Wasn’t sure where to put this; apologies if it’s in the wrong forum.
I recently bought an item on eBay for which the shipping charge seemed kind of high. After I recieved the item, I looked up what the charge should have been, and it looked like I had been charged approximately double. I emailed the seller, who said he lived in a small town and had to take the item 30 miles to a UPS Store which charges 100% OVER the standard rate.
My question: Does this sound feasible, or does it sound like a made-up excuse? Will UPS not do pick-ups in remote areas? Is it common for shipping outlets to charge double?
It depends. Does the seller sell a lot of items? If so he’s using S&H as a fee. If not, if he’s only sold one or two things (or some other low number) he is probably telling the truth.
I just got done fishing in eBay. There was a guy selling 1¢ BIN(Buy It Now) items. BUT his S&H was $15.00.
eBay does not tolerate this and calls it fee avoidence. If you see an auction like that report it to eBay. They will pull the plug fast.
For future reference NEVER, EVER bid on any auction that doesn’t have an exact price for shipping and handling. Some seller view their time as extremely valuable. In one newsgroup the seller said if he had to hire someone he’d have to pay $9.00 an hour. Obviously he is not being honest with himself or anyone else.
If you bid on the item and the S&H was what you agreed to pay for, just chalk it up to lesson learned.
One other BIG SCAM sellers do on eBay is charge for insurance. They say “Insurance 1.50” (for example).
But they aren’t paying for postal insurance, the are self insuring themselves. So always ask is the money for POSTAL INSURANCE (Or fedex insurance etc) OR for self insurance.
Did you know what the shipping cost was before you bid? I look closely at S&H before I did, if it seems too high I go to another auction selling the same thing. If it isn’t listed I email the seller with my zip code and get a price before I bid. Once you bid, you are bound to the seller’s terms, and many do tack on a handling fee.
Going to a UPS store is more expensive than shipping directly through UPS. Pack and Mail around here charges an extra fee on top of the actual UPS charge. Reasons why the seller might have had to use the UPS store - maybe he had to work and wouldn’t be available for UPS pickup, or maybe he had to buy the packing materials, and the UPS store was convenient. So yes, I would say that reason is feasible.
I have posted this before and probably will again. At least 4 or 5 times a year someone that buys something from me on eBay will complain about the shipping and handling charge even though I put the full price in the ad.
“You charge me $5 and the envelope or box is stamped $3.20” or something along those lines.
Who do you think paid for the envelope or box? Who paid for the bubble wrap or peanuts? Who paid for the gas to take the item to be sent to you? You did. That is all part of the handling in ‘shipping and handling’. Most eBay sellers have to buy their supplies. If you try to roll these costs into the price of the item you are selling you have to start with a higher reserve and this will drive away potential bidders. I feel that when a buyer completes the deal, whether through Paypal (which I pay for from any profits) or they send me a money order, they are fully aware of the shipping and handling charges and have absoluted no right to bitch or complain about how much I charge. If you don’t like how much I charge, don’t
bid on the item.
Climbs down from soapbox.
Selling, I include a either a link to the shipping fee finder (based on Zip) or I state a preset fee for shipping and handling. Again, note the term “Handling.” If I allow overseas biding is the only non preset S&H fee. But, I have the item packed and weighed already, so I can quickly e-mail any askers. The overseas buyers I’ve dealt with seem okay with this, but there is probably a better way that I just haven’t found yet.
Buying, I tend to avoid bidding to anyone who isn’t up front (one way or the other) about the S&H fees.
So, to reflog the dead horse once more, S&H, not just shipping.
I buy and sell (mostly sell) on Ebay quite a bit and I almost always quote a fixed price cost to ship. This has bitten me in the rear a time or two with California and western US addresses.
If you are buying and the postage cost is less than the quoted ship price it’s irrelevant. As others have indicated the cost to ship (if fixed) if always there for you to decide if it’s feasible or not. I never buy anything with a “shipping to be calculated” taq unless it’s stated that they’re shipping at standard UPS/USPS rates plus a fixed (and stated) handling charge so I will know what the cost is.
Thanks for the replies so far. With the exception of Markxxx, nobody has hit the mark yet, though. Maybe I should clarify; I’m not looking for any general “do’s and dont’s” advice regarding eBay. I always look at the shipping cost before I bid; this person only said “buyer to pay shipping cost”. There was no mention of handling in the description. Normally, I would email to get a shipping estimate, but I happened to see this one with only a short amount of time left, so I took a chance and bid on it. It was my decision, and I’m really not interested in anyone second-guessing it. That was the main reason I didn’t put this in Great Debates.
I am not asking for anyone’s opinion as to whether I should pay the shipping; I already did. Since the seller has told me why the shipping charge was high, and is NOT including any handling charge or other fee, but merely claiming that that WAS the actual cost for them, what I am asking is, do you think that sounds plausible, or do you think the person is lying? The seller has offered to refund half of the shipping cost, but if that’s truly coming out of his own pocket, then I don’t want to take it.
So again, my 2 questions are:
Will UPS pick-up in “country” areas?
Is it common for shipping stores to charge double the standard rate?
Sorry, *Boscibo , you did give an answer to my question. Since you started out saying the same thing as the other people, I guess I stopped reading before I got to the end. Thanks for the answer.
Actually, you asked THREE questions. Looks like most of us stuck with only the first one, though.
I’ve had small items shipped to me where the S&H total was double the shipping (like a book or video) but it rarely adds up to much over $5.00. I’ve never had it happen to me on large items (I’ve had over $100.00 shipping on some very large and heavy items). Typical? I really have no way of knowing that.
UPS generally will not pickup in rural areas unless there is already an established route. Sometimes large businesses are located in rural areas and UPS is already going there for daily pickups and deliverys and so they will swing by if it isn’t too far out of the way. Drive out to pick up one small package from some guy who doesn’t ship that often… no way.
It is if they are in rural areas and especially if they are transporting the packages themselves to the UPS hub, which may even be in another city.
Yes, most shipping places charge a premium to ship things. They also charge an astronomical fee for boxing and peanuts if you need those as well. The last UPS Store I was in wanted to charge me $12 to ship a DVD via USPS Priority Mail (I was hoping to save a trip to the post office). The reason I actually went there was to UPS some old RAM via UPS Ground, for which they wanted $9 - for a 3oz. package. I was lucky in that my buyer knew I had no UPS account and knew that I was paying the “off the street” price at the UPS Store - but he didn’t care. It HAD to be UPS - something about his work, I think.
I have been an active ebay seller for over 5 years now. I used to run in to this problem a lot, even while being completely honest with the buyers and sometimes taking a loss on shipping charges.
I would sell some item usually worth at least $30 (If it’s less than that ebay becomes more of a waste of time for me, I’m lazy and would just as soon throw it out) and charge about 8 dollars for shipping, I would get all kinds of people sending me angry emails saying things like I know that this is a small item and it cannot cost any more that 3 dollars to ship this.
Then I had to explain to people that the high price was for several reasons.
I can ship you package to you through USPS and pay 3 dollars, but if something happens to that package then I am required (or with paypal forcibly made to) refund full value amount of the item. So I send all of my packages through ups where I get $100 free insurance and a tracking number that holds up to paypal if the package is lost
People usually respond to this with “but you can insure through USPS”
They are correct, but I sent a package to Hawaii using parcel post paying extra to insure it. The buyer was unhappy with the amount of time it took for the package to get to him. He explained to me that it should get there from SC according to priority mail estimates in around 4 days. It ended up getting there in around 30 days, but in the meantime the buyer decided to revoke his money from paypal. I wake up one day to discover that they are taking $700 dollars from my bank account. I send countless emails to paypal explaining the situation and giving the insurance number that I was told could track the package to no avail.
They eventually ruled in his favor as I had no tracking number to prove my story. The package arrived one week later and after 3 days of him telling me he was not going to pay for it even if it did ever show up he eventually did give 700 dollars (not quite the amount that was removed from my account, said it wasn’t his fault that this happened and he wasn’t paying for it) to my stressed out, ready to strangle this Hawaiian, not wanting to ever go through that mess again ass.
Where I live the Mail boxes ETC stores are the only practical way to get something sent ups and they have a markup on ups shipping prices. As many previous posters have already pointed out there are other costs such as boxes and packing peanuts. I don’t think I have ever charged some one for the cost of the gas for me to drive it there though
I eventually got around the markup problem by opening my own ups account, if you tell them you run a small ebay business they will (or at least used to) let you open one for free.
Arghh!! I hate reliving any of the horrors that come with dealing with what happens when an ebay transaction goes wrong. I eventually just quit dealing with it after I ran out of stuff to sell and got tired of praying round the clock for two and a half weeks until the buyer sent me some positive feedback confirming his satisfaction.
Yeah. I worked for such a place for a few months, and we charged a rate that was about double what we paid. We got a volume discount on our rates, but what we charged was probably still at least 50+% more than if you’d taken the package directly to UPS.
I would agree with everyone else to watch the shipping costs, though. I’ve seen a number of sellers who are listing fees of, say, $15 to ship single DVDs. On small items, anything more than about $2-3 more than the actual postage is gouging.
