items there has to be a LARGE profit. I generally don't offer free shipping on those & when I do I build the highest shipping cost into my asking price.

 

[Paleo_joe]

I go back and forth between USPS and FedEx without a problem. I may list it with USPS priority, then see after the auction ends that FedEx Ground is cheaper, and I can select it. I just make sure it is the same speed or faster.

 

[diggummup]

I get what you are trying to do but...

Unless you are selling massive amounts of items, why not just use the method described in posts 2/3 above and then if you need to ship UPS, just take the item to the UPS store. Problem solved?

Sounds good to me. The only thing you may have to do is physically upload the tracking information to ebay.

And yes, because of the discounts given when printing labels on ebay, many times the priority rate is cheaper than the parcel select rate so always check when printing your lables via eBay.