I use Royal Mail Signed For 2nd class for all my jewellery. On each listing it is £3 for 1 item, £0 for any more added to the order However, I do have a small proportion of non-jewellery in my shop that I don’t send this way and they’re a cheaper price as well(keyrings, guitar picks, tree decorations), so I send them as standard post. £1.30 for the first item and then £1.70 for additional items which takes them up to the price for a Signed For postage as chances are, the second item would be jewellery. They would all be sent then as Signed For.
But it doesn’t work like that. If the customer orders the jewellery first and then adds on the other item, that’s fine, it’s just £3. If they do it the other way round though and start with the non-jewellery piece then add the jewellery, then they are charged £1.30 + £1.70 + £3! How do I get over this??
I just added one key ring… charged £1.30. ok
Added a second charged £3.00. ok
Added a jewellery item shot up to £6.40 !! Why the 40p ???
Added a second jewellery item and it stayed at £6.40 ok
2 * £1.70 = £3.40
I think it takes the additional price of the first item added to apply to everything so jewellery first additionals charged at £0. Keyring first additionals all charged at £1.70
Thinking…
It may work better if you remove the additional item charge on the keyrings all together so each one is charged at £1.30. That gives you almost enough if you sell 2 and a bit extra, swings and roundabouts if you sell 3.
Try it and see what it does.
My understanding is that it automatically takes the highest postage item as the main postage, so if a customer has 2 x key rings, plus 1 piece of jewellery, irrespective of the order they put them in the basket, it will use the £3.00 as the main postage costs, and add the additional costs of the key rings, so 2 x 1.70. So total is £3.00 + £1.70 + £1.70 = £6.40. That is why Joys basket shot up to £6.40 when she added the jewellery item. When she added the second jewellery item it stayed the same because there is no additional cost for jewellery items.
I agree with joy, it may be worth removing the additional cost altogether on the cheaper items and see how it goes (don’t put anything in the additional postage box, not even zero’s) Maybe increase the main postage on those items to £1.50 so you are covered if you sell 2.
You don’t need to guess what the second item could be, the additional price is for if that item is the second item.
The item with the most expensive shipping is charged its first shipping cost, and every other item is charged its own additional item price. If you can ship 1, 2 or 5 jewellery items all for the same price, then it should be fine to have 0 in the additional box. If 2 will be the same but 5 will push it up, you might want to put a small price in the additional, so 4 extra would add up to cover the extra.
Having an additional item cost on keyrings that is more expensive than the original definitely looks odd, and would likely put people off buying multiples. If someone buys 2 keyrings, does it put the price up, or is it the same like with jewellery? If someone bought a piece of jewellery and a keyring, would the keyring increase the price of signed for postage, or would it be the same? If adding a keyring in doesn’t make a difference, it would be better for the keyring to have an additional price of 0 or a small amount, but yes I agree with the others, at most leave it blank so it’s the same as the initial. The initial price of the jewellery item will cover the signed for if they’re buying different types of item.
At the moment, if someone bought 1 keyring it costs £1.30 to post, 2 keyrings would cost £3, and 5 keyrings would cost £8.10!
Thanks Joy, I think I’ll do as you suggest. I sell very little from my Folksy shop (those 155 sales are over about 12 years! 
) so the liklihood of this happening again are slim but yes, it’s not going to leave me out of pocket in the long run.
Yes, I’m doing as you and Joy advise, I’ll remove the additional cost but I’ll up the £1.30 to £1.50. Thanks alot 
Thanks Kim, I can’t get my head round all your explanation but I accept how I’ve done it is too convoluted. I’ll take off the additional in the non-jewellery stuff and accept that if they choose a non-jewellery first and then add a jewellery piece, the postage will be short but as I replied to Joy, I sell very little from Folksy, so the chances of this happening again are highly unlikely.
It doesn’t make any difference what they choose first. If they put a key ring in the basket, then jewellery piece, the postage will be £3.00 for the jewellery item, but because you have set additional item cost for the keyring to 0.00, they will only pay £3.00 total postage. Both Joy and I suggested that you don’t have anything in the additional postage for the cheaper items (delete the 0.00) and leave empty…this way people will pay the full postage for each one, which will cover the cost of signed for if they buy more than 1.
Thanks to all of you, I’ve now changed it all 
. However, I queried the “which the customer put in first” originally as this did happen to me when the keyring was put in first and led to an overcharge. If she’d have put the jewellery in first, it wouldn’t have happened. Anyway, it won’t happen again as there is no additionl charge in any category now.
@KBCreations is correct, it doesn’t make a difference which order they put the items in the basket.
Because it was £3/£0 and £1.30/£1.70, the most expensive first price got charged and then the second price on the other item - £3 + £1.7 = £4.70. If it did charge as the first item added first, it would have been £1.30 + £0 so would have been an undercharge, not an overcharge.
If I try it out now by adding a keyring and then a piece of jewellery, the total is £3, which hopefully is correct for what you need.