| Most Recent Posts BUYER BEWARE of SHIPPING OVERCHARGING!!Posted Jul-03-07 08:03:57 PDT NOTE FROM BLOGGER: This posting and all references in it are completely based on my own opinion and examples and in no way are to be considered a reflection on ebay or any of it's "law-abiding" selling community. Nothing in this blog should be understood to be a reflection of any specific seller on ebay. This is simply an illustrative example for discussion and learning purposes only. I recently purchased an item. I was quite surprised about how I was overcharged for shipping and how the seller seemingly pocketed the difference. The item weighed 25lbs with dimensions 25x22x8 and was shipped from (for example purposes only!) zip 75935 in Texas to North Charleston, SC 29406. The seller said it costs $52.70. UPS says it costs $21.74!! Why the diifference in charges??? Why charge an ebay buyer $30.96 more than it costs? Handling? What sort of handling costs $30 ? Why charge more than twice what it costs for shipping!?! Go to UPS's site and see for yourself. The truth is there in black and white. You can see what could have been charged in this example and what it actually costs. http://wwwapps.ups.com/calTimeCost?loc=en_US If I were a buyer on EBAY I would definitely BEWARE and verify any and all shipping costs before buying. Some cannot be trusted. If you have any questions regarding shipping costs simply ask the seller the weight, dimensions of the package and the shipper and method he plans to use. Then ask the seller why it costs differently. YOU ARE ENTITLED TO KNOW! Please feel free to contact me via messages and I will be more than happy to share my experiences and tips to avoid this sort of problem. TIPS for SELLERS and BUYERS regarding SHIPPING OVERCHARGINGPosted Jun-28-07 08:39:28 PDT Having had my prior experience of being unfoundedly overcharged for the shipping of an iterm, I have begun looking at shipping on other like items. It's AMAZING what you will find. If you are in the market for selling something, or you are a seller or more precisely a seller that has been accused of overcharging for shipping and had your ad pulled, you should try this. Look in the category of the item in question. When you see nearly all other items shipping for say 9.99 or less, and your item is shipping for nearly 4 times that. Well... "Here's your sign" ;-) Say for example recently I was looking at some Roseville pottery. I had found some pieces that appeared to be priced well, but the shipping was WAY out of line. This was definitely suspicious. Here's another one, if you recently bought say for example a Body for Life Book by Bill Philips and noticed that the seller didn't charge shipping for a book... perhaps you should consider your shipping, since sombody was nice enough to help you ship your purchase to you. WHAT can concerned ebayers do??? I recommend two choices of action. 1) Contact the seller and ask them simply why their shipping is so out of line with everybody elses. Perhaps they live in Juno, Alaska. Perhaps the bubble wrap is laced with gold for extra protection. Perhaps they pay their professional shippers $50/ an hour. Or in all seriousness they may just not realize that they are shipping pricing their products out of the market. It never hurts to ask the question and give them a chance to explain or modify their shipping charges. 2) You can go to the bottom of the ebay listing and report the item. You can choose from a number of violations, but more appropriately would be for the first subtopic to choose Listing Policy Violations (improper keywords, outside links, excessive shipping, etc), then choose either Circumvention of eBay fees or more directly Excessive Shipping and Handling. Finally choose for step 3 Excessive shipping and handling. That's all. Let ebay handle the rest. Likely if ebay finds a problem (which they very likely will), they will pull the listing and contact the seller for the reasons why.
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