What is the best way to ship furniture?

Hi everyone, I am a new member on SaleHoo. I have a account with a furniture company I used to work for, so I can get furniture at dealers price. My problem is that I am trying to sell some on eBay but shipping is what stopping me for doing it. i need some help, anyone on here sell furniture on eBay and what is the best way to ship?

That's a tricky thing selling furniture on Ebay, the weight of the item is what you have to keep in mind as that is what will bring up the cost of the product.

if the item is light in weight ok, but some time size may not be. so what you have to do is find what works for you and do that.

furniture is always hard to do but you have to find a combination of weight and size then go with that.

Another thing is if the item you display is large and the customers wants it let them pay the EXTRA FEES for shipping and handling plus any insurance cost for you to ship it to them.

hope that helps.

Hi dunahey31,

cherleen4u has pointed out the essentials and I'd just like to add a bit to it.

Tip: A calculated postage cost is essential when you ship unusually sized or overweight item.

Select which postal carriers you want to use, these will vary depending on your country. For US eBay sellers, USPS generally offers the cheapest postal rates, but it’s best to compare all the main services by visiting their websites before you select one.

Also, you may have to enlist the help of 'packers' when you pack your furniture to ensure that it doesn't get damaged in anyway.

If you feel that it would be too much an obstacle, you can also try selling your furniture finds locally rather than on eBay, or limiting your eBay sale to pick-up only so that you don’t have to deal with shipping it.

All the best! :)

Hi dunahey31,

As what Richelle has mentioned, consider limiting your EBay sale to pick-up only for heavy/large items, so you don’t have to think about shipping concerns. Besides, the larger the item, the more expensive it will cost to ship and the more difficult it will be for your potential buyers to justify spending on high delivery fees than buying the furniture locally.

If you want to pursue shipping, you may use the help of a freight company who can safely protect the furniture in crating, strapping and supports so that it will reach the buyer in one piece. For a free assessment on your item, you can use this site. It also compares rates from all the top carriers so you can decide which ones to use. Link hidden: Login to view

If you are willing to do the packing yourself, this guide can help you. –Link hidden: Login to view
It says that generally, for medium sized furnitures, you can charge $30 handling. For larger items using more packing materials and manhours, $60 is reasonable enough. And these fees are less than half than what UPS would normally charge.

Good luck to your endeavor. Let us know how you got on.

Cheers!

Hi everyone, I am new to SaleHoo also.
I am from Tas and have a stall/shop at the local market. I have been looking around for shop counters. I checked out eBay and found quite a few with good buy it now prices but nobody will ship them, they are expensive to buy down here, So my point is if people started shipping the heavier items to the people in my situation maybe they would make more sales than the ones that don't. Even with the shipping cost it would probably still be cheaper than buying locally. ( talking used counters)

It's a very good point you make actually poochgroom.

What you will find is that most sellers will limit their selling opportunities if it saves them some level of drama, essentially everyone wants to make money, but most want to do as little as possible to actually earn it!

I see eBayers not wanting to ship all sorts of things, and I'm not talking about heavy items, I'm talking about things that would cost no more than 10 dollars to ship. It's the fact that the person has to actually put it in the box and then drive to the post office is what's stopping them from shipping it.

The crazy thing is that they don't even consider the hassle of having to sit around and wait for the person to pick the item up only to get an email 4 hours after they were supposed to be there informing them that they can't make it today.

Shipping in my opinion is FAR less hassle and day, and you can always sneak in a few extra dollars into the price : )

OK, I've sold some really big stuff online in my time, but I never, ever restrict it to local pick up only unless the item is too big to ship through Aust Post and not worth the value of shipping via courier or some other means.

I always leave the ball in the customers court, happy to ship if you want to make your own transportation arrangements. That gives them the opportunity to bid if they want whatever it is badly enough, and gives me access to a larger market other than those that are only willing to drive to my place for pick up!

The biggest advantage to selling online in the first place is that you are selling to a mass market, restricting any item to pick up only is reducing the size of your market. The smaller your local area is in population, the smaller your market is using that strategy!

I know a guy that had a very rare skateboard, only wanted to list it for local pick up. I couldn't contain my frustration and had a minor dummy spit questioning him as to why on earth he wouldn't list something like that with not just shipping, but with international shipping to give himself the best chance of getting the best possible price, but I couldn't talk him around.

Crazy, he just didn't want to go to the post office. I'm still to work out what on earth is so scary about Post Offices these days, I mean it's almost like they are the new dentist offices. Dentists are fine now, it's the post offices no one want's to go near lol