The Wholesale Forums

[CS111]

I am just curious as to how sellers of small items, like for example a Uk Plug make a profit on items when posage is £1.29 for similiar items to this in the post office ,i think they are classed as a large letter. The Plug being one example of hundrens of
'small items', am i missing somehing or some cheaper way of posting such items.
After buying the item, then paying the fees and the postage they would be into a loss, the fees and postage alone would be into a loss, never mind buying it.

[HeadBangingMerc]

One of the small items I sell is Pin Badges. These have to be sent as a large letter, as they are 6mm thick, when the cut of for standard letters is 5mm .

But what I do is make the customer aware of what the postage will be, and stick to my guns over it. I will combine postage, but make sure that the buyer knows what size and weight the item is, so if they want to check with RM they can.

You should make your money on the item, not the postage.

[crispydog]

Large Letter,has to fit through a 250mm x 25mm slot a few mm to thick & it virtually doubles the postage cost.
Many sellers use these as loss leaders.I sell a few items on Ebay for £3-£5 that cost me under 50p to buy but try to make sure they will post as Large Letter.

[CS111]

Yea, i understand the loss leader angle, but some very big sellers have 90% of their items like this and i dont understand how they make a profit on them with the postage alone being so close to the selling price, never mind then buying the item and the fees etc.

[PT]

They won't be loss leaders, there's no sense in doing it with that kind of product.

Volume discounts on their postage in theory.

What's more likely though is that they're making a few 'mistakes' when putting in their order with Royal Mail.

[CS111]

Hi, thats what i was thinking, then my local postie told me that the machines only allow certain letter sizes through the slots at the sorting offices and if they see the incorrect stamp money on the letter/package they dont post it, if that makes sense, then again i dont know how many they check for this.

[PT]

Originally Posted by CS111

Hi, thats what i was thinking, then my local postie told me that the machines only allow certain letter sizes through the slots at the sorting offices and if they see the incorrect stamp money on the letter/package they dont post it, if that makes sense, then again i dont know how many they check for this.

If you have an account, or more specifically PPI, it works slightly differently. The packages you send will only have your printed postage impression (PPI) and there'll be no details of how much postage you've paid for that particular item on the package itself.

Instead of going to the post office, you complete an order for the postage online. This means you have full control of whether you're saying it's a letter, large letter, or packet and what weight it is. After entering the details of what you're posting you print an invoice and attach it to your sack of mail. So in theory, when your packages have been separated and are away from the sack with the invoice, they don't really know what you've paid. Unless of course they wanted to go back and check, but it would be a lot of effort for something that means nothing to the employees.

I'm not condoning this, just stating how a lot of these sellers can offer items like these so cheaply. If you have to resort to doing this, I would say you're better off looking for something else to sell.