As another eBay seller, I sometimes charge extra for shipping. There are two reasons for this:
(1) The shipping box costs me money too, and that is rightly part of the shipping cost.
(2) The shipping charges vary across the country. So I take an average amount and charge it. If you live in the West, you’ll think you got a break on the shipping. If you live in the East, you might feel ripped off a bit. But short of calculating the shipping on every item for all possible locations (which I don’t have the time to do) this is the best system for me.
I see CDRS being listed and going for beaucoup bucks all the time on ebay. I usually e-mail the seller after the auction and ask if I can get a “copy” of it. If they doesn’t work, I e-mail the buyer.
I’m amazed at how cheap some people will sell these things. Probably so I won’t report them to ebay.
It wasn’t a “computer glitch” - he posted the same auction twice by accident. A computer didn’t do that.
And, again, I said as much in my feedback.
OK, once again, please - that was over a year ago, and it was when I first started on eBay and didn’t understand the whole “handling charge” thing as it exists on eBay.
And, again, I didn’t leave negative feedback, I left neutral* feedback, with an honest comment that neither condemned nor praised the seller, but told exactly what happened in a fair and honest way.
I “got” it on your first post. I just happen to disagree with your assessment of the situation. If you think that “neutral” feedback is benign, yet everyone else thinks it is damaging to one’s feedback profile, it’s still going to be seen as a ding on the guy’s record. When people look at the feedback, they are not reading your mind, and saying “Oh, well Esprix doesn’t look at neutrals the way the rest of us do, so I’m going to ignore this one”. And I would think that due to your past mistakes with feedback, you would be a little more willing to consider the possibility that you overreacted, but I guess that’s not the case.
Again, if the guy made good on his mistake, I don’t see the point of tarnishing his record. In spite of our best efforts, we all make mistakes. If you thought the guy was a liar and a cheat, that would be another story; but you didn’t say that. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to justify his retaliatory feedback - that kind of behavior is indeed contemptible. I’m just saying that, personally, I would not have given neutral feedback in light of the fact that the seller sincerely tried to make good on the situation.
Well certainly now that I understand that one neutral feedback out of 207 (now more than that) positive ones would get someone’s knickers in such a bunch, I’ll be a little more cautious about placing them in the future. But, given that I really feel every auction should have feedback given about it by both parties, and given that I really felt I couldn’t give positive feedback, I really thought it was the best solution. Obviously you disagree - so be it.
If you can’t give neutral feedback for a less than satisfactory buying experience, what good is the damn feedback system anyway? He’s not perfect, you’re not perfect, I’m not perfect, why should any of us be expected to BE perfect, or get pissed when it is revealed to the world that we’re less than divine? The seller screwed up, period, he is NOT perfect, and doesn’t deserve to have a perfect record.
Having a perfect record implies that every single one of your auctions went off without any significant problems. Holding an auction for something you don’t have is a significant problem, don’t you agree?
No, I don’t agree. I think the problem was mitigated by the fact that the seller was more than willing to try to make good on the situation. Mistakes happen. It’s how a person deals with the mistake that matters. I don’t consider omnipotence to be a requirement for me to do business with someone.
If I choose to pay myself $10/hr for my ebay work, and figure 1 auction represents 30 min of work for me (scanning, posting, packing, driving to post office) I charge $5 + shipping/packaging for S&H.
Once I had 12 auctions going at once, all closing within hours of each other. Promptly shipping all that stuff was a bit of a chore so I don’t feel bad about charging for my time.
The only way I turn a profit is if there are multiple bids for the item.
This is really strange - here I am reading a pit thread about eBay and what to I get in my email? The following (from my girlfriend):
A woman won a pair of boots from me on Ebay. She paid this morning by paypal, and wanted to know if she would receive them by tomorrow! She’s in NY, and I told her that the only way she would receive them by tomorrow was if she paid a LOT more for shipping. She said ok, but wanted them shipped today. So, in other words, she bought last night, paid this morning, and wants them by tomorrow! Ha!
He didn’t make good on anything! Making good would have resulted in Esprix getting the product he paid for. The seller had an auction for an item, Esprix won the auction, and the guy refused to give Esprix the item, claiming that it was a mistake. Note that we have absolutely no verification that it was, in fact, a mistake. For all we know, he sold it to a neighbor, or decided to keep it. All this seller did was give back Esprix’s money, which he had no right to in the first place. I hardly think he deserves some sort of medal.
If you go to a store, and buy a product, only to find that it is out of stock, getting your money back is standard procedure, it does not indicate some sort of generosity on the store’s part. Failing to give Esprix his money back would have been a crime. All the seller did was avoid committing that crime.
"To his credit, he offered to either refund my money or give me another figure and throw in another one free"
He offered a replacement item AND an additional free item. It wasn’t what Esprix happened to want, but he did offer. If a store said they had Mickey Mouse figurines in stock, and it turned out they were out of them, but they offered me 2 Donald Ducks for the price of one Mickey Mouse, I would consider it generous, and certainly not merely necessary to “avoid committing a crime.”
And I didn’t say the guy deserves a medal. But neither do I think that he is some sort of hardened criminal who makes a tidy profit by deliberately double-posting fake auctions and then refunding people’s money after they pay. Do the math, for crying out loud; He lost money since he had to pay the listing fee. I really doubt he did it on purpose.
