Interesting discussion has been happening on our forum lately, via e-mail and within internet trading circles in general about the effects of the new NZ Post Charges as well as increases by other courier companies, and the impact this is having on TradeMe Sales.
There are other factors at work influencing TradeMe Sales and these can vary depending on who you are talking to. These can include, the changes to start=reserve, the ‘recession’ (is there or isn’t there one), novelty wearing off, and many more thoughts. Whether any or all of these have impacted on your business or not, the cost of shipping goods and buyers picking goods up is likely to increase again with the near doubling of the price of diesel.
One of our Christchurch users, Classy-Clutter made an interesting observation after a recent trip to the Post Office.
“Just been to our local New Zealand Post Shop and boy are they moaning. With all the postage, petrol price hikes and food prices going upward they have noticed a downturn in Trade Me parcels being sent. In June they were down a large number of the Big Parcel bags being taken away each day, enough to be noticeable.
We are now 7 days into July and my few parcels were the first for 3 days! They had rung around other NZ Post shops in their wider area and they reported almost as bad business for parcels coming over the counter.
So we asked the pick-up driver – who happened in while I was there – same story, less bags to pick up and some only have a few items in them. Seems the drivers have been noticing it also. So if you are not having great sales totals be heartened it seems wide spread.”
I asked Classy to write a few lines to share with everyone her thoughts on how postage prices have affected business on TradeMe. Classy has been an Auctionitis user since 2004 – she was one of our very first customers and aged in her late 60’s! There’s no finer compliment for Auctionitis than to know we’ve developed a product that is so easy enough for the older generation to use, but still packed full of advanced features for all age ranges and abilities to take advantage of.
Here’s what Classy had to say:
“The N.Z. Post charges are now starting to bite the Auction community at large. Many buyers are now expecting items to be sent for an unrealistic cost. The problem seems to lie in that for many items (which I sell) Volumetric pricing comes into play.
For example, an item under 5kg can be sent for $12.50 if within the Volumetric pricing schedule. However each extra 5kg, or part thereof, you pay an extra $9.50 over the original up to 25kgs.
Packaging is now becoming an art! How to protect the goods properly and still try to keep the weight down? Bubble wrap, pop corn, shredded paper (a cheap document shredder is useful), bean bag ‘beans’.
Scrunched up newspaper weighs more that ‘beans’, so check out how much your packaging is in weight, you might be surprised.
Filed under: Opinion & Gossip | Tagged: courier, New Zealand Post, nzpost, packaging, sales, Trade Me, trademe
It is interesting to read the comments above regarding posting through NZ Post Courier. We stopped using them a couple of years ago because of the cost to courier larger parcels, i.e. TV’s and telescopes. We changed to Fastway Couriers who take the bigger items and I can courier a 6″ telescope weighing about 17kgs from Chch to Auckland for $24. I have couriered TV’s to customers for $20 using Fastways and if the customer has had to return it for servicing they have paid up to $58 through PostShop!! Fastways do not deliver to Post Office boxes so if someone insists on that we still use CourierPost but charge accordingly. Fastways will also pick up from your door saving the trip each day to the Post shop. I believe Courier Post will also offer that service. The courier business is competitive so shop around for the best deal and use a mixture if one does not offer the service you want. We can dictate some terms (nicely of course) if we want to put a lot of business their way. Get quotes from Couriers who service your area and find out what their charges are for satchels and packages. One firm wanted to pick the satchels out of our business and charge us much more for the bigger packages. Needless to say we did not employ them.