Cheap Airfix Bofors guns

[Weaver]

Sorry I didn't see this earlier, but today's "gift" in Airfix's Advent Calendar promotion is that the 1/76th Bofors gun plus tractor is available for £2.50 FOR TODAY ONLY.

Obviously, watch out for the P&P (£4.98, but free for orders over £30), but if you're getting something anyway...

[PR19_Kit]

£4.98? The GPO charges £3.20 for small parcels.....

[deathjester]

Have to spend £30 quid then, eh?!!

[Weaver]

£4.98? The GPO charges £3.20 for small parcels.....

Actually it's £2.80.... Bear in mind that Airfix have got to run a major warehousing and packing operation as well as actually pay for the postage, and their level of service is very good.

[PR19_Kit]

£4.98? The GPO charges £3.20 for small parcels.....

Actually it's £2.80....

Only for 2nd Class, it's £3.20 for 1st. I know that only too well as I've posted off 20+ parcels in the last few weeks.

I take your point about the size of Airfix's operation, but don't economies of scale apply here?

[Weaver]

£4.98? The GPO charges £3.20 for small parcels.....

Actually it's £2.80....

Only for 2nd Class, it's £3.20 for 1st. I know that only too well as I've posted off 20+ parcels in the last few weeks.

Yes, quite right. I posted one off 2nd class this morning....

I take your point about the size of Airfix's operation, but don't economies of scale apply here?

They do, but all that space, hardware and manpower has to be paid for somehow: if it didn't go on the P&P, it'd have to go on the kit prices. Also, they do apply economies of scale in a sense: spend £30 and the P&P is free and you can manage that with two Lightning F.6s at full retail. What their postage setup is really "saying" is that they'd rather you organised your purchases into a smaller number of multi-item orders that are easier for them to pick and pack, rather than individual dribs and drabs, and that they're willing to reward you for doing so.

[zenrat]

5 quid for postage is OK...
...compared to Lego who (on their Australian website anyway) have a minimum charge of $25 for postage.  I have VIP points about to expire and thought i'd use them to get some small items to use as xmas dekkies. Hah!  Think again.
Australia Post rate for parcels under 500g is something like $8.  Obviously everything is awesome, when you charge like a wounded bull.

[NARSES2]

I take your point about the size of Airfix's operation, but don't economies of scale apply here?

They do Kit but the real problem with making a comparison is that it is not a direct one. When we cost a delivery it is usually purely the postage with perhaps a little for packaging. As Weaver says retailers have to factor in the real cost of packaging, wages, rent/rates, utilities and all the other sundry costs of running a warehouse operation. Soon adds up so on the whole both Airfix and Hannants do quite well I think.

[PR19_Kit]

I'm afraid I disagree. The overheads should be priced into the kit itself, not the packaging. You see the opposite thinking on dealers pages on eBay, reasonable 'Buy it Now' prices and exhorbitant p&p costs.

We'll not agree on this and I won't be persuaded otherwise so I won't post any more on the subject.

[Weaver]

I take your point about the size of Airfix's operation, but don't economies of scale apply here?

They do Kit but the real problem with making a comparison is that it is not a direct one. When we cost a delivery it is usually purely the postage with perhaps a little for packaging. As Weaver says retailers have to factor in the real cost of packaging, wages, rent/rates, utilities and all the other sundry costs of running a warehouse operation. Soon adds up so on the whole both Airfix and Hannants do quite well I think.

It's not neccessarily even "a little bit" for packaging since Royal Mail introduced size limits, since you now have to be very careful not to let a recycled package gor over the Small Parcels limit or it'll end up costing you a shed load more for a Medium Parcel. A lot of the kits I'm selling at the moment are flat, wide boxes, and I found out last week that none of my carefully hoarded second-hand boxes will actually do the job, so I had to go out and buy some new boxes which cost me £2.00 each on the high street. With Ebay and Paypal fees, that pretty much halved any profit on those items. I've now got the new box price down to £0.70 each, but I had to order 25 off ebay to get that price.

The £3.50 I'm charging for postage is therefore made up of £2.80 postage plus £0.70 packing, plus nothing for the tape, delivery note envelope, paper, printer ink, my time or a share of the overheads on the house where the operation takes place. Also, ebay and paypal fees are based on the whole transaction cost including the postage, so if the buyer sends me an extra £3.50 p&p, I get charged approximately £0.47 for the privilege of handing all of it on to Royal Mail and the box company.

One of the problems on ebay is that people judge what postage is "reasonable" relative to the sale price, not the actual postage cost, so they'll happily pay £4.00 postage on a £30.00 purchase, but ask them for £4.00 on a £5.00 purchase and they start muttering about being a ripped-off, even though both packages cost exactly the same to send.

[Nick]

.....Royal Mail Small Parcels limit... Ebay and Paypal fees..... nothing for the tape, delivery note envelope, paper, printer ink, my time...

One of the problems on ebay is that people judge what postage is "reasonable" relative to the sale price, not the actual postage cost, so they'll happily pay £4.00 postage on a £30.00 purchase, but ask them for £4.00 on a £5.00 purchase and they start muttering about being a ripped-off, even though both packages cost exactly the same to send.

This is why I avoid Ebay selling. I've started using Hermes parcels because it's simpler with fixed, easy to understand prices and sizes and weights, and being sure your letters aren't too thick to get thru the Post Office's miniscule idea of a letterbox size. There's no long queues when I drop off at a local newsagent unlike the Post Office where everyone wants to tax their car, get a fishing licence and claim their pension.

As a buyer from Ebay I am amazed at the savings that largescale sellers manage on their postage. I bought a USB cable for 99p last month with free delivery. Small padded envelope, at least 40p postage, Paypal and Ebay fees, printed label, staff pay... I can't imagine how little profit they made on this but clearly it's worth it to them. 

[Weaver]

Ebay are now actively pushing sellers to offer free postage since they know that "REALLY CHEAP!!! (plus £4 P&P)" puts a lot of people off. Basically they want you to hide the p&p cost in the item price instead. I think they're getting worried: my recent spurt of selling got me an invite to an ebay survey (despite the fact that I'm the smallest of small-fry) which heavily focussed on nergatives: "how much stuff do you buy and sell elsewhere?", "what puts you off using ebay as a seller/buyer?" etc.....

[PR19_Kit]

But then your starting price has to be higher to kick off and the item doesn't sell as people don't see the 'Free P&P' until after they've looked at the detail page. We pay eBay enough when selling as it is, what with insertion fees, the auction charges themselves AND what PayPal costs!!!

[king of men]

But then your starting price has to be higher to kick off and the item doesn't sell as people don't see the 'Free P&P' until after they've looked at the detail page. We pay eBay enough when selling as it is, what with insertion fees, the auction charges themselves AND what PayPal costs!!!

Heh heh. Agree 100% Kit! 

[Weaver]

But then your starting price has to be higher to kick off and the item doesn't sell as people don't see the 'Free P&P' until after they've looked at the detail page. We pay eBay enough when selling as it is, what with insertion fees, the auction charges themselves AND what PayPal costs!!!

It depends how you set your search page preferences up. I've got mine showing p&p in the search results and you can order them lowest to highest (or vice versa) by just price or price+p&p. I presume they think/know that a lot of buyers do this. They may also think/know that people are put off bidding on a 99p item when they see that it's actually going to cost them the best part of a fiver with the postage: suddenly it's gone from a trivial purchase to one they have to think about.

I say think/know above because I don't know how much data Ebay gather or how intelligently they process it. When you're selling, the site makes all sorts of "helpful" suggestions which give the impression of being generated by a non-too-clever expert system. When I was selling some Thunderbirds models recently, it kept badgering me to "improve" the descriptions by putting the words "science fiction" in them, as if anyone buying Gerry Anderson models would need to be told that....  This leads me to suspect that their promotion of free p&p might result from similarly superficial analysis. It may be that it's based on nothing more than "the sellers who make the most sales are the ones who offer free p&p", ignoring the fact that they're huge companies who can buy in bulk, absorb the p&p costs and still sell at an attractive price.

This "big company" thinking has made Ebay more seller-unfriendly over the last few years. The refunds and returns policies expect everyone to behave like a big store and give no-quibble refunds no matter how unreasonable or downright dishonest the buyer is being, and you can't even leave them negative feedback to warn other sellers. Big companies can absorb these kind of costs and chalk them up to "reputation", but they kill small sellers. I think they might be waking up to some of this: one of the questions in that survey I mentioned was about whether competition from big companies was making Ebay less attractive for small sellers.