Why is shipping for eBay items from Hong Kong free?

ronbarak · May 28, 2010, 6:10am

Many times, when I buy items from eBay merchants that ship from Hong Kong,
the shipping price (worldwide) is free, and the item’s price itself is only a few cents.
How is that possible

Reply · May 28, 2010, 6:25am

Do you have an example?

astro · May 28, 2010, 6:31am

I have bought cables etc from Asian ebay sellers for a few dollars (not just pennies) and the shipping is free. I would imagine the international shipping of tiny items is fairly cheap and the production cost for the item is probably “pennies”. The (say) 2- 10 profit can add up if the packing and shipping labor is cheap and you sell thousands of items. If, as I often suspect, these items are off the clock production overruns from Chinese factories the production cost is probably pretty negligible.

Wordy · May 28, 2010, 6:31am

Well, some of the stuff sold is low quality.

Darryl_Lict · May 28, 2010, 7:18am

That doesn’t affect the price of shipping. I’ve bought a couple of spare antennas for my cell phone years ago and I was stunned that the shipment came from Hong Kong.

Arjuna34 · May 28, 2010, 12:15pm

HorseloverFat had one interesting theory in this previous thread on the same topic:

This is how you unload lots of the same commodity item. The idea is that you fill the ebay market with 100 of those little chargers. Now you need to set them at a low price so people bid them up. You dont know the demand so you sit and wait. At the end of the week 90 of them sold for 5 or so dollars but 10 or so sold at the opening price. Next week you only sell 90 instead of 100.

In the meantime you take your 10 loss because your minimum price covers shipping. Its not much of a loss, just a waste of time and labor. This also gives you the benefit of aquiring feedback and not letting your competitors get to your customers.

If you were more conservative and sold 50, that means you werent able to sell those extra 40 from the 90 that sold over the opening price. So thats a loss of a couple hundred dollars of profit and your potential customers get to meet your competitors.