Ebay Shipping Poll

Bobby....
Thats why I started this topic/poll.

Start your bidding at a higher price. If you know that the cost of mailing, including supplies, is "x," include that in whatever you decide as your starting bid.


How often does that happen? Apparently not enough to discourage a lot of sellers from not offering tracking. Of the hundreds of ebay purchases I've made that did not have tracking not a single one ever failed to arrive. But if happens, it is just a cost of doing business. Factor it into your starting bid, in the same way that businesses have to factor in the cost of breakage or shoplifting into their prices.


I thought you started this poll because you wanted buyer perspective on tracking and how to pay for it.

If the remark you responded to alludes to me, it misses the mark. Supplies are a cost of business. Factor it into your starting bid. I mostly pushed back against the idea that "shipping" needs to cover the value of the sellers time.

This is a strange thread. I thought it was soliciting input from buyers. Looks to me like most of the responses are from sellers.

Then its not an auction....
It would be fixed price.

That is correct....

I will respond anyway, even though I rarely buy anything on ebay any more. The last year I purchased more than one stamp, I purchased 10, retuned 5 and the seller accepted a price cram down on another because it was damaged that the seller failed to mention.

As a seller, I offer free shipping to the US and to Canada in some categories. Charging for shipping used to result in bad shipping Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR). Postage for tracked shipping is $2.32 using stamps. Mailing supplies generally cost 50 to 75 cents. I also have to account for potential insured and uninsured losses, usually minimal but not zero. The out of pocket cost to mail a tracked item is about two dollars using discount postage.

Initially, the ebay top-rated seller discount was more significant than it turned out to be, after final value fees were lowered to 6 percent in the Stamps category. Unfortunately, other categories are at the original 9 percent. A 20 percent discount is still significant. For very expensive stamps and somewhat expensive collectibles, the ebay fee discount is more than the differential cost of tracked shipping and materials.

I moved stamps under $15 to bidStart, eliminating 80% of sales and 20% of revenue from ebay. Sellers have to make the choice of whether to sell lower priced items and ship first class mail or sell more expensive items and use tracked shipping to maintain top-rated status and the ebay fee discount. Some sellers have set up multiple accounts. I have a second account, but I don't use it much. It is easier to use bidStart or some other site for inexpensive stamps. I have automation for bidStart, but not DelCampe, so I use bidStart.

Foreign shipping, at least for now, does not require tracking. This creates an anomaly where it is less expensive to ship stamps or light weight collectibles to Canada and less expensive to mail stamps to Europe. All of this falls apart if weight or size requires a parcel. Rates triple to mail a first class parcel to Canada. It also falls apart for more expensive stamps. The minimum cost jumps to at least $10 for any kind of registration (useless) or $20 to $30 or more for tracking as required by my insurance policy.

If the stamp is truly expensive, I am not as concerned. At some point Registered (domestic only), Express Mail or FedEx are the only choices. Shipping becomes complex and ebay is not very helpful or user friendly.

The bottom line is that a $2 mailing charge is appropriate if tracking is required. I notice that seller prices for stamps with free shipping track catalog value and condition down to about $5. At that point either the price is at least a dollar above catalog or the seller charges for shipping, either first class or tracked depending on the status of the seller.

As a buyer (hypothetical), I don't think I would buy anything expensive from sellers I don't know personally unless they an ASDA member or an APS Dealer member. In some cases, I would buy from a collector selling off a better collection. Unfortunately, many collectors quit selling better stamps after about three weeks or so once they find out that better stamps may go for a lower percentage of value than damaged stamps.

As a seller, I am forced to work around the damage caused by malicious or incompetent sellers. As a buyer, I have given up. It is just not worth the time to pick through all of the altered, faulty or poorly described stamps.


Clark

As a Buyer:

#1 Shipping price is calculated in my bid - The seller has stated the shipping costs. I simply deduct that from what I am willing to pay and I have my maximum bid. (Also make sure I need to factor in any state sales tax if applicable). If the seller has clearly stated his terms, it's up to me figure out what I will bid and if I am even interested.

#2 Don't matter, I want the item - If I want the item due to it's rarity or top condition, whether shipping is free, $1 or $3 will have little or no impact on my decision to buy or bid. Again, it's just factored in to what I am willing to pay.

#3 Free shipping - As with #1 above, free shipping is factored into my maximum bid, might just mean I can bid a little higher. If it is a Buy It Now item, I'm going to assume the Buy It Now price covers the sellers shipping (As I do).

#4 Does it matter if item starts at .99¢ - Starting bid has no affect on what I will pay. If the item generally goes for $200 dollars and that's what I am willing to pay, than as long as the opening bid isn't $225, I'm in.

#5 Major factor in cost - Only if it is a significant percentage of the purchase price. $5 shipping on a $2 item is a big deal. $5 shipping on a $200 item is not.

Whenever I am looking to buy a specific stamp (or anything else), I check to see what is listed and as long as each item is pretty much comparable, I simply add up all the costs involved to see which is lowest. Factor in if I know the seller (or at least feel comfortable) and I go from there. When bidding on an item, I check to see what is currently available in Buy It Now. I then use that as a benchmark when bidding, no sense bidding more than I can pay for it as Buy It Now.

In regards to tracking and/or insurance, I'm more than willing to pay extra in shipping to ensure delivery of my purchases. Tracking enables me, that's right, to track the delivery. Whether it is a $10 stamp or $500 stamp, I still want it to arrive and be undamaged. As a collector, as I think most would agree, even the inexpensive stamps are just as important to my collection.

As a seller, everything goes out with a tracking number. I use the ebay shipping to print my labels (at a slight discount) and everything gets a tracking label (2 - 3 oz. is $1.93). I then monitor those shipments to confirm delivery or find out when something is lost or held up. If something is either lost or held up, I contact the buyer to let them know there is an issue, and then file a claim with USPS after the appropriate time. I've done this a number of times, not only is the Buyer happier but I prevent issues, bad feedback, etc.

One more thing, I will also pay more for shipping if it means the seller will take a little longer packaging my items and uses better materials for packing. I've just gotten back into stamp collecting and am amazed how little attention is paid to shipping small, delicate paper stamps. But that is another issue...

As someone else said, it all comes down to total purchase price which is obviously item + shipping = total.

As a buyer I like to see reasonable shipping charged from wherever in the world the item is coming from, and I buy from almost everywhere. I collect stamps. That is my main focus.

If a seller wishes to charge me less shipping as a loss leader for his sales, that's OK, but I wonder at the quality of the stamps and service I will recieve then.

If a seller charges me more than everyone else is charging then I have to consider the extra charge as part of the price. Normal shipping charge is normal so not considered.

If everything with envelope size cost $2.00 to ship from anywhere in the world, no matter how much the seller wished to compete by seemingly lowering his stamps shipping pricing, then the stamps would be my main concern and I would judge them on qua;ity and fitness for my collecting interests.

After a while, lately, I have started collecting shipping charges, er, envelopes with ink and stamps on them. Ink, after all, is a large part of the price of any envelope or packing slip. Oh, and the postmarks and postal labels and markings. Oh, and the stamps too.

edit: typos.

Shipping is a major factor on what I buy. If the shipping is higher than the item I want then I'll simply pass over it.

How did you get that from what I said? Plenty of items which are auctioned have higher starting bids than $0.99. My point was in response to your saying that you could not recover "costs" with a $0.99 opening bid. As a seller, you have the latitude to recover shipping costs through your opening bid, or through a specific charge added to the final bid. Do you think sellers who offer free shipping are not recovering their shipping costs? Of course they are. They just adjust the starting bid accordingly.

As several have suggested, buyers will take shipping costs into consideration when deciding on a maximum bid. In that sense, it doesn't really matter how you do it. I was simply pointing out that setting a low starting bid and high shipping cost does have a negative connotation for some buyers, especially for low ticket items. I collect US airmail FDC's, and am always on the lookout for ones I don't have that I can pick up for under $10 (though I do not hesitate to spend more for those that are worth more). And I can tell you that when I see an item that I want, and can probably get for under five dollars, and then see that the seller wants $2 (or more) for shipping, I pass it up. I can almost always find the same item at some point for a shipping cost of half that. This doesn't alter the fact that I'm treating shipping cost as "six of one and half a dozen of the other" in determining a final bid; it is because of it--on items in the $5-$10 dollar range, $2 for shipping is simply exorbitant, and I know can get the same item for a lower total cost by being patient and shopping around. I'm focused on the final cost, and for small ticket items, shipping can be a significant aspect of the final cost, even a deal breaker.

I was told personally by an ebay executive. They knew full well it would cause an uproar with sellers, but the cheaters were running rampant and virtually impossible to police, his exact words were "It was like peeing on a forest fire." I was told about it 3 months before it was even announced. Just like I knew ahead of time that the Singapore feedback hole was going to be closed because of abusers.

I don't buy that story. I've been on there 12 years or so buying and selling all things philatelic and I never saw what could be called a pattern in low pricing with high shipping.

Maybe it wasn't a common practice in the stamp category, but I shop for a lot of different items on ebay and I remember seeing listings all the time for this or that for $1 plus $29 shipping. This for an item that costs $30 in a store and would cost at most a few dollars to ship. Then as now most sellers were honest and did things the right way, but it was common enough that I saw it pretty regularly.

ebay had to look at it the way any business would, as lost revenue that's rightfully theirs. A better way might have been to set maximum shipping prices for a given product or category, but how do you come up with a one-size-fits-all solution for that? Don't get me wrong, I hate paying FV fees on shipping, but I understand fully why ebay does it. It's not only the lost revenue, but they would probably like to enforce a certain level of uniformity in this area to make people more comfortable buying there. Seeing listings for $1 plus $29 shipping sprinkled amongst other listings could give one the idea that ebay is kind of a Wild West, anything goes type of place, and I don't think they like to encourage that idea.

Using a higher shipping charge to shift some of the cost of an item has been going on all along (I started with ebay in 1998) and it still is. There's a seller of philatelic supplies operating right now who charges less for the supplies he sells, but has shipping charges that are twice as high as other sellers of the same thing, and he does not discount much for multiple purchases. So he will sell stock pages by the 5 pack with a $2 charge per pack. Buy 5 and the s/h charge per pack drops to $1.75, like that.

Nothing new, yet too small for ebay to mess with it. It takes a delicate balance to walk the spider's web.

How a seller breaks down the costs in terms of base item cost versus shipping charges is completely and utterly meaningless, now that (1) both PayPal and ebay take their cut of shipping charges, and (2) on returns, sellers are almost always required to refund the complete original cost including shipping.

It. simply. doesn't. matter.

If I charge:

$5 for an item + $10 shipping

$10 for an item + $5 shipping

$15 for an item with FREE shipping

What's the difference?

Answer: none whatsoever, other than the beauty in the eye of the beholder. Materially speaking, they are identical. One way or another, you're paying $15 to get the item, and that's all that matters.