Very big thumbs up from me & a question

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jonbyrne
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2014 3:43 pm

Very big thumbs up from me & a question

Post by jonbyrne » Thu Feb 13, 2014 4:54 pm

Hello

Fantastic service from you when I ordered a Nokia 5110 screen from your eBay store, speed and quality of packaging where great and I have had it running with your sample library this afternoon.

One question though when I saw your listing on eBay I popped over to your site to see if I could order it from here but it would have been £1.50 more to get it sent by the same service as it did on eBay, should that be the case or is your postage calculator a bit confused.

Thank You Again

Jon

andrew
Site Admin
Posts: 1374
Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2012 4:15 pm

Re: Very big thumbs up from me & a question

Post by andrew » Fri Feb 14, 2014 8:51 am

Thanks for the good feedback. This is a question that we get asked from time to time. There are several reasons why prices are different on our various sales channels (eBay, Amazon, and Play) in comparison to our website and although I can't give out sales figures to back this up I will try and explain why these prices vary in the way they do:

The most significant of which is postage. Although as you would expect that postage prices will vary depending on the item(s) weight, in the UK Royal Mail's prices also vary significantly depending on if that item will or will not fit through a letterbox. Now you may notice that the majority of the items we currently sell are relatively small and cheap and either fall above or below this restriction. It actually costs us over two and a half times more to post a small pot of silicone grease than it would an Arduino Due. As a result it get's very difficult to automatically calculate the shipping cost because it's not only a factor of weight, but if one or all the items put together will fit through a letterbox.

This however doesn't really answer your question on why it would be cheaper to buy one Nokia screen on eBay. This is to do with our customers having different buying habit's on eBay than they do on our website. On eBay most customers prefer to not have to pay postage (we tested this with flat rate postage and found we sold more when offering free postage even though the total cost to the customer could be more). As nothing is actually free, we integrate the cost of the postage into the items price. This allows us to individually tailor the postage charge depending on the item itself. Great - unless you are buying multiple items, which means you are paying multiple postage costs hidden in the items price. It is a little frustrating for us sometimes when we see the odd eBay customer buy a lot of items but eBay rules don't allow us to tell them that it would cost them significantly less from our website. However, on eBay most customers only by one item so this is fine.

On the website the average customer will buy multiple items and spend significantly more than the average eBay customer. As a result having a flat rate postage system is much better for the majority of website customers than the hidden postage system of eBay. Because of the quirk of postage charges as mentioned above we have to set this minimum level to cover the cost of shipping one small item that wouldn't fit through a letter box, such as the pot of grease (which actually still costs us more in postage than we charge). However because of the big difference in postage cost depending on the letter box restriction, some items like your Nokia screen fall between the cracks. What's even more bizarre is that these restrictions don't exists when posting outside of the UK and so the previously mentioned small pot of grease doesn't cost much more for us to ship to somewhere like Latvia or even Alaska than it would to post it to an address less than a mile away.

So because of all these factors, if you are buying one item that is very small it may be cheaper on our eBay sales channel, but if you are buying more than one item it is very likely you will get a better deal on our website. Hope this answers your question. It's a bit long winded but as we have been asked this in the past it's worth answering the question properly.
Comments made by this poster do not necessarily reflect the views of Hobby Components Ltd.

jonbyrne
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2014 3:43 pm

Re: Very big thumbs up from me & a question

Post by jonbyrne » Sat Feb 15, 2014 12:58 am

Hello

Thank you for taking the time to reply so in depth. I fully understand that the habits on eBay V other online places vary greatly and the size restrictions set by Royal Mail cause more problems that I think they realise.

Anyway keep up the good work and I will be back soon to get some more parts ordered.

Thanks

Jon

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