Ebay sellers - high shipping cost even after eBay took part of pie?

[asphaltman]

I browsed through an auction listing tonight that had a buy it now on eBay and thought about pulling the trigger. It's a $70 buy it now - and while I usually don't even pay much attention I luckily caught the shipping price. $45.50 for priority shipping in the U.S. Am I missing something? Can a seller actually profit off the shipping like that? (I thought ebay basically was taking such a percentage of shipping that you have a problem making anything off of it to begin with). There may be a good reason for this i'm missing - but would sure advice folks to make sure to look at shipping costs before pulling the trigger...I'll definitely start being more aware.

***Didn't want to provide a link as the seller has a few live auctions up. But looking through most all the auctions are $40-50 shipping.

[buymycards]

Wow, for $45.50 you could ship a live donkey to Afghanistan!

I wonder if it is a typo. Probably meant $5.50. The $ sign is on the 4 key so he probably made a mistake. Once you set it in your auctions it stays that way for future auctions unless you manually change it.

Rick

[ktimm]

Without knowing what item your talking about I would say he really wants more money for his item. At a quick glance you might think your getting a good deal and that's generally what a seller wants. Instead of asking an obviously higher buy it now price he charges higher shipping prices.

[thecatspajamas]

I'm assuming this was for a card or something light that the usual shipping cost wouldn't approach that?

If so, I can think of a couple of reasons, but not any good ones.

1) They're hoping that someone would be just a little quicker on the trigger than you were and go ahead and click BIN before looking at the shipping price. They also aren't concerned about repeat customers, and are looking to get their maximum return on the single transaction they will have with you before you discover the inflated shipping price.

2) They take consignments and pay their consignors based on the selling price alone. In this case, the item price itself might actually be a really good deal, and with the shipping factored in may still be a decent price, so you go ahead and buy. Since the consignor's payout is based on the selling price alone, they get less, but the seller makes his money on the shipping. In this case, they aren't concerned about repeat consignors.

So there's a couple of possible scenarios, but to answer your original question, I've never heard a GOOD reason for grossly overinflated shipping costs.

[brookdodger55]

Originally Posted by buymycards

Wow, for $45.50 you could ship a live donkey to Afghanistan!

I wonder if it is a typo. Probably meant $5.50. The $ sign is on the 4 key so he probably made a mistake. Once you set it in your auctions it stays that way for future auctions unless you manually change it.

Rick

That's a great deal I can ship my jackass sister-in-law there. I would pay triple for a one way trip to the tribal region.
Mike

[asphaltman]

These were specifically for cards - I was looking at a Joss T206, he has others. He has buy it nows as well as bids which it doesn't seem like most have hit his reserve yet. But surprisingly they are getting some pretty decent bidding action early on, just wondering how many of those bidders noticed the shipping cost.

[JasonD08]

Before you crucify the seller why not send him a message and ask?

Jason

[asphaltman]

What do you want to ask? He specified his shipping, it's not a mistake...all of his items are $40+ and they aren't all the same amount...so it wasn't a typo. I chose not to bid. I wasn't sure if there was some benefit to him doing this where he would make a few more dollars that ebay wouldn't collect, but figured I'd point it out to others to pay attention to shipping costs.

[pepis]

Originally Posted by asphaltman

I browsed through an auction listing tonight that had a buy it now on eBay and thought about pulling the trigger. It's a $70 buy it now - and while I usually don't even pay much attention I luckily caught the shipping price. $45.50 for priority shipping in the U.S. Am I missing something? Can a seller actually profit off the shipping like that? (I thought ebay basically was taking such a percentage of shipping that you have a problem making anything off of it to begin with). There may be a good reason for this i'm missing - but would sure advice folks to make sure to look at shipping costs before pulling the trigger...I'll definitely start being more aware.

***Didn't want to provide a link as the seller has a few live auctions up. But looking through most all the auctions are $40-50 shipping.

Depends on the item, for example it cost me $39 to ship a motorcycle
helmet priority mail and only $16 for similar item parcel post.