Auction House Shipping Costs - Really?

I recently won a relatively inexpensive auction for a country collection, sight unseen, for about $200 from an auction house, plus the additional percentage for buyer's premium. The item had no other bids so I won at the minimum bid.

I finally received the invoice with shipping costs and they want just north of $90 for shipping and insurance. Of course, I asked for details such as weight, size, insurance cost on a $200 item, shipping origin and carrier so I could better understand the charges. I'm still waiting for a reply.

By the way, I didn't see any discussion of shipping costs on their web-site before the auction.

I was just wondering what others have experienced in this regard. Should I have expected this going into the auction? Is this is a ploy to extract additional fees or just an honest attempt to send the item the best way possible. I guess I'm just a newb or a rube when it comes to these auctions.

Is the auction house in the US? Postage and insurance from a foreign country can be very expensive. If you and the auction house are both in the US, $90 seems excessive unless the collection is in multiple volumes.

Is the collection housed in albums, stock books, on stock sheets, in glassines, etc?

Likely a ploy to extract a "handling" charge. These are regularly "padded," in my experience.

The last time this happened to me with a New York auction house, I crossed out the shipping and handling charge, wrote a check for the balance, and added instructions to ship via FedEx, insured at my specified amount, via my corporate FedEx account number with charges billed to recipient. They complied, and I saved $50, as well as acquiring online tracking in my own account. I don't ask questions or seek to negotiate, I just instruct them what to do. Of course, you need to check the Terms of Sale that you agreed to at bidding time, because you may have bound yourself to accept their charges.

Yes auction house is in the US. Collection is housed in albums. Okay, actually now I understand there are multiple, quite a few albums, 8-10. That sort of explains it doesn't it? Duh!

In light of that information, $90 maybe is not so much.

But I do like the idea of shipping via the corporate FedEx account. Thanks for that tip. Not sure I'll do it this time, but in the future that's a good avenue to pursue.

BTW, the Terms of Sale mention nothing about shipping charges.

Hungry

Can't speak for the US, of course, but the standard price here (auction houses I use simply pass on the Royal Mail price) is £12.90 for up to 20 kilograms for value up to £1,000, next day delivery. $90 seems pretty high.

Geoff

I just got my Invoice for same auction. For a Scott Specialty album and a couple small items they charged me $23, which is quite reasonable IMO. If you have a problem with this auction house you should call them up, they are easy to talk to.

In general I have found auction houses usually charge reasonable fees but are not flexible with regards to service, most use FedEx, even though it is more expensive. I have occasionally tried to talk an auction house into using Priority Mail but they just won't change.

On the other hand the contrast between auction houses and ebay are significant. On ebay I have to ship the next day and every penny of shipping costs is scrutinized. Auction houses say "oh we're shipping next week, maybe", charge a buyers fee and shipping charges at their discretion. Plus their refund policies are usually quite restrictive. Every time I see someone complain about ebay I have to chuckle.

How you know same auction house???
I see no mention of name anywhere.....
care to mention??

I think KRelyea and I we were conversing on another thread about the same auction, so likely that explains his assumption about which auction I was referring.

I didn't mention the auction because I don't want to cast aspersions. In fact...

I talked to the auction house and I want to clarify that for the weight of the items, the charge now seems reasonable to me. I am happy with this transaction. This mix up was my fault, not knowing the exact extent of the items that were being shipped.

A few days ago we were talking about watching and bidding in Harmer-Shau in another topic, so I knew what Hungary was talking about. They had some nice material and unfortunately some spirited bidding!

HFS/KR....great.
YES....Harmer-Schau always has some interesting material
Chris/Kurt and the crew do a GREAT JOB!

Also....fair and honest

Normally (I'm tempted to say "always") an auction lot specifies number of albums so bidders have an idea of the scale and shipping. I'd be surprised if you were totally surprised.

Yes, my subconscious probably remembered how many albums were involved, but one of my conscious personalities got it all wrong and "assumed" it was a very small lot.