Avoiding outrageous postage fees

There are so many people selling on online auctions these days that the more popular auction sites are able to charge pretty much what they want.

Fees for insertion, extra photos, enhanced listings and buy it now all add up, not to mention the final sale fees for some item categories. And if you use PayPal the fees stack up even higher. Even those sellers using free online auctions will have to charge for their time, packaging material and PayPal fees.

Most sellers pass these fees, in full or part, onto you, the buyer. Whilst this is understandable some sellers seem to take advantage of the fact. £10 for the postage of a bracelet that in reality only costs £0.79 to post 1st class is verging on highway robbery.

So how can you avoid paying overly inflated P&P costs? First of all accept that sellers will usually charge a bit above what the postage actually is. That's fair as P&P also includes the packaging, time spent listing the item, answering queries and finally going to the post office to send it off. And most sellers don't actually know the final postage cost until they're at the post office so they'll usually have standard fees calculated as, "what I think the postage will cost + a bit extra for the packaging and my time". Thus £1.50 or £2.00 P&P for a top isn't outrageous even though it is about twice as much as the actual postage.

But if you don't want to get stuck with paying £5 P&P for a second hand cuddly toy that ended at £0.49 the following tips might help.

• Always include the P&P in your decision of whether or not the item is a good buy. Otherwise you may find that buying it new from a store would have been cheaper.
• Carefully check the postage fees. Not all sellers list the postage fees so be sure to ask and keep the reply.
• Check the description even if the postage fees are stated at the top/bottom of the listing as some sellers will state that "Postage might be more" or that the stated postage costs are only for certain areas.
• Search for those sellers offering free postage. You can even do a site wide or category search for "free p&p".
• Search for those sellers offering low postage costs. Some are now taking advantage of the fact that other sellers are greedy and advertising the fact that they instead undercharge on postage. Try a search for "low p&p".
• Search for the item you want as you normally would but only visit the listings that have a fair P&P cost listed. For example, if I want to buy a summer skirt I will only look at those that charge £2.50 or less for P&P. If it's jeans I only look at those items listed as £4 or less for P&P.
• Find out if the seller will offer discounts on P&P if you buy two or more items. A lot of them will state that they do but even those that don't publicly state it will often by happy to combine postage.
• There may be several P&P options. Often the 1st class price is the one that is predominantly displayed but some sellers will offer a cheaper 2nd class option as well.