The Energon Pub

Okay, here's another eBay story...

I just bough a Leader-Class Movie Megatron on eBay some time ago. I got really lucky and won an auction by bidding only 27$ US! I was so excited! Shipping came up to 30$, which I thought was a little excessive, I even emailed the seller and asked her if the shipping cost could be brought down, and she said it was as low as it could go. I didn'T mind since, all-in-all, I was still saving a bundle since the figure sells in Canada for about 80$ (which sucks now that our Canadian dollar is almost 1:1 with the US$).

I got the package this morning, and the shipping sticker said 13.99$. Half of what I actually paid.

I'm so fed up of people overcharging S&H, but I understand it's a reality- but this is just ridiculous - it's highway robbery. what should I do?

Skowl wrote:Okay, here's another eBay story...

I just bough a Leader-Class Movie Megatron on eBay some time ago. I got really lucky and won an auction by bidding only 27$ US! I was so excited! Shipping came up to 30$, which I thought was a little excessive, I even emailed the seller and asked her if the shipping cost could be brought down, and she said it was as low as it could go. I didn'T mind since, all-in-all, I was still saving a bundle since the figure sells in Canada for about 80$ (which sucks now that our Canadian dollar is almost 1:1 with the US$).

I got the package this morning, and the shipping sticker said 13.99$. Half of what I actually paid.

I'm so fed up of people overcharging S&H, but I understand it's a reality- but this is just ridiculous - it's highway robbery. what should I do?

Yeah I don't like it when people rip you off for shipping which is why I always check the shipping cost as well on any auction that I bid on.

The worst offenders for that are the south east asians(re Hong Kong etc.) where the seller will post a buy now auction for something with an extremely low buy price, but ask for shipping that far exceeds the cost of theproduct they're selling(eg $70 shipping on leader megs with a buy now price of $2)

Skowl wrote:I'm so fed up of people overcharging S&H, but I understand it's a reality- but this is just ridiculous - it's highway robbery. what should I do?

Have you left feedback yet?

Contact the seller and explain everything. I paid $5 for shipping a figure, and ti ended up coming in a letter-sized envelope with the price of shipping on it, which was about $1-something. I e-mailed and explained everything and got a partial refund.

Also keep in mind that some sellers charge things like gas money and such for getting the thing out. There's also the price for the packaging itself, not just the shipping.

I think eBay also has a policy against overcharging. You can look into that.

It's always a good idea to ask the seller for a shipping charge if the auction doesn't state it. And ask through eBay itself (don't e-mail from your address) because the message will show up in your eBay inbox. That way, if the shipping price goes up, you can say, "Uh-uh, we agreed on such-and-such amount" (unless, of course, there's a reasonable explanation). If the person still doesn't charge the agreed upon shipping, you can get eBay involved using that message you have in your eBay inbox as proof of agreement... if it's still worth the trouble. eBay will back you up on that.

And, after all that, there's the threat of negative feedback.

I remember there used to be a lot of e-bay auctions where the item would be sold at a ridiculously good price but then you'd see the shipping was even more than the product. This ended up being claimed as a type of fraud and eBay made it a point that all shipping prices now have to be listed alongside the price in all listings.

I can't really say I've ever been over-charged on shipping just because I've never bought anything on ebay that I felt cost too much to ship. For me, I basically set a total price that I am willing to pay, subtract shipping from that, and use the remainder as my max bid.

It's always a good idea to know shipping costs of an item before placing a bid.

You may want to leave negative feedback if the seller doesn't give you a partial refund, but you are probably aware that if the seller hasn't already left you feedback, she could leave also leave you negative feedback in return.



One posibility of why the seller quoted such a high shipping price is that she might not have sold many items (if any at all) to another country, and therefore may believe that shipping costs may be high.

I know that one time I sold something to someone in Ireland, and grossly understated the shipping cost by $15. However, because I agreed to a certain amount of shipping cost with the buyer beforehand, I honored the agreement and ate up the remaining $15 shipping cost.

Of course, shipping to Canada and shipping to Ireland are two different things, but you get my point. I don't usually ship internationally, but if I did, I would probably state a high shipping price upfront then refund the difference if the actually shipping (including cost of packing materials) was lower.

Baseball Tonight wrote:It's always a good idea to know shipping costs of an item before placing a bid.

You may want to leave negative feedback if the seller doesn't give you a partial refund, but you are probably aware that if the seller hasn't already left you feedback, she could leave also leave you negative feedback in return.



One posibility of why the seller quoted such a high shipping price is that she might not have sold many items (if any at all) to another country, and therefore may believe that shipping costs may be high.

I know that one time I sold something to someone in Ireland, and grossly understated the shipping cost by $15. However, because I agreed to a certain amount of shipping cost with the buyer beforehand, I honored the agreement and ate up the remaining $15 shipping cost.

Of course, shipping to Canada and shipping to Ireland are two different things, but you get my point. I don't usually ship internationally, but if I did, I would probably state a high shipping price upfront then refund the difference if the actually shipping (including cost of packing materials) was lower.

Yeah transatlantic shipping can be a killer . The most blatent over charging i've seen by any online website has to be rightstuf though their international shipping is $18 for 1 dvd and an additional $3 thereafter. I still use their site as some of their offers are too good too not get anything, every so often they have a 25 dvd for $100 offer, even with the extortionate shipping still works out about $500 less than retail.

sniper_samurai wrote:Yeah transatlantic shipping can be a killer . The most blatent over charging i've seen by any online website has to be rightstuf though their international shipping is $18 for 1 dvd and an additional $3 thereafter. I still use their site as some of their offers are too good too not get anything, every so often they have a 25 dvd for $100 offer, even with the extortionate shipping still works out about $500 less than retail.

Yeah, over here in the States, we've got stuff from "Buy 3 - Get Free Shipping" to "Spend $100 - Get Free Shpping"

I guess I take this stuff for granted.

Have you tried animecornerstore.com or animenation.com?

The auction DID say 30$ for shipping to Canada - but that still doesn't make it right.

I knew it was 30$ to shipped, and that's what I paid, except as it turns out, it only cost her 13.99$ to mail the damn thing. It's still being dishonest.

Baseball Tonight wrote:

sniper_samurai wrote:Yeah transatlantic shipping can be a killer . The most blatent over charging i've seen by any online website has to be rightstuf though their international shipping is $18 for 1 dvd and an additional $3 thereafter. I still use their site as some of their offers are too good too not get anything, every so often they have a 25 dvd for $100 offer, even with the extortionate shipping still works out about $500 less than retail.

Yeah, over here in the States, we've got stuff from "Buy 3 - Get Free Shipping" to "Spend $100 - Get Free Shpping"

I guess I take this stuff for granted.

Have you tried animecornerstore.com or animenation.com?

I usually use dvdboxoffice or deepdiscount for my R1 dvds as dvdboxoffice do free international shipping and deepdiscount is still only $3-4 a disc for shipping. I only buy off rightstuf if the cost of the shipping is far less than the savings like on their recent 10 for $50, 25 for $100 deals.

I agree with everyone else here contact the seller and ask for a partial refund. They probably added some for the commute to the post office, packaging supplies ect. I think if a seller is going to add extra to the shipping cost for that they should mention it in the item description.

things from ebay are pretty cheap to post to autralia, i recently bought a ps2 game from the uk and it cost about AUS$6.00 which is pretty cheap.

Skowl wrote:The auction DID say 30$ for shipping to Canada - but that still doesn't make it right.

I knew it was 30$ to shipped, and that's what I paid, except as it turns out, it only cost her 13.99$ to mail the damn thing. It's still being dishonest.

It's fee dodging.

E-Bay makes it's money by charging commission based on the selling price.

So a seller can keep their E-Bay fees down by offering low B.I.N's and then make their profit in shipping, plus the "handling fee" (yes e-bay seller it's so hard for you to go down the post office each day, I truly feel your pain, NOT)

I was looking up Trumpets (as I play one) the other day, found a brand new Trumpet in the US for $2US. Postage to Australia? $150US.

Now Trumpets aren't big, though fragile, but even with insurance and air freight I seriously doubt it would cost $150US to send. (Would our resident bending FedEx worker care to clarify that?)

Personally when I sell, I charge for a spiffy new box (rarely recycle, I believe in safe packaging) and a bit of bubble wrap. Heck, I don't even like to charge for the bubble wrap. And I would feel exceptionally guilty about charging a "handling fee" considering the post office is a minute's walk from work.

But yeah, always try to get postage costs, and I think most postal services now have calculators on their websites so just ask the seller questions like weight and where it's coming from and get an estimate yourself.

You just paid her eBay sellers fees with that shipping cost. Many people who are dishonest on eBay jack up the shipping cost so they won't have to use some of the money they got from the auction to pay their fees. And after that is done she probably also got an extra $10 left over after it was all shipped and paid for. It's a scam to be sure, but if she stated the amount before hand and you paid it, theres really nothing you can do. For future reference and as a comparison I'll give you something to base what actual cost would be. I shipped a complete Xbox 360 through normal parcel post and it cost me $14. Priority was $20. That's 10 pounds of electronics and it only cost $14. Granted you'll have to adjust it because it's going to another country but still a good standard to go off of.

Just my personal policy, but I usually use the FedEx shipping calculator (since it's trackable and closer to my house than the post office) and add $2 for packaging when I sell on E-Bay. People who overcharge for shipping really annoy me.