Why "Free Postage" Is Never Actually Free

Nobody actually delivers anything for free

Worth stating plainly, because the phrase itself invites the opposite assumption: a courier is being paid the same real amount to move a parcel whether a listing calls it "free delivery" or shows a separate postage charge. "Free postage" is not a discount a seller is absorbing out of generosity - it is a pricing decision about where that same real cost sits on the page, folded into the headline item price rather than broken out as its own line. Nothing about the actual cost of getting the item from a supplier to a buyer's door changes based on how the listing chooses to describe it. It is worth being genuinely clear-eyed about this before deciding how to price anything: "free postage" is a presentation decision layered on top of a real cost that already exists, not a cost that has been removed - and treating it as the latter is exactly how a seller ends up quietly eating into margin on every single order without ever noticing where the money actually went.

Why the same total behaves so differently once it is split

This is the part worth understanding properly rather than taking on faith: a buyer comparing "£24.99 plus £3.99 postage" against "£28.98, free delivery" is looking at exactly the same total cost, and yet the two are not read the same way at all. The separate postage line reads as an extra cost stacked on top of a price already accepted, where a single all-in figure with "free delivery" attached reads as the whole story up front, with nothing further to add once a buyer has decided the headline number is acceptable. "Free" itself carries a genuine psychological pull well beyond its literal meaning - it is read as a bonus rather than as the arithmetic identity it actually is, and buyers routinely respond to it as though it were a better deal even once shown, side by side, that the total is unchanged.

A buyer is not doing the maths wrong by preferring the free-delivery version. They are responding exactly the way the framing is built to make them respond - which is precisely why it is worth using deliberately, not by accident.

The effect is not only psychological

Beyond how a human buyer reads the two versions, Best Match itself is understood to weigh the combined total a buyer actually pays - item price plus postage - rather than the headline item price alone, when ranking otherwise-similar listings against each other. This means the free-postage framing is not purely a matter of buyer psychology at the point of viewing a listing; it can genuinely affect whether that listing is shown as prominently in the first place, for exactly the same real total cost either way. A seller splitting the same total across two separate figures is not simply presenting it less persuasively - they may be handing a genuine ranking advantage to a competitor doing the identical maths differently. This is worth taking seriously precisely because it compounds: a small ranking improvement from a better-framed total cost means more views, which means more of the sales-history signal that itself feeds further ranking improvement over time, from a decision that cost nothing to make correctly in the first place.

What eBay's own guidance actually says, in its own words

Checked 27 September 2026, directly against eBay's own guidance on optimising listings for Best Match: eBay names "the price of the item" directly among the factors its own algorithm considers, and states plainly, under "what you need to know," that "to improve your Best Match ranking, start by offering competitive prices, reasonable postage, and great customer service." Postage sits alongside price as its own named consideration, not folded silently into it - worth knowing directly from eBay's own words rather than taken purely on the strength of seller folklore about how Best Match supposedly behaves. The same page also names a seller's return policy and handling time among the listed ranking factors, which is worth connecting back to the postage decision itself: a listing offering free delivery alongside a genuinely fast, clearly stated handling time is optimising against two of eBay's own named factors at once, not just the one this piece has focused on.

Why this is not automatically the right call for every product

None of this is an argument for making every listing "free postage" without thinking about the specific product first. A genuinely bulky or heavy item - much of what a furniture dropshipper actually sells - can carry postage costs that are large enough, and variable enough by buyer location or courier, that folding an assumed average into every listing risks quietly losing money on the orders that land above that average, even while looking fine on the ones that land below it. The decision worth making product by product is not "should postage ever be free," it is "does this specific item's postage cost sit in a narrow enough range that one built-in figure covers it reliably" - true for plenty of smaller, lighter home goods, genuinely less true for the largest and heaviest pieces in a furniture catalogue. A useful rough test is to look at the actual spread of postage costs across the last several genuine orders for a specific product, not just the average - if the cheapest and most expensive delivery for the same item sit close together, one built-in figure is safe; if they sit far apart, a single average is quietly subsidising the expensive end at the cheap end's expense, or the other way round, every time it is used.

Why eBay's fees do not change based on how the price is split

Worth clearing up directly, since it is a genuine point of confusion: eBay's final value fee is calculated on the total amount a buyer pays, including postage, regardless of whether that postage appears as its own line or is folded into the item price. Choosing "free delivery" does not reduce the fee owed, and splitting the same total across a separate postage charge does not increase it either - the fee is identical either way, because it is based on the buyer's total payment, not on how that total happens to be itemised on the listing. This means the free-postage decision genuinely comes down to buyer psychology and search ranking, covered above, with no separate fee consequence pulling in either direction to complicate the choice.

A worked example: the same product, the same total, a different result

Take a product costing £18 from the supplier, with a genuine £4 postage cost, sold at a price built to clear a specific margin after fees. Listed as "£24.99 plus £4.00 postage," a buyer sees the £24.99 first, mentally accepts it, and then meets a second number before checkout - a point at which some buyers genuinely reconsider or compare against a competing listing showing one figure instead of two. Listed instead as "£28.99, free delivery" - the identical total, arranged differently - the buyer sees one number, decides once, and the postage question never becomes a second moment of hesitation at all. Nothing about the product, the margin, or the actual cost of delivery changed between the two versions. Only the number of decision points the buyer had to pass through changed, and that is a real, measurable difference in outcome despite being, mathematically, exactly the same offer.

A practical way to actually decide, per product

Work out the real, typical postage cost for a specific product first - not a guess, the actual figure a courier charges for that item's real size and weight - and build that figure into the item price rather than leaving it as a separate charge, provided the cost is reasonably consistent across most orders for that product. For an item where postage genuinely varies a great deal - a bulky set needing pallet delivery to some addresses and a standard courier to others, the kind of variation covered in dropshipping garden furniture - a separate, honestly stated postage charge that reflects the real cost for that specific order is often the more accurate choice, even if it gives up some of the framing advantage covered above. Getting this decision right product by product, rather than applying one blanket rule to an entire catalogue, is worth the extra five minutes it takes - a catalogue is very rarely uniform enough for a single rule to be the right answer for every item in it, and treating "free postage on everything" or "postage charged separately on everything" as a fixed shop-wide policy usually means getting the decision wrong for a meaningful share of the products it is applied to.

Where this fits into pricing a product properly

Working out whether a specific product's postage is consistent enough to fold into the price is exactly the kind of decision that depends on real numbers, not a feeling - the same discipline as pricing after every real fee generally. Sellhelm's pricing works from the actual cost and fee figures for a specific product, so the choice between a built-in postage figure and a separate charge can be made deliberately, with the real numbers in view, rather than defaulting to whichever framing simply looked better without checking whether the underlying cost actually supported it.

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