And while you’re there picking through someone else’s junk, try to understand why a seller would rather make a buck instead of surrendering his wares to you and coughing up fees to ebay and PayPal, thus walking away with NOTHING for his time to offer that “just what I was looking for” item to a sniper who pounced on his auction at the last minute for .99¢ with “reasonable” shipping charges.

It’s a shopping site not a garage sale!

Oh, and here’s another bit of realism to all you “disgusted” wannae be snipers…..

The ‘WINNER’ of an Auction is actually the LOSER as he is the person who was willing to PAY the Most! If the price is .99¢ and the shipping is XXX$ and 1. You want it, 2. The TOTAL price is fair….. what’s the beef? At least you know some inexperienced flea market shopper (bidder) isn’t going to raise the price on ya! Now hurry up and “Buy it Now” before someone else does because you wanted the thrill of being the “winner”….. or you expected to pay .99¢ for that American Gold Eagle….. Dunces!

Also, when you whine about unfair s+h charges to ebay all you’re doing is asking them to raise the price on YOU by demanding they extract a larger percentage of you and the seller’s transaction. You’re also increasing their cost of doing business by having them micromanage your idyllic world.

Do people think anymore or do they just act like animals and follow their ravenous instincts?

I’m not going to look at and calculate the actual fees, but here’s what I mean by way of fictitious example:

Item $0.01
S+H $100.00
Total $100.01

Cuts
ebay $0.20
buyer/seller $99.81

Item $100.01
S+H FREE
Total $100.01

Cuts
ebay $14.00
buyer/seller $86.01

buyer/seller +$13.80

Now the buyer and seller have $13.80 to divvy out between the two of them. When everything else is equal, the seller will have saved $6.80 and the buyer $6.80. The buyer gets a better price and the seller is able to profit and to continue buying and selling. He has more resources with which to buy and sell.

He can also bring more goods to the market. Goods must have an acceptable profit margin. If that $6.80 margin is done away with, it will reduce the variety of products he can sell and it will also decrease his volume. When you decrease volume you put upward pressure on prices.

Ever noticed how ebay doesn’t simply list the total price on the item up for bid (bid+shipping+handling)? I mean, there are computer programs out there that can still add, right? It’d be quite simple to do. They don’t do it because it’ll begin to make sense in your mind that it doesn’t matter what column you write your expenses in or which way you choose to itemize them.

All that matters is the bottom-line: BUYER: I now have the product and I now have X less dollars. SELLER: I now have the money and I now have X less inventory.

It’s like saying you want to pay someone 10% more for the Free Shipping text on their auctions – ABSURD!

This is what you get when you send your kids to public schools.

At the end the buyer can alway disagree to the purchase and an agreement can be easily reached to cancel whatever transaction, therefore, buyer and seller should be able to choose freely how to advertise, for how much sell and purchase, it one doesn’t like the other product or price, well theres are always other sellers and buyers in the market

I buy alot of CDs and DVDs, and the eBay shipping prices are 100% outrageous. How many times haven’t I seen shipping rates like “1 st CD $6.99, each additional $4.99″. If I buy two CDs from that seller, the shipping alone is 12 bucks! When the seller in reality pays a couple of bucks.
If you compare eBay sellers’ prices (total price, including shipping expenses), to Amazon’s marketplace sellers, you will find out that the total price is cheaper on Amazon in 99% of the cases.
I have stopped completely supporting eBay and its scammer sellers, unless I am on the hunt for a rare item I can’t find on other sites.
Next time you’re buying something on eBay, compare the prices with Amazon’s marketplace sellers’ prices before actually going thru with the purchase!
I can also advice you that Amazon’s customer service is 100 times better than most (i’m not going to say all, because there are some honest ones left) sellers on eBay. If I receive a broken item from Amazon, they replace it without any hassles. Would most eBay sellers do it? No way. “It’s not my fault, it’s the postal service fault”. And don’t get me started on their totally pointless retaliatory feedback system that serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever.
To make a long story short: 90% of all sellers on eBay today are LIARS, THIEVES and SCAMMERS. End of discussion!

I thought it was excessive so I emailed the seller thinking it was being shipped quickly. I received a reply talking about having to pay e-bay $1.55 to insert the ad paying E-bay an 8.75% value fee and paying Paypal a 2.9% charge plus 30 cents to collect payment from me.

OK fine I get these – but was that 30.00? The reply went on to talk about the other expenses of doing business, like the time and gas and mileage charges, paying an auto leasing company to go to buy the item, and then the costs to come back to the sellers office office and the costs of wrapping paper, boxes and tape, and the time to wrap it, and so forth and so on…

It was a long winded justification of jacking me on the shipping costs.

As an e-bayer, I paid a day or so after the explanation because I had made a committment to buy the item. As a consumer I am a little peeved at this sort of practive.

Indeed, as a consumer – I understand that people need to mark-up a product – often by 100% – to make a profit. Honestly though, I would rather pay for that increase up-front and honest then on the back end in a sort of ’sneaky’ way…

I shop on e-bay for a number of reason – often to find things I can’t get in my community, or for interesting or antigue/hard-to find items so price is only one consideration when I shop.

Until this incident, I have found most sellers to be very reasonable and had never balked at the cost for shipping things… but this was my first experience with such blatent infation and I have to say I was shocked and a little angry.

I will be more careful from now on and request shipping costs before I buy when they aren’t listed.

Sorry for the rant but this is stuck in my craw today.

I’ve often heard buyers complain about a seller who overcharges on shipping. They feel that they are being cheated. Let’s look at a couple of examples to see if this is really the case.

For our purposes, let’s assume that a seller is wanting to sell a $30 product and make a 10% or $3 profit on the sale. Since the actual shipping charges will be the same regardless of how much is charged, we
can ignore that amount. Ebay final value fees are 10% of the actual item amount. PayPal fees are roughly 3% of the total amount (item + shipping).

Example #1

Shipping Charges = $0 (free)

In order to make the desired profit of $3, the seller would need to charge $37.93.
$37.93
- 3.79 (10% ebay fees)
- 1.14 (3% paypal fees of cost + shipping)
= $33 (the seller’s product cost of $30 + $3 profit)

The total cost to the buyer would be $37.93 (item cost) + $0 (shipping) = $37.93

Example #2

Shipping Charges = $10

In order to make the desired profit of $3, the seller would need to charge $26.79.
$26.79
- 2.68 (10% ebay fees)
- 1.10 (3% paypal fees of cost + shipping)
+ 10.00 (shipping charges)
= $33 (the seller’s product cost of $30 + $3 profit)

The total cost to the buyer would be $26.79 (item cost) + $10 (shipping) = $36.79.

As you can see by the above examples, while the seller is still making the desired $3 profit, the buyer is actually paying $1.14 less in example #2. This is the amount that has been saved in Ebay and PayPal
fees.

Perhaps the next time that we see a seller who we feel is overcharging on shipping, we should thank them for passing the savings on to us.

If the shipping materials and labor are the same to ship to Alaska or Florida, they should be in the price of the item… not shipping charges.

I am using eBay less and less because of ridiculous shipping charges.