well you got a deal on pants which means she most likely lost money, so to make it up, it was in the shipping but 16.50 is alot. normally its like 10
Overcharged? Over-reacting?
- Thread starter cdnshopper
- Start date
I won an item for $10. When I asked for shipping rates, I was quoted $16.50 for ground and higher rates for priority & overnight. I recevied an invoice for priority shipping and asked her to adjust it for ground shipping and she did.
I received the item and noticed the postage was $6.46 but I had paid $16.50. I sent her an email to let her know that I had received the item and mentioned the postage rate and asked if I was over charged. Here is the response I got:
Hi there i am responding to your question about the shipping cost. The total amount i gave you was for shipping and handeling. there are expenses involved in shipping items. also there are expenses for supplies to ship item's. I have to put gas in my car to drive to the post office where the item's are shippied from. Plus i spend 10 to 20 mins waiting in line at the post office. all in all there is a charge for handeling. The pair of pants which you won for 10 dollars. cost 160.00 min. and the pair that you won were brand new. i do'nt see why this is a issue. I hope that you like the capries, and if i can be of any other help to you please contact me. thank you
In all my correspondence with her she has been very nice. I do understand that there are handling fees & costs associated, but $10? Is this reasonable or am I over reacting?I can't help but feel ripped off. I have not posted feedback for her and not really sure what to post (because she is nice).
Just wanted to get some thoughts/opinions out there....
I live in Greece and I think anything more than $10.00 on the postage paid for shipping is excessive. For example I won Dolce and Gabbana Shirt for $0.99 and the shipping was $17.50, when I got the shirt the envelope was only $4.60 I told the Seller that it is unreasonable to charge so much for shipping and she refunded me $10.00 which I was very happy about.
I agree with quote as well. I think excessive shipping and handling fees above $10 need to be in the price of the item.
When I buy something and see the shipping price, I expect the actual shipping price to be fairly close with the quote and allow a bit for handling, depending on the price of the item.
I just shipped a Coach bag that cost me $28US in ebay and paypal fees, along with costs for the box and bubble wrap, etc. Actual shipping was $27 and I charged $35 for shipping to recoup some of my costs.
I am sure that if I charged $27 for shipping and then an additional $35 for handling, the buyer would have felt totally taken advantage of and rightly so, even though I would have only been recouping my costs.
So, I build most of my handling costs, to cover most of paypal and ebay fees, into the price of the item.
When I started out on Ebay I was very naive about the actual costs in terms of time, decent packaging, travel etc involved in postage. I have increased my rates but in a transparent and realistic way. I have been on the other side too as a buyer and learned that I need to check whether postage is what I believe to be excessive because if it is then I have to decide whether to bid or not. . .it is one of the most variable things on Ebay I think and I have learned to be sensitive to all the variations depending on how much I want to either sell or buy something!
The seller offered to refund some of the $$ and asked what I wanted. I basically told her that I would leave everything as is, since I knew what the costs were before bidding. I have taken this as a learning experience on moved on....
doing that is against ebays policy
if i were you i would be pissed come on 16.50 to ship a pair of pants But she did tell you the price before hand so it's not like you didn't know you could have asked her if she can lower her fee before you placed a bid. The seller telling you got a pair jeans $10 that cost 160 is pointless not your fault that it didn't go up higher or that she started the bidding at a low price
what you can do is give her 1 star when you have to rate her on shipping & "handling"
I just listed another item @ 15.00 shipping (shoes). This includes insurance & delivery confirmation for my protection - it is not optional. The shipping charge is clearly listed. If people don't like it they shouldn't bid. I used to list flat shipping of 8-10.00 for everything and 1/2 the time ended up paying more out of my own pocket to ship it. I will not be doing that again, and why should I? Depending on the item, what's included in the shipping charge, etc - it absolutely can be reasonable to charge more than 10.00 because trust me - many times it does actually cost more than that.
The best way to handle it IMO is to not bid if you don't agree with the shipping & handling cost. If more people would do that instead of being upset after the fact, it would cut down on shipping overcharges by a lot. However I do agree and so does ebay that sellers should be allowed to charge a small handling fee. The problem is that they have not set guidelines on how small the handling fee should be.
She told you S/H up front, don't like it don't bid. Pretty simple. And yes, people make their S/H higher than the actual cost because like she said it covers all those extra costs involved in shipping. I don't think it's excessive personally, I know people pad their S/H a bit to cover Ebay fees and I'm Ok with it as long as it is reasonable. I know I have a choice where I buy things and I know I'm still getting a good deal over retail.
I agree with you , and she was very professional and upfront IMO