"excessive" shipping fees

[Archive]

Posted By: warshawlaw 

I recently ran across a seller I've done a lot of business with over the years who charged $5 to ship a single $5 card. When I inquired as to the reason, he told me that he prominently listed the shipping cost in the auction listing on the assumption that the buyers would bid down accordingly and he would therefore pocket more money by cutting ebay out of the loop on the $5. Since I always treat the shipping costs as the equivalent of auction house "vig", this sounds pretty smart to me, especially when multiplied by a few hundred items a month. Your reactions?

[Archive]

Posted By: Hankron

Devising a system to have bidders lower their bids sounds like a pretty dense idea. It's may just be me, but I want my bidders to raise their bids not lower then.

[Archive]

Posted By: MW

In my opinion, it's unreasonable for a seller not to adjust shipping prices for lower valued items. Dense. Stupid. Call it what you want. It's just plain bad business.

[Archive]

Posted By: Hankron

I should point out that, when I bid I take into consideration the stated shipping cost. Also, I have nothing against healthy but reasonable (repeat, reasonable) shipping charges. I generally buy physically larger items that don't cost me $2 or $3, and I don't mind paying the cost to have it well packaged.

[Archive]

Posted By: julie

Why waste time comparing thieves?

[Archive]

Posted By: warshawlaw

The seller WANTS a low bid to dodge the ebay final value fees while still getting his price. If I pay $10 for a card and I am happy with the overall price, the seller puts the card into a mailer and puts on $0.60 postage (which is exactly what happened), then he keeps about $4 of postage clear of ebay final value fees. While this is only about $0.22 saved, think of this multiplied over hundreds of sales, many at higher prices. It is adding over 2.5% to seller's profit on each item.

BTW, I'm not saying it is honest, only clever.