Ebay sellers - high shipping cost even after eBay took part of pie?

[asphaltman]

I browsed through an auction listing tonight that had a buy it now on eBay and thought about pulling the trigger. It's a $70 buy it now - and while I usually don't even pay much attention I luckily caught the shipping price. $45.50 for priority shipping in the U.S. Am I missing something? Can a seller actually profit off the shipping like that? (I thought ebay basically was taking such a percentage of shipping that you have a problem making anything off of it to begin with). There may be a good reason for this i'm missing - but would sure advice folks to make sure to look at shipping costs before pulling the trigger...I'll definitely start being more aware.

***Didn't want to provide a link as the seller has a few live auctions up. But looking through most all the auctions are $40-50 shipping.

[buymycards]

Wow, for $45.50 you could ship a live donkey to Afghanistan!

I wonder if it is a typo. Probably meant $5.50. The $ sign is on the 4 key so he probably made a mistake. Once you set it in your auctions it stays that way for future auctions unless you manually change it.

Rick

[ktimm]

Without knowing what item your talking about I would say he really wants more money for his item. At a quick glance you might think your getting a good deal and that's generally what a seller wants. Instead of asking an obviously higher buy it now price he charges higher shipping prices.

[thecatspajamas]

I'm assuming this was for a card or something light that the usual shipping cost wouldn't approach that?

If so, I can think of a couple of reasons, but not any good ones.

1) They're hoping that someone would be just a little quicker on the trigger than you were and go ahead and click BIN before looking at the shipping price. They also aren't concerned about repeat customers, and are looking to get their maximum return on the single transaction they will have with you before you discover the inflated shipping price.

2) They take consignments and pay their consignors based on the selling price alone. In this case, the item price itself might actually be a really good deal, and with the shipping factored in may still be a decent price, so you go ahead and buy. Since the consignor's payout is based on the selling price alone, they get less, but the seller makes his money on the shipping. In this case, they aren't concerned about repeat consignors.

So there's a couple of possible scenarios, but to answer your original question, I've never heard a GOOD reason for grossly overinflated shipping costs.

[pepis]

I browsed through an auction listing tonight that had a buy it now on eBay and thought about pulling the trigger. It's a $70 buy it now - and while I usually don't even pay much attention I luckily caught the shipping price. $45.50 for priority shipping in the U.S. Am I missing something? Can a seller actually profit off the shipping like that? (I thought ebay basically was taking such a percentage of shipping that you have a problem making anything off of it to begin with). There may be a good reason for this i'm missing - but would sure advice folks to make sure to look at shipping costs before pulling the trigger...I'll definitely start being more aware.

***Didn't want to provide a link as the seller has a few live auctions up. But looking through most all the auctions are $40-50 shipping.
Depends on the item, for example it cost me $39 to ship a motorcycle
helmet priority mail and only $16 for similar item parcel post.

[brookdodger55]

Wow, for $45.50 you could ship a live donkey to Afghanistan!

I wonder if it is a typo. Probably meant $5.50. The $ sign is on the 4 key so he probably made a mistake. Once you set it in your auctions it stays that way for future auctions unless you manually change it.

Rick

That's a great deal I can ship my jackass sister-in-law there. I would pay triple for a one way trip to the tribal region.
Mike

[asphaltman]

These were specifically for cards - I was looking at a Joss T206, he has others. He has buy it nows as well as bids which it doesn't seem like most have hit his reserve yet. But surprisingly they are getting some pretty decent bidding action early on, just wondering how many of those bidders noticed the shipping cost.

[JasonD08]

Before you crucify the seller why not send him a message and ask?

Jason

[asphaltman]

What do you want to ask? He specified his shipping, it's not a mistake...all of his items are $40+ and they aren't all the same amount...so it wasn't a typo. I chose not to bid. I wasn't sure if there was some benefit to him doing this where he would make a few more dollars that ebay wouldn't collect, but figured I'd point it out to others to pay attention to shipping costs.

[bbsports]

Maybe e-bay is not following their policies anymore. A few years ago, there was a clause in their rules not to overcharge on shipping & insurance costs. If caught, e-bay has the right to remove the sellers items & the buyer would be credited back his listing fees. However, in the past I know may buyers e-mailed & called e-bay on these complaints & e-bay did nothing about it.

[thecatspajamas]

Maybe e-bay is not following their policies anymore. A few years ago, there was a clause in their rules not to overcharge on shipping & insurance costs. If caught, e-bay has the right to remove the sellers items & the buyer would be credited back his listing fees. However, in the past I know may buyers e-mailed & called e-bay on these complaints & e-bay did nothing about it.

What little enforcement they did on that pretty much went out the window when they started charging the same fees on shipping as they do on the item price itself. Before they changed, sellers would use high shipping / low item prices to try and skirt paying fees, so eBay had some incentive to put a stop to such things. Now that they just charge a fee on everything, the monetary incentive to enforce isn't there.

[tschock]

What do you want to ask? He specified his shipping, it's not a mistake...all of his items are $40+ and they aren't all the same amount...so it wasn't a typo.

Again, as someone else said, I would ask. It very well could be a typo, and even more so possible if he is selling similar items. His original "template" could have been a typo and just got carried over to subsequent listings. It's happened to me (but not with stratospheric shipping though). Personally, I don't think it's a typo but trying to give benefit of the doubt. :)

My bigger concern/question is, for a card, how did he get a way with this through ebay's policies? That would be my bigger question/concern.

[tschock]

What little enforcement they did on that pretty much went out the window when they started charging the same fees on shipping as they do on the item price itself. Before they changed, sellers would use high shipping / low item prices to try and skirt paying fees, so eBay had some incentive to put a stop to such things. Now that they just charge a fee on everything, the monetary incentive to enforce isn't there.

Lance,

There still is some form of automated enforcement in place. I know that not too long ago I was automagically denied a listing because of the shipping cost I had put it place. It was an over sized paper item that I was NOT about to fold and put the details regarding the shipping cost and why I was doing this in the details (mailing flat in a large, reinforced, cardboard flat). I couldn't get around ebay's automatic rejection from this so I just upped the initial bid with free shipping.

But I totally understand and agree with what you are saying regarding ebay's reason and relaxation of any enforcement on this. Yet if you go through their shipping process for paying for shipping they still take out their % on this even though they control it???

[ctownboy]

IMHO, eBay is a joke.

First, when a seller was charging too much for postage, eBay said for buyers to just leave a Negative in the seller's Feed back.

Next, eBay changed the rules and added the five star system specifically for problems with postage. SO if a buyer had a problem with the postage they could leave positive Feed Back but ding the seller on the five star system.

Next, eBay said screw it and just started charging fees on the postage.

To me, there had to be some law/s that eBay is breaking by doing this. Also, eBay gets an automatic fee increase every year when the USPS raises their rates. This is wrong and there has to be something that can be done about it.

David

[JasonD08]

It is pretty simple. If you do not like the sellers terms......then just move on. I am not defending someone with outrageous shipping, but just saying. Why frustrate yourself over it. It is not like he is doing anything illegal. Just my 2 cents.

Jason

[D. Bergin]

What little enforcement they did on that pretty much went out the window when they started charging the same fees on shipping as they do on the item price itself. Before they changed, sellers would use high shipping / low item prices to try and skirt paying fees, so eBay had some incentive to put a stop to such things. Now that they just charge a fee on everything, the monetary incentive to enforce isn't there.


It's funny, Ebay's fees on Shipping are actually a higher % for many sellers then it is for the actual item they are selling, add to that Paypal also gets a piece of shipping which most people take for granted. Makes it hard to break even on S&H costs without feeling like you're gouging people.

Ebay claimed they did this to keep shipping prices down. All it did was make people up their BIN prices on Free Shipping items, and charge more for S&H in auctions so they could recoup the difference.

There really is no reason to charge $40 shipping on a card unless it's super expensive and it's going towards insurance. As a seller you may end up paying more in fees then you would with a higher price and lower shipping cost.

Either it's a typo, or they're trying to get unsuspecting people to pull the trigger on a lower priced item. Not many people left who aren't savvy enough to at least check the shipping cost before they pull the trigger on an item nowadays.

[cb7171]

Have no idea about the specific item but will tell you that Ebay has recently made some very confusing changes regarding listing of items and the associated shipping policies (they converted all existing listings into very confusing templates). Unfortunately they strive to fix things that are not broken and subsequently causing issues with listings. I can only imagine that attempting to create a new template (which I have not done yet) is probably equally as confusing/frustrating.

[ibuysportsephemera]

It is pretty simple. If you do not like the sellers terms......then just move on. I am not defending someone with outrageous shipping, but just saying. Why frustrate yourself over it. It is not like he is doing anything illegal. Just my 2 cents.

Jason

+1

[ibuysportsephemera]

In the link below is an article about eBay sellers being suspended for having low DSR scores. Charge excessive S&H and for sure you will get dinged on your DSR's and it could lead to being kicked off eBay.

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y13/m11/i06/s01


Jeff

[steve B]

When I was selling regularly I had a few bike parts that sold well and I had a lot of them. Not expensive, something like $15 plus $2 shipping. I've always done a set price in the US and international at cost.

That made it odd, because I was sending them to Canada and I think a couple other countries for less than $2.

When Ebay changed to pushing free shipping with DSRs, I did a small experiment. I listed some at $20 with free shipping anywhere. That Just barely covered a couple countries, but none I'd ever actually sold to. It also gave me a bit more profit. I figured sales would be less. Wrong:D I sold about 3x as many, even with the old $15 listing still up.

So I switched everything to free shipping and added a little to the price.
That actually worked too.

Steve B