Whatever I charge is reasonable, whatever anyone else charges is excessive...
Seriously though, I know people aren't interested in looking at things through the auction company's perspective but let me just throw out a scenario.
My company specializes in doing, in addition to the great items that we all hope to get, lower value lots to maximize the return for the seller as opposed to doing a bunch of bulk lots which will then get broken up by the buyer to make a profit that should be going to my consignor.
We start ALL our items between $1 and $25 with no reserves. Every auction a ton of items go for under $10. My commission + Buyer's Premium on a lot like that would be $4. Shipping could easily be $7. Plus I have to pay someone to pull the item box it up print the packing slip and bring it to the post office. A single card is easy but on larger purchases it can take a half hour just to make the package. We charge actual postage (plus insurance on invoices over $200) plus $5 for materials and time. We lose money on shipping every auction. Hopefully by this Spring's Pre-War auction we will have private insurance so we don't have to buy additional postal insurance, and we are very creative in our attempts to keep the actual postal costs down as much as possible. Using Regional Rate boxes, going UPS on larger packages where the Postal rates get insane etc.
None of this even takes into account the time it takes me to generate all these invoices (what I am doing right now for last night's auction) which is usually between 4 and 8 hours of drudge work of weighing and figuring package size so we invoice accurately.
Are there companies out there that gouge? Absolutely. However, just assuming that everyone is profiting off of shipping isn't really accurate.
Just my 2 cents.
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03-02-2020, 07:12 AM
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