Except: 2.00-3.00 shipping is NOT excessive for a single item. If the OP had listed the shipping at 10 bucks or something like that, then that would likely qualify as excessive. (anecdote: I once listed a chandelier, that I’d considered putting out for the trash, with 60 dollars shipping. It turned out to be a pretty hot auction. All the people who were interested questioned the shipping… but that was a genuine figure, confirmed with two different packaging shops, and in fact the final figure was more than the 60 dollars. Just goes to show that sometimes, large shipping amounts are appropriate).
The decent thing to do would be to cut the shipping as a nice gesture, given that you really will be saving some time etc. by packaging them together. If this were something breakable which required individual packaging or lots of padding, you wouldn’t be saving any time by combining, but with books? I’d do the nice thing even though you didn’t specifically state you’d combine shipping.
FWIW, the buyer should have contacted you before the listings closed and asked if you’d consider combining the shipping under the circumstances.
I honestly did not expect all these to go to one person, who BTW, pretty much sniped the auctions at the last hour…
Post bid, the person’s moral ground is shaky at best. Perhaps I will offer (I really want to use a gender specific pronoun here, like “him”) this person half off the total shipping for his orders, and give him a link to this thread where we all agonized over it. :rolleyes:
Crimeny, I have already wasted much more time here discussing it! But it is the principal of the thing. I am new to selling (not buying!) on ebay and want to do the right thing.
Well, does “Handling” include all the time I took to individually photograph the books, edit the images for correct size and orientation in gimp, and manually transcribe each and every Table of Contents for the listing? If you averaged it out, I probably spent half an hour on each of these things. And the guy now wants them for 99 cents plus my actual postage?
I guess the lesson is, don’t sell inexpensive things on ebay because it just isn’t worth the trouble. That would be a shame, because I have bought many items on ebay with similar prices and “Shipping and Handling” and am very glad to have them.
Again, what does this have to do with it? I did not offer to combine shipping, a specific ebay option. And you are forgetting handling. Whatever that means. As someone who has bought a boatload of stuff on ebay, I never questioned the “shipping and handling” charges, even when they were more than the postage shown on the package when I got the item.
No, ‘handling’ doesn’t include that. That should be included in the purchase price.
FWIW, I don’t sell anything on eBay for less than five dollars. With the insertion fees, final selling price fee, and PayPal fees, it’s just not worth it. I scrounge boxes out of storage (free) or charge the actual price for packaging I buy. I charge actual postage.
Given the fees, I think the best way to sell inexpensive items would be as a lot. Five 99¢ items for $5, plus postage.
You are charging for individual shipments and then not shipping them individually.
Charging individual shipping and combining it on your own is a great way to get a ton of negatives on your account, plus a Paypal claim from the buyer.
So when I am bidding on multiple items from a seller myself, I should just ASSUME that they will combine shipping, even though it is a specific criteria for an auction? Good to know! :rolleyes:
If they want to play it that way, why not? I will be happy to package them separately, as long as I get what I specified when I put the item up for auction.
If I were the buyer, I’d probably grumble about you not combining shipping but then suck it up. Combining shipping on small items like you’re selling is standard, but as you’ve said you didn’t promise to do so in your listing. But if a buyer didn’t combine shipping thus making me pay for individual shipments and then I didn’t actually get individual shipments, I’d probably file a complaint or leave negative feedback.
BTW, assuming you haven’t already told the seller otherwise, you could claim that you can’t combine shipping because each of the books has already been packed individually so you could get them out the door as soon as they sold.
The problem with items like this, is that, especially for books, individual buyers have different interests. I would not expect “Cat Facts” to have the same buyer as “How to win the Lottery”.
Actual Shipping cost: This is the actual cost paid to the carrier (i.e. postage) for shipping the item.
Handling Fee: Actual packaging material costs may be charged. A handling fee in addition to actual shipping cost may be charged if it is not excessive.
I listed a bunch of books. If people wanted to buy two books instead of one it was no problem to combine shipping, because I could usually put two books into one jiffy bag (which is what I had for sending out the books). But if someone wanted more than two, they wouldn’t fit in the packaging I had, it was a hassle to go find packaging that would fit, so I didn’t. Obviously it costs more to send more stuff.
But in all cases I corresponded with the buyer and explained my reasons for either doing it or not doing it, and it all worked out. Basically I wanted to get rid of books, though, and make a little money, or at least not lose any!
ETA: I did once list a bunch of books as a “lot”–they were all mysteries with “Shadow” in the title. I had some people who wanted only one of them, and asked if I would break them up. I did not. And I did not sell them, either.
Look, I have to put this to bed. And go to bed. How does this sound? Offer the buyer the books for 1/2 the total shipping charges, and if they don’t like that, they can cancel the purchase with no negative feedback. How much more can I do? Obviously, I am not retiring on this crap, so why worry? Like I said upthread, this is my New England Stepmother who hates waste doing this. I should have just trashed the lot.
You are posting repeatedly on a message board trying to find a way to stuff a bunch of envelopes, as opposed to taking a shoebox to the post office.
The reasons you dont want to combine shipping are:
1: It’s easier for you to ship multiple small items than one large.
2: It costs much more to ship a single larger item than multiple smalls.
3: You want to collect a much larger set of shipping fees.
The first 2 reasons above are clearly not true, and I can’t think of any other reasons.
“Making up for your work in selling” is not something that should be included in shipping and handling; those costs are not part of delivering the item to the buyer.
Even though you don’t have any duty to combine the shipping, I have to agree with some of the others that you’re just tacking on extra profit that should have been included in the sale price.
So many posts to argue your case? The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
