nn wrote:If you win an ebay auction, are you obligated to pay for shipping?

ie, if you win a measly 2$ item, and the seller tries to charge you an exorbitant shipping fee, can you just pay them the purchase price and tell them to ship it to their dustbin? Could they claim you were a non-paying bidder? Could you force a retraction of negative feedback?

Well, by the same token - I got some bad info from the post office and told a guy in Italy that the only way I could ship his item was for 18 bucks ... for a 5 buck book ... to which he replied, "sorry that's too much."  Luckily for me, I had been sending something else to Italy and the person was demanding 11 dollar air letter post - so I was able to offer that, and the person said "OK" ... but in that situation, even though the price I was charging was retarded high, it wasn't MY fault (I mean who chooses to live in a craptastic country like Italy ANYway) and I was about to get screwed out of the cash at the best, and negative feedbacked at the worst, from someone with a 2 rating.  Woops.  You can bet I won't bother shipping internationally to anyone with less than 100 rating from now on.

nn wrote:If you win an ebay auction, are you obligated to pay for shipping?

ie, if you win a measly 2$ item, and the seller tries to charge you an exorbitant shipping fee, can you just pay them the purchase price and tell them to ship it to their dustbin

I think that is an interesting point. What if you pay for the item and tell seller to keep it and not ship it. I don't think he can list you as a non-paying bidder, you did in fact pay for the item. What the seller does with it after the fact if you instruct him after you pay for it, really is up to you the buyer, No?

I agree with BadMike a full 50%.

On the postive side, I do not charge exact shipping and I do not gouge.  I have overcharged people in the past (on large lots and to places like  Italy and Greece that do not offer priority) because my scale is not an exact postal scale (the wife keeps on changing the settings as she tries to loose a few pounds for the pool this summer).  I will give a refund to people if I am at fault.  I only ask a small handling fee of one dollar or less.  This is for packing/printing materials...not time and labor.  Ebay allows one to charge "reasonable" handling fees and not "percentages of sale" for handling.  Any more than a buck over packing material...and you are gouging.

On the arguementative side, I do not believe that just because a handling price is listed in the auction, a buyer should pay.  The buyer is going on the assumption that he is paying for the correct s/h fees perhaps with a small stipend to cover other costs.  He is doing this in faith because this is what Ebay states in their regulations (course...not everyone reads all of these rules...even me  :oops: ..but the buyer is covered and the seller should be following the regs).  To me, if a seller lists extensive handling fees and is charged far beneath this fee by the post office, it is theft and FALSE ADVERTISEMENT.  The fees are listed as a part of the contract.  And it is supposedly a contract  :roll: .  

Hypothetically, if you signed a contract for a new job and say the fine print states that your life insurance will cost you $5 and that this is what it will cost the boss.  When you receive your check stubs, the boss is taking $5.  Later, you find out that the cost for insurance is only $1...what do you do?  

Hypothetical #2:  You sign a contract on a house.  In the costs, the appraisal charge is say $500 which you pay.  Later, you find in the messy paperwork that the appraisal fees to be charged were only $350.  What do you do?  

In both scenarios, I bet you contact someone to get sh$t straight.  You were acting in good faith on a contract.  You were mislead, either purposely or accidentally.  If the seller is misleading you, they are in the wrong.  If it was an accident, they should be notified to make ammends.  

I have had occasions like one listed above where the seller has multiple s/h fees listed.  That can be confusing if you only note one.  I have also ran through an auction, especially at snipe time, and not noted the s/h overcharge.  I will pay what the seller lists, but rest assured, if it is extensive and I note the discrepency when the package arrives with the tell-tale price sticker from the post, I will be sending you an email detailing my disdain and a link to the detailed description in the Ebay rules.  I expect a partial refund for shipping or I will leave negative feedback, report the seller to Ebay/Paypal, block the seller, and never buy from them again.  Most of the time, the seller sees the mistake and it seems an honest one, but there are others....

carl3369 wrote:We can all work out how much something costs to send via the postal service, the issue lies in the 'handling' side of it. Who is to say how much your/my/Cougars time is worth, and wether or not you are justified in passing this cost on to the buyer. Eg. If I make $12 an hour (Just to make the math easy!!) , and I spend 5 minutes wrapping your parcel and 5 minutes standing in the post office then the charge already stands at $2! I know that many here will certainly spend much more time an effort wrapping a parcel and a few might even make more than $12 an hour so already the costs are skyrocketing!

*g*. I knew I'd overlooked something in all this!
...So the deal is that the buyer pays the seller a fixed hourly rate in addition to a (hopefully) tidy profit on the goods?

*wonders why everyone here hasn't given up their day jobs, in that case*
*jk*

=

Can I hire a cougar by the hour, then?? ^^

Ekim Toor wrote:How much do you charge your company to put your pants on in the morning and drive to work? What about the sellers that only take MO's....I have to DRIVE to the post office, STAND in line, PAY for a MO, then mail it off.........
Ebay.....utopia it is not, but then what is.

Let's see...wearing pants (ie. not working from home) factors in at about $25/hr when you consider the lost productivity...driving to work gets expensed at $0.35/km, plus $8.00 parking per day...plus on the road meal/coffee expenses...since you asked.  :)  

However, anybody that expects their eBay customers to carry that cost is a real a$$.

Ekim Toor wrote:In my opinion, if you sell something on ebay, the whole aspect of taking it to the post office should already be factored in.

For routine shipping I agree. My general policy is to charge actual shipping (including delivery confirmation) plus a flat $1 handling fee per package shipped domestically (not per item won), or $2 for international.

However, if I get a special request to ship something by a relatively uncommon method (i.e. M-Bags), then I have to ratchet up the handling fee big-time. It's not to be a jerk, but because the small local post office branches in my area don't carry the bags or tags. That means I have to make a 40-mile round trip to the airport post office. If the customer wants me to do that, he's going to pay me for it.