Hi, I thought i would try and stick up for a few sellers in the war of words over postage and packaging with this guide. Im not a big seller but i do read people's feedback while wondering around ebay and often see negative feedback left for people because of problems with the costs associated with postage and packaging.

You always find feedback saying "They charged me £8 but it only cost £4 to send". This maybe so but the seller creates the cost of postage with their discretion based on the cost of things such as the the postage, packaging, petrol to the post office, time out of their day and even to recoup some of their ebay fees.

The buyer then looks at the postage cost and it is their choice whether to pay this amount or not so they cannot then moan that they are getting over charged.

For instance i sell a few video games and i always charge a flat fee of £2.50 in my auction. It only costs me 70p to send a game in the first class post but with another 65p for a package, £1 for petrol and (free service) time out of my day equals £2.35. Add this to the fact that between ebay and paypal you lose 10% of your sale then sellers get quite a hard deal, especially when they are competing to sell items at the lowest cost.

To me once the buyer has decided to pay the money as stated in the auction then that is it and they should have no argument.