Saturday 14 May 2011

The puzzling economics of Friends

My daughters have discovered Friends so I have recently had cause to buy some DVD sets from ebay to feed the new habit.

I'm puzzled by the economics of the transactions.

So far I've bought 3 series on DVDs paying total prices between £2.20 and £2.90

Thing is that posting a DVD set second class mail costs £2.16....

If you also allow for ebay and paypal fees then my back of envelope calculations suggest that the people selling the DVDs are effectively paying me to take them (and that's without allowing for costs of packaging materials, time, travel to a post office etc...).  The figures aren't large - just a few tens of pence but surely if you were selling something you'd be looking for a positive number.

Given that ebay allows you to specify the start price for the auction and set P&P fees and the actual postage costs are predictable I'm left bemused as to why this is happening?

Wouldn't the rational economic approach be to price them at a level that at least ensured your direct costs were covered?  If it doesn't sell then give them to a charity shop and save yourself the cost of paying someone else to have them.....

Most odd....

1 comment:

  1. My thoughts as well Michael. I got a battery for my Kodak camera from ebay for 99p (no other bids) with free postage from Hong Kong! Having won the bid I was not expecting to get said battery, but it turned uo after 3 days. High street shops wanted nearly £40! Many thanks to someone in Asia subsidising my photography habit...

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