Sellers Not Honoring Shipping Charges

I'm just tired of the unfortunate acts by both buyers and sellers.

I sell a lot of collectible cards on ebay, and I charge $.50 shipping for most auctions. I'd assume this should be similar for coins.

To ship a coin without insurance you will need:

$.39 cent stamp - 39 cents
plastic flip taped shut - maybe $.15 ? cheaper if you buy in bulk?
1 envelope - if you buy in bulk, maybe a couple cents ...

I can see maybe charging a buck to cover all that, but some of these $7.50 charges for shipping on common coins? gimme a break.

Why stick the buyer with $5.00 for priority mail when you can ship first-class for around fifty cents?

I charge $5 for first class delivery and that includes insurance and delivery confirmation. On average that is what it cost to send. Not including the cost of the bubble bag and bubble mailer. I should add this is for graded coins.

Bryan, when you're paying $100+ for a graded coin, paying $5 for a nicely packaged coin in a padded envelope is great, but when I'm buying a coin that I payed maybe a buck or so for, I find it a bit of overkill to pay so much for shipping and handling.

I've had very very good luck (i guess) with my first-class shippings. You can actually ship a large padded envelope for $.54 anywhere in the continental US. You could even put a slabbed coin into a large padded envelope, and still be well under the weight-limit for a large-size firstclass shipment.

I don't mean to sound argumentative, I'm just saying that there are cheaper alternatives that are good options as well.

I thought I'd give y'all an update on this situation:

quote:

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Originally posted by texasmick

Second story:
I buy a common, circulated Barber dime for $1.25, $1 s&h....
After the auction, I get an invoice from him for 1.25 plus $4.05 s&h!

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Yesterday the seller initiated a non-payment complaint against me. I responeded with a description of what the seller did wrong. Since I had warned him that I would retaliate if he filed a complaint, I follwed through.

I filed a complaint with ebay's Security & Resolution Center: seller asked for additional fees after the auction ended. After having read that if the dispute goes against me I would lose my feedback privilege, I went ahead and left negative feedback.

This morning, I received a message that the seller had withdrawn his complaint, saying that we had agreed to complete the transaction.

There may yet be fallout to my complaint and the negative I left, but for the time being, it seems the seller finally figured out he was not going to get his fees back.

Peace

TM, I'm late getting into this discussion (a personal crisis came up), but for the relatively small amounts of money about which you are discussing, you are risking a much higher loss of reputation and record with ebay and potential future buyers or sellers as a Non-Paying Bidder and with negative feedbacks.

I think I would have handled your situation a little differently. Emails to the other party are the first step, as you did, but if no response within a reasonable time period, I would have then phoned the seller (using ebay's contact procedures) to discuss the matter with him/her. If s/he kept lowering the shipping, but just stopped at a certain point and further negotiations were at an apparent standstill, I would have just sent him/her the money and chalked it off as a lesson learned. This would have precluded the NPB on your ebay record. If you STILL had not received the coin(s), you would then been able to take action against him/her as a non-delivery seller. There's a lot of twists and scenarios in this situation, but the idea is to keep yourself clean at your end.

Regarding shipping, ebay's Terms of Service require that no profit be made from shipment and handling of an item. As a coin seller, I charge no more than what it costs me to safely package and ship a coin with reasonable assurance that the coin will not be damaged nor lost enroute and some sort of verification that the buyer has actually received the coin. If the coin DOES become lost enroute, then I have at least included some provision for tracking down its loss.

My basic shipping and packaging costs are: First Class postage (usually 63 to 83 cents for two or three ounces); bubble envelope ( Walmart 45 to 65 cents, sometimes more, sometimes, less); a Safe-T-Mailer (31 cents; I buy them by the hundred http://www.safetmailer.com/ ); and Delivery Confirmation 60 cents. Insurance is mandatory for anything over $50 value and is extra above shipping and packaging. Total is up to $2.39, but I usually charge a flat rate of $2.25 for a slabbed coin (range $1.65 to $2.75 depending upon the item, especially if it's a Scout or other item instead of a coin). My s/h rates will be going up slightly this fall when I get back to eBaying since I MAY add Certificate of Mailing (95 cents) and/or Return Receipt ($1.85 up) or, more likely Signature Confirmation ($1.90); it will depend upon the value of the coin or other item. I will REDUCE my costs significantly by printing my own USPS shipping labels, something I started doing only this past spring; DC is only 14 cents instead of 65 cents when I print my own labels.

I do NOT see myself shipping coins via Priority Mail since most of my First Class shipments arrive in about the same two to three days as would Priority Mail. Delivery times vary too much from location to location (i.e., much variation in the efficiency of USPS Central Sorting Facilities and even within a specific Post Office) and shipping distance to spend the extra money for a service which isn't guaranteed to be faster than First Class mail.

Mick, your humble opinion shows you to be wise, forthright, and honest beyond your years. This is a good thing. Like you, I have no problems going into battle on a matter of principle although I need to pick my battles as a practical matter of time. If you feel you are right, then go ahead an wage war (didn't Davy Crockett say something like this, at least on the TV show?). As you stated, ebay isn't doing much to combat fraud, so it's a feeding ground for all the sharks out there. The problem is that there are so many sharks and so many prey fish with not enough shark-hunters that it's a target-rich environment for those of us with shark guns. I guess we do what we can do in the time we have to do it and hope that even just a little anti-fraud activity will have an effect.

One subject bears repetition: ebay's feedback system sucks big-time. It is fraught with opportunity for abuse, mostly through seller feedback extortion and reprisal. ebay absolutely refuses to correct the problem which is of its own making. Honest sellers such as myself with 100% feedback after almost seven years of eBaying (no negs, neutrals, mutual withdrawals) who have built a customer base founded upon openness and honesty are scared to death that someone might pop a neg on us for no reason and thus dissuade potential buyers who might perceive me as less than honest and hence hypocritical. (In addition to coins, I sell Boy Scouting memorabilia in which Trust is a key factor.) Thus, I work extremely hard at keeping my feedback pristine; like all eBayers, I have had a couple close calls but was able to work my way out through extreme measures which invariably cost me money. My suggestion has been to ebay to withhold feedback posts until BOTH parties have posted; in this manner, feedback extortion and reprisal is eliminated (or at least, reduced). I have written ebay a number of times on this subject to Bill Cobb, ebay North America President <billcobb@ebay.com> and received little except boilerplate in return (with some exceptions and qualifications). However, for whatever reasons, ebay has dug in its heels over its feedback system and change does not appear to be in its future.