OT: Excessive shipping - does ebay care?

[D. Bergin]

Ebay has their head up their ass with their priorities. Driving off all the good sellers and then encouraging fly by nighters to list as much stuff with their cell phones, mobile apps and 3 word descriptions as they can get away with.

Out of 2 of the last 3 items I won on Ebay.

I didn't get gouged on shipping charges but one of the lots (a group of about 30-35 1940s era boxing programs, tickets and credentials) was delivered as "Contents missing from package" by the Post Office. Not the fault of the Post Office. They were stuffed into a plain white 10x12 envelope, no tape reinforcement, just licked closed to the adhesive, shipped media mail and a half-assed taped copy paper shipping label that was flapping in the breeze. Only thing left in the package was a half a piece of backing board.

Sure I got a refund, but a collection that survived together for about 75+ years now sits destroyed at the bottom of a USPS sort table somewhere between California and Connecticut.

2nd was a large poster, shipped in a gift wrapping tube. Not a shipping tube.........a gift wrap tube. That was a fun adventure to get out of the package........and then when finally I pull it out, I find it's a horrible large photo reprint with a guage in it. My fault I guess. When I went back to look at the description the word "Reproduction" was hidden in the "Item Specifics". Unfortunately no clue to this in the massive 5 word description or the blurry camera phone photo they provided in the listing. No worries I guess, it was cheap and I can just pin it up in my attic space............but I didn't get gouged on shipping I guess.

This seems to be the norm lately.

I would gladly take a little gouging if these people could just get their stuff to me safely. This is coming from somebody who sells a LOT more on Ebay then he actually buys on Ebay.

Ebay has managed to piss off both good buyers AND good sellers with their wonderful business strategies.

[unamuzd1]

Excessive shipping? Try clicking the "You won!" button in an email and getting this gem...



Okay, so it was a typo when the seller went to combine shipping, and it got fixed within 2 minutes of me sending message to let the seller know... but I about keeled over when I saw my total!

[Jewish-collector]

My apologies for the stupid question, but why can't sellers just always do free shipping and just add their shipping fee to the starting price or BIN price ?

[savedfrommyspokes]

Originally Posted by Jewish-collector

My apologies for the stupid question, but why can't sellers just always do free shipping and just add their shipping fee to the starting price or BIN price ?

If you are looking to buy just a single card from a seller at a time, than free s/h is a great idea.

However, as a collector, I try to buy as many cards from one seller at a time in order to minimize my s/h costs. So I look to sellers who charge a set fee (say $3) to ship no matter how many cards are purchased or free s/h once a quantity/$ threshold is achieved. I typically do not buy multiple cards from the free s/h sellers as I do not enjoy paying the embedded s/h cost on each item.

As an example, I find a free s/h seller offering 20 cards I am considering for a set I am building. Typically $1 cards, the free s/h seller offers them for $2 each in order to cover their s/h. My total (with free s/h) for these 20 cards is $40. I find another seller with the same 20 cards being offered. However, this seller offers a $3 s/h cap and sells the cards for $1 each. My total with this seller is $23.

I am surprised when sellers who offer lower priced cards (commons) using the free s/h format. It works great for single card purchases, but what seller prefers to sell just one card at a time when they could be selling 15-20 at one time.


In regards to excessive s/h charged by sellers, ebay is not going to police their own rule about excessive s/h as they do not pay out ebay bucks on s/h, the ebay bucks are earned only on the cost of the item itself. You would think ebay would be encouraging sellers to not offer free s/h as they end up paying out more in rewards to the buyers when free s/h is used. In addition, TRS still pay 9% on the s/h charges and do not receive their 20% FVF discount on s/h FVFs. So it is certainly to eBay's benefits to allow higher s/h based on the rewards that do not have to be paid and the discounts on fees that do not have to be offered.

[bbcardzman]

Bottom Line: EBay cares only about $ and not about the sellers who make it for them.

[jcc6252]

VCP does not handle shipping variances correctly. Depending on the amount, excessive shipping charges can greatly skew the VCP price of a card. For example, if a $20 card sells for $15, plus $5 shipping, VCP records it as a $15 sale. If it sells for $20, with free shipping, the sales price now becomes $20. Basically, VCP is flawed, and should be using the grand total.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by jcc6252

VCP does not handle shipping variances correctly. Depending on the amount, excessive shipping charges can greatly skew the VCP price of a card. For example, if a $20 card sells for $15, plus $5 shipping, VCP records it as a $15 sale. If it sells for $20, with free shipping, the sales price now becomes $20. Basically, VCP is flawed, and should be using the grand total.

Then you would have all the instances where a single buyer buys a bunch of cards from the same seller at once in order to combine shipping. (ex. they buy 5 $15 cards from the same buyer, and is charged $5-$7 for the same shipment).

Are you going to tack on the initial $5.00 charge to each card? I don't think VCP has a magical software tool to access the actual charged invoices of every individual purchase. Best to keep it as simple as possible. Only thing I can think to do would be to automatically knock a couple bucks off the price of FREE SHIPPING sales, to bring things a bit more in line.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Jewish-collector

My apologies for the stupid question, but why can't sellers just always do free shipping and just add their shipping fee to the starting price or BIN price ?

It's fine with BIN prices. If you are running true auctions it's a lot trickier.