Ebay Cracking Down On Excessive Shipping

Not personally, but I've noticed shipping rates that I would consider "unreasonable" still out there. It seems the outrageous shipping charges (e.g., $50 for a single coin) are no longer as prevalent, but there's still sellers who charge more than they should, e.g., $5 for a single coin, insurance not included. When it gets to a question of how much packaging should cost, there's a lot of wiggle room. I can get by on Walmart bubble-padded envelopes for 45 cents to 60 cents, but Office Max and the US Postal Service charges more and who is to say that a seller didn't buy the same envelope at his corner convenience store for $2.50?

Fred

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Originally posted by Morgan Fred

To add to my list of quotes, "Oh what fools these mortals be!" (Shakespeare, but I haven't shaken out the specific play yet).

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Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover's fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Puck, A Midsummer Night's Dream (act 3, sc. 2, l. 110-115)
William Shakespeare (b.1564 - d.1616) English Playwright

I dont understand, if ebay wants to take this seriously, why cant I just sort the auctions according to shipping costs? I'm usually already looking for something very specific (ie a certain type or year of one coin) so the shipping charges should be similar for similar goods. This would automatically weed out the higher priced items (in terms of shipping) and reward the lower shippers by putting them at the top. This way, the market should find the average cost for shipping a given item. ebay would incur no cost to do this, its as easy to sort on one database field as on another...

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Originally posted by Toblerone2

I dont understand, if ebay wants to take this seriously, why cant I just sort the auctions according to shipping costs? I'm usually already looking for something very specific (ie a certain type or year of one coin) so the shipping charges should be similar for similar goods. This would automatically weed out the higher priced items (in terms of shipping) and reward the lower shippers by putting them at the top. This way, the market should find the average cost for shipping a given item. ebay would incur no cost to do this, its as easy to sort on one database field as on another...

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Toblerone, I actually thought of this same thing and think it is a great idea. I even e-mailed ebay a few months back about this very thing. The response was they were taking excessive shipping very seriously and that it was being handled. I guess they missed my point altogether. With the amount of money they make and the staff they support surely someone could figure out how to allow this in the advanced search window. They make just way too much money not to be able to figure something like this out. As mentioned there are many shipping methods and perhaps this is why they don't do it but, I am merely wanting to search on the amount of shipping, I don't care about the method in which it is shipped. I would enter a maximum of $5.oo and anything above that just wouldn't be getting my business because as I stated previously my feeling is that anything over that amount is a ripoff and only a way for a seller to make money they shouldn't be making. He or she, needs to calculate that into their starting bid price. I know that people are starting off cheap to attract bids so they may not want to do that but better to have a couple extra bucks thrown in to the bid price than the S&H price as lots of people are getting turned off to the idea of excessive shipping prices. It makes me not even consider looking at a coin no matter how much I need it. I won't even give it a second look. All in all, if ebay didn't have such outrageous fees to begin with a lot of what you see as excessive shipping may not even happen in the first place because sellers wouldn't be trying to recoup their fees through the cost of their S&H. To me, that is the main problem, excessive ebay fees!