New Ebay Experience (At Least for Me)

[Archive]

Posted By: Laura

Here's the thing, different postal employees handle things differently.

You say the seller asked for $3.00 postage. Perhaps you mean he charged you $3.00 for shipping? There is a difference, shipping includes materials and possibly handling.

I ran into this problem when I switched to a different mailer last year. I started using a rigid cardboard mailer to send out things in toploaders, in an effort to reduce costs and improve over the bubble mailers I had been using.

My local PO guy, who is a great person, made a mistake about how much to charge. I went in with a number of cards all ready to go in the new mailer. He charged me 59 cents, despite me trying to tell him that I thought there should be a surcharge (any envelope that has a rigid item in it is subject to a surcharge, according to the USPS website.)

Out they went. Of the batch, one did arrive with postage due, the rest did not (how THAT works I have no idea.)

Happily, the buyer emailed me and was fine with it, and I sent her a small paypal payment to cover the charge (20 cents, gotta love that.)

Afterwards I went back to my local PO guy and talked to him about it, bringing with me a printout of the USPS website page. He then called a regional supervisor who confirmed what I had said, and what no one in that office (and presumably many other offices around the US) knew.

So bear with your seller, he may have been given faulty info by his local PO employee, and may not know enough to check the USPS website for things like rigid insertions, square envelopes and the like.

If I were you I'd email him and let him know you had postage due. Most likely he'll go out of his way to reimburse you. I presume you didn't leave feedback yet, right?

The postage system is a mess, and I can hardly wait for rates to go up again in May. Oh frabjous joy! I get to modify all 800+ items in my store... ((sigh))

Laura