Ebay Shipping Requirements

I have been selling on ebay for about a year. I have been slowly building up to become a Top Rated seller. I charged $1.00 shipping to the US and $2.00 WW. Now they are changing the requirements to receive the discounts for TRS. They require tracking which means they want the sellers to purchase through ebay. I almost quite the site but changed my mind. I had a rash of items I bought that never arrived. Different sellers but most were not TRS. You get beat pretty badly on bidding or lack of bids when you aren't a Top Rated Seller even when you have a better product than a TRS.
So the big question I have is would you pay $2.00-$2.50 for a purchase you can actually see where it is in the shipping?
William

I've been a seller on ebay since 1999. I don't bother with the hoops to jump through to get powerseller or TRS status. It's just not worth the hassle and it's not really compatible for what I do. I use stamps for postage so that knocks me out of the runnning no matter what I do, but my buyers really like the stamps used for postage and I have no complaints. I will never use ebay shipping/tracking/label service. It's a broken system...a joke. Try to mark 800 items as shipped and see how long it takes you. How do buyers know it's been mailed? - I send them an email. If they have a problem and that's really rare, they email me and we work things out.

My advice, ignore the TRS system. Make sure to have great communications directly with your buyers. mail things quickly and use some stamps on the shipment envelope. My feedback is over 8000 with 100% :) Do what works for you, not ebay.

I believe the tracking is free on domestic orders if you use ebay's shipping / label service, but again not going to use it.

I was looking through the completed sales and noticed the TRS get most of the sales and about 50% more for there items. It's hard to ignore. I figured ebay's policies out from the beginning. They torture anyone just starting out. The fees paid to them and Paypal eat up most of the sales on small items. If you are just starting out you almost have to give away items to build a clientele. It is even harder today than before the bust. It also doesn't seem to deliver the customers as they used to.

I am fairly new to ebay,
so it's expected I'll make a few clangers.

Today I very nearly bid on a catalogue for $1.50 (japan)
and just before I clicked I noticed the postage from UK was $40.

It was a SG part catalogue, and they are not so heavy.

Once you click, are you obliged to pay stated shipping costs?
or can you retract the bid?
Thanks.

Looks like you had a near miss!
I think you can retract a bid, under certain circumstances. You would have to read the small print on ebay. I don't think you could get away with it too often. The other option is to email the seller as soon as you realise what you have done. Explain your mistake, maybe ask if the shipping cost can be reduced (it may be a sellers mistake to include the large shipping cost), if they are understanding, you should be OK. If your bid was to win, but you had agreed for the purchase not to go ahead, the seller has the option to offer it to the next highest bidder, that's what's known as a second chance offer. The next highest bidder would get the item for their highest bid, and everyone would be happy.
If you are interested in the item, why not fire off an email to the seller? He may not have intended such a large cost to come up. No harm in asking?

Thanks Stampgal for your advice. I'll do that.

Rod Number one thing to do when bidding on ebay is to check shipping cost's
Lots of sellers will list with a low starting bid and have a very high shipping cost. This is done to make sure you get a certain dollar amount for the sale, seems to work as the buyer will see something cheap and jump on it.

You can always contact the seller after the auction and tell them that you think the shipping is far to high and ask for the sale to be cancelled.
What is the seller to do force you to pay for it and you leave negative feedback. As a buyer a seller can not leave you negative feedback.
Just last week I sold a cover for $105 and 2.50 shipping, on my listing I said any sales over $100 must be sent using reg mail at a extra cost of $13 plus regular shipping costs a total of $15.50.
I sold this to a overseas customer. but he argued the cost of shipping is only 2.50 and he refused to pay the extra, and asked for the sale to be cancelled. What do I do? The same buyer bought a lot for $70 a week before from me, do I force the sale on him fight with ebay to get him to pay. Will he go ahead and pay be mad and then say the other lot that I sent him never showed up and open a claim for the $70.
A little bit to risky as I could end up $70 in the hole and have 2 negative feed back.
I just emailed him saying I sorry you did not read the listing properly and I will cancel the sale And I very sorry about this. Well at the same time if I could reach out and grab him through the monitor , He would know how P-off I was.
So if you do happen to bid on a item and then realise how high the shipping is after the fact, Just email and ask for the sale to be cancelled the seller will not be happy but will probally after a day or 2 will just let it slide.

Hmmm, not sure I could do that Jack.
I probably would have emailed him/her asked for a reduction
or copped it as experience.

As it was I couldn't find the listing again, I had deleted it.
I had taken your previous advice, and had looked at listings
that may be incorrectly advertised, and came across the book,
Then I couldn't find it again.
Life is a doddle, isn't it

Good to know there are buyers out there like your self. That buyer had me between a rock and a hard place, and I think he knew that, I still have my fingers crossed that he doesnt open up a claim against me.
But always look at the shipping first, I have got caught a few times myself. See something that ends in a few minutes and put a bid in real quick ,then to see the shipping costs are very high.

It all comes down to how much you are willing to pay for an item. If you feel a Stamp is worth $5, then does it really matter if you buy it for $3 and pay $2 for shipping compared to $4 for item and $1 for shipping ? In the end it's all relative what the shipping charge is.

I agree with stallzer, I have a maximum price that I will pay for the item and shipping. I bought several items from a dealer that charged $5.00 shipping. Most people did not bid because of the high shipping and I got some great bargains.

I do not worry if the seller is TRS or not. I do look at their feedback and the types of material that they have previously sold. Many good sellers have figured that the TRS is not worth the problems when selling small items like stamps.

Slowly I am getting use to the ways of ebay and Battlestamps very helpful info on how to handle ebay has been just the best help.

2 months ago we lost our TRS status because I believe our sales in the USA fell sharply. So we did not have enough sales for a TRS score in the USA.

But our USA ebay store has a TRS status on Australia ebay. Try and figure that one out.

Thank you for your help Battlestamps! KGV

I've messed up before where I bought an item for $20 only to pay a $40 shipping fee. I didn't notice the shipping fee when I made the bid so I accepted that it was my fault so I just bit the bullet and paid the outrageous shipping cost. The catalogue value of the items were about $120 so in the end I still technically came out ahead. Live and learn I guess.

This reply is to Rod222. I too run into the problem of very high postage costs when I order a catalog. This is not through E-Bay, but from the Zumstein firm in Switzerland. Their Swiss catalog runs about $35, and shipping / handling is $ 35.20. Of course, you get it within the week, because they ship airmail. I have asked to ship regular for a fraction of the price, and they do it. The same goes for larger items that I sometimes bid on through E-Bay; some sellers seem to automatically ship airmail. If you contact a seller beforehand about postage they generally will be cooperative!

Cheers Peter, understood.
It was just the shock, at the time of nearly accepting
a $40 postage fee. I'll be vigilant in the future.
I just ordered Michel from Germany, and that was $14 freight.
That sounds reasonable, I order a few books from Europe so I have
a fair idea of costings.
If I do a selective search on ebay for "Stanley Gibbons Catalogues"
the shipping variance is like wow!