I believe that many buyers who ding the stars do not even know what reasonable shipping costs are. Do they factor in the cost of materials, the cost of insurance, the actual cost of the shipping?

Many items that I ship cost more to ship than I actually state in my listing. I don't go back to the buyer and complain that it's costing me more to ship than I stated. If I said it cost something in my listing, that is exactly what the buyer is charged.

+1

classic..and great reference back to Lax...

Still one of my favorite movies ever!

did you ever notice that he actually got the rib for free?

Ha. Yeppers. Makes it an even better analogy for eBay!

That's a different story. He wasn't trying to make money off of shipping. He is just an idiot. Also, do you assign any blame to USPS? I would. They took money to transport one item from one place to another. Regardless of contents or shipping material, shouldn't they be able to do that ONE simple thing. Did you purchase insurance on the stuff?

Guy knew he screwed up and refunded me right away. I got a great deal on the lot so would have much rather had the items. I didn't ding him. Just felt really bad about some great vintage material being destroyed.

No, I didn't blame USPS. If you saw the way it was packaged, there was no way it was ever going to make it to me in one piece. Especially seeing that he shipped it "Media Mail".

At least 2 lb's of loose paper items, stuffed into a plain white envelope, very little if any tape, and a mailing label which consisted of a single piece of copy paper barely scotch taped to the top of the package. I was shocked the mailing label even survived to get the empty envelope to the right address.

If the USPS have any blame along the way, it's perhaps that they never should have accepted the package to begin with, but he printed out the mailing label himself, so he could have easily just tossed it in a Mail Deposit box. Once it was in the system, it had no chance.

Above a certain price I sell with free domestic shipping. Saves me the hassles of dealing with pissy buyers over a few centavos. And I recycle all the envelopes and boards and card holders I receive from my buys so my cost is postage and tape. Environmentally friendly and economical.

If a shipping cost is disclosed up front I factor it into the deal same as a BP from an AH

I will ding a seller for poor packing and if he won't combine shipping charges.

I'd like to add this to the thread...

How big a boy are you?
How do I get to where you're at?
You going to be there all day?:D

That's just silly the way the guy used so many stamps. Totally unnecessary as all of them could have been eliminated with a simple trip to the Post Office.
(Just assuming a Post Office was an option and not knowing the details of the transaction/shipping agreement?)

What is frustrating to me are the buyers who buy multiple cards, and subsequently make a payment for each card individually through paypal. Even more frustrating is when the buyer then turns right around and asks for a refund back on ALL of the excess s/h. Most recently, I had a buyer pay for 9 cards (each with $1 s/h) separately through paypal. These 8 additional payments caused me to incur an unexpected $2.40 in paypal transaction fees. The buyer called me and asked if I would still honor my s/h cap of $3.....not likely, as the extra $2.40 in fees are not covered by the $3 s/h cost.

In addition, my descriptions mention that the $3 s/h cap is only applicable to orders paid for on a single payment...in other words, I will try to find a way to appease the buyer w/o going in the hole on expenses. In this case, I appeased the buyer by sending him 5-6 off grade cards of his favorite player.

Unless the seller has $100s of dollars tied up in old stamps that aren't worth any more than face value. Then it is not silly or unnecessary.

Yeah, that's a pet peeve of mine to. Sometimes it's an impatient buyer, sometimes it's an Ebay software issue that's causing the buyers problems in the shopping cart.

That's why I try to make it clear to buyers to not attempt to pay for their auctions or purchases if they have won more then 1 item from me, until I send them a separate adjusted invoice.

Doesn't always work, but I think it cuts down on the occurrences.

Agreed. I do free shipping if you buy 10 or more items at once. I do find that some people don't understand the shopping cart.

As others have mentioned, the cost for a 3oz package is now $2.45. For 4oz (thru 8oz), it is $2.60. You can mail a PSA graded card (or raw card) in a 3oz bubble mailer, but an SGC or Beckett will need 4oz. I think sellers can say anything they need to in order to justify the cost of shipping. I've heard sellers adding in the cost of the gas it costs them to drive to the Post Office to drop off the package and even the depreciation of their vehicle. Buyers just care about the cost of the postage, and I think they're willing to give a little leeway for the bubble mailer. This is why I always use the pre-printed ebay shipping labels, and I never show the cost of the shipping unless it is more than the buyer paid. In general, my costs for shipping a PSA card would be:

Mail Cost: $2.45
Bubble Mailer $.10
Postcard sized penny saver to protect slab: $.02
eBay charge 10% $.33

I put a thin piece of cardboard (from the free small priority mail boxes) on each side of the card. I also tape the packing slip to the cardboard with the buyer's address showing in the very unlikely event the card is separated from the package. I charge $3.25 for shipping (and it used to be $3 before the postage rates went up at the beginning of the year). Using this rate, I've never gotten a negative feedback on my sales. I've been dinged a little, but never down to 1 or 2 stars, and never anything to threaten my Top Rated Seller status. And you can say that I technically think I make a small profit on my shipping. Personally, I really think a key to getting good ebay satisfaction from buyers is if you ship the card really fast, and the buyer has it in his/her hands really quick, they will forgive a lot of things, even slightly higher shipping charges.

About marketing charges, I would never charge the buyer for that. C'mon you're charging the buyer slightly more, and you want to win more of their business by giving them a business card? If you want more of their business, I think they'd much prefer lower shipping cost. And anyway, if you file Schedule C for your business, those marketing costs (and costs of the bubble mailer, etc) are all tax deductible. And I saw that Just Collect posted to this thread also. The last time I won from them on ebay, they even sent me a free Just Collect t-shirt. (Granted my winning was over $1K.) Seriously, that is marketing that you remember. I toss business cards straight into my recycling bin without ever looking at them whenever I get them in my packages.

The not understanding how to use the shopping cart is the most common excuse I have received back from these buyers.....I implore buyers in my listing to use the shopping cart and offer simplistic directions on how to use it.

Another excuse I have heard is "I did not realize I was buying all of these items from the same seller".....wow, just wow.

To me, it appears that part of the problem causing buyers to make these multiple payments centers around the fact that most buyers are only given the option to checkout/pay for items when using the BIN option. It may be an extra click for a buyer buying one item, but if ebay removed the BIN option and only went with the "add to cart" option, this problem would be severely cut back.

Awhile back I called ebay and had my buying account set up so, in most cases, I can use the BIN option and NOT have to send an immediate payment. This would allow me to buy multiple items from one seller over time to save on s/h. However, I still have to use the cart to receive and "promotional" discounts that the seller is offering.

OH MY! This is a person who needs a good punch to the face. Who mails a card like that in an envelope?? Who??

That isn't the seller. That is EBay. Ebay is charging that fee. Sellers ship it to a center in Kentucky and wipe their hands of it.

I have a question for you guys that do sell on eBay. Do you have to use the eBay shipping system or do you just process and mail on your own?

I use Stamps.com for most packages, and it sends the tracking info back to Ebay.

Will use Ebay for Internationals because they give better discounts for that. Ebay used to give discounts for heavier Priority packages, but not so much anymore.

Stamps still showing $2.60 to me for 3 oz's and under. Doesn't make much difference though, since I pack everything heavier then 3oz's anyways, even if it's just a card. You could say it's wasteful, but it's going to get where it's going in the same shape it left in.

Not likely, but I guess it's a possibility?

It's a sellers choice whether they choose to use E-Bay shipping or not.

The majority of the cards I purchase now are way cheaper than Global and certainly cheaper than the price of the card I am purchasing.

Global is expensive and on the cards I purchase, is sometimes double and triple the price of the card.:eek:

It makes zero sense purchasing a $4.00-$5.00 card only to have to pay $14.00 dollars+ in shipping fees plus another few bucks for import fees which get applied using the Global shipping as well.

Most I usually pay now, to my door, is $4-$5 or less.

Shipping is just part of the cost of the card. If the card is worth $X to you, you pay up to $X to have it. And part of having it is having it sent to you. Neither the buyer nor the seller should care what the shipping cost is. If you charge $40 for shipping buyers are just going to bid $(X-40) for it. How the cost is distributed between the card and the shipping charge really doesn't matter.

So no, don't leave negative feedback for high shipping charges. Just put in a lower bid than you would otherwise.

+1.

That's how I look at it. I have left negative or neutral feedback for shipping when costs are obviously skewed, such as failing to combine shipping, higher shipping costs for an item shipped relatively unprotected. I will say, in my comments, my bid reflects the cost of shipping.

On auction houses, especially those who charge for postage, supplies, handling, etc, I don't bid mch, if at all for many AH these days. In my prior life managing a profit center, many of these descriptive items are actually labor and material costs. I consider this no more than an attempt to increase profitability and, with the A H juice running up to 20%, any explanation is no more than justification for suckers. Just my two bucks worth, which is now $2.60 with S&H.

By the way, I make several purchases from shippers in Japan. Costs are all over the place, but several ship for under three bucks. Food for thought.

I can see it not really mattering much to the seller if he is selling cards but it does matter to the buyer and that is reflected in less purchases, or in my case, zero purchases from those who use Global shipping or have other high shipping fees.

Imagine that! :rolleyes:

I feel sorry for the people in other countries who have to deal with Global Shipping and the associated costs, but I still use it because it's the only safe way for ME to send something internationally. I was losing so many packages in customs around the world or just plain getting screwed over by unscrupulous buyers that it was no longer worth it to ship international. Now all I have to do is get it to Kentucky and my part is over.

I use the eBay system because you get a 10% discount on the postage, which basically covers the fees on the shipping.

If you live out of the country, especially Canada, do one of the following.

A. Find someone stateside you trust to collect your purchases and ship all together once a month.

Or easier:

B. Set up a COMC account and have all your purchases shipped there. You can bundle and and ship groups whenever you feel like it. Your monthly fees will be drastically less than you pay in shipping for your purchases.

+1


.

+1. Once you get too many packages get "lost" to Canada, you begin to question whether you really want to ship there or not.

i don't sell much on ebay, but when i do, i use my own fedex account and simply upload the tracking number to the system.

card delivered the next day or so and don't have to play the waiting/worry game that coincides w/ the usps or swap 20 messages about what they should do or where is it.

i also don't charge for shipping, one less thing anyone can b!tch about.

"time" is the ultimate commodity.

Negative feedback for excessive shipping is uncalled for. Bidders know the shipping if they read the listing and nobody is forced to bid so negatives should not be allowed. Now poor packaging is a different story in my opinion.

Shipping can be strange sometimes.

When I was active I shipped internationally and didn't have any problems. But all the stuff that went international was cheap. I did have a buyer in Germany ask how much the partial Victrola would cost to ship. (About 50Lbs packed, actually an upright machine that someone cut the useful part off of. Ugly but worked great)

For small stuff like one card or some small bike parts I had a flat price that was just above postage, at the time around $2. International at cost. What got weird was that for a very light package Shipping to Canada and most of western Europe was actually around 1.50. So the international buyers got a pretty good deal.
I figured packing materials as an expense. I reused a lot, and got a huge batch of bubble mailers for CDs from a friend who bought a vanload of shipping supplies from someone who quit Ebay selling.

One of the parts I had a lot of I was selling for $15 a set. And sold around 10 sets a week. Ebay started pushing free shipping, so I figured I'd give it a try - they might have offered some deal like no insertion fee. So I made it $20 with no shipping. And sales nearly doubled :D

Since I did stamps and general antiques and odd stuff, I got some interesting requests. A guy from Japan who collected postage meter envelopes asked me to ship his stuff by surface mail which was being cancelled at the end of the month. The poor guy at the post office tried for about 15 minutes but the system wouldn't allow a letter to got surface. (They were ok with trying since I usually had everything entirely ready to go, and knew the rules about what I could send with what service)

Fun stuff, I kinda miss it. I don't miss the LCD buyers they really tried to attract. "Shipping is $2, international at cost"
"How much to ship to Kansas" :confused:

Steve B