Postage rip off

mike_paterson

masonic wrote:

...and I would agree with that. However, I think £20 P&P for a £140 leather jacket, including postage, insurance, packing materials, fuel costs etc. is not that excessive by comparison. You can't send a leather jacket to someone in the post for 30p, you know.

I just pointed out that rules and that certain sellers charge excessive postage - my example was £20 postage for an item werighing only a few grammes and worth only £15! As I said I just don't buy from these rip-off merchants.

As you mention the leather jacket - I'd say a fair price would be packaging £2 (though boxes are generally given away at supermarkets) postage with insurance £5 plus a couple of quid for petrol to take you a few miles to the post office. - round it up and you have a tenner.

I recently mailed a towbar for only £10 and it weight 50 times the weight of a leather jacket and was far bulkier. so quite clearly it is obvious that some people are charging excessive postage.

Hintza

I tried to mail a 3.5kg printer special delivery they wanted over £20!!!!

kit

I agree with most - he listed the price so its your choice whether to bid or not.

We seem to go over and over this subject all the time.......... oh, and also the whole 'when to leave feedback' debate!

masonic

mike_paterson wrote:

I just pointed out that rules and that certain sellers charge excessive postage - my example was £20 postage for an item werighing only a few grammes and worth only £15! As I said I just don't buy from these rip-off merchants.

I put it to you that rules that state that an item, which can be posted for 30p, are not applicable to an item that would cost considerably more to post. Supposing the item is between 500g-1kg, it would cost £5.35 to send by special delivery (essential for adequate insurance). Thus, by extrapolation of the text you have quoted, ebay would consider £446 to be an excessive delivery charge. So, is the text you quoted pertinent or not?

crisam

since this thread is just about shipping charges rip-off, can someone pls advise me on how to get a refund if seller found to have conned me. i paid my item thru paypal with my credit card, but listing only covers ebay's standard protection.

my seller did not pay enough postage for my item. i paid her required £10 p+p, but had to claim the parcel (only soft briefcase/laptop bag) at the PO depot with additional charge of £4.50, as seller only put 10p stamp (yes, 10p!) on it. could this be possible? can seller just leave their parcel at PO & put any stamp without weighing it by PO staff? RM swears there were no trace of any loose stamps on their collection bag, in case its stamps has just came off.

seller not even responding to my emails. it'll just bounce at me if i simply leave her bad feedback.

masonic

crisam wrote:

since this thread is just about shipping charges rip-off, can someone pls advise me on how to get a refund if seller found to have conned me. i paid my item thru paypal with my credit card, but listing only covers ebay's standard protection.

my seller did not pay enough postage for my item. i paid her required £10 p+p, but had to claim the parcel (only soft briefcase/laptop bag) at the PO depot with additional charge of £4.50, as seller only put 10p stamp (yes, 10p!) on it. could this be possible? can seller just leave their parcel at PO & put any stamp without weighing it by PO staff? RM swears there were no trace of any loose stamps on their collection bag, in case its stamps has just came off.

seller not even responding to my emails. it'll just bounce at me if i simply leave her bad feedback.

That's a difficult situation. You would have been better off had you not claimed the item, since you would have been able to persue a refund using paypal's buyer complaints process (which covers you if you have not received the item, even without paypal buyer protection). The seller would have been required to prove it was delivered to your address in order to successfully dispute a claim for non-delivery through paypal. I think your best bet is to take this up with your credit card company. You should certainly file a dispute through the ebay system as well so that the seller doesn't get away with this. Also, remember that negative feedback is far more harmful to sellers than it is to buyers - you really shouldn't consider not leaving a negative in this situation.

Contains_Mild_Peril

kiwichick wrote:

It can be difficult to judge postage costs sometimes, talking from experiance here.

I try to be as honest as possible, I dont weigh every item at the PO prior to listing as it would take too long.

I recently sold a heavy beaded dress which I totally etsimated to cost of posting. I put £12 due to its weight but it only cost £6.71. After taking off £1 for packaging I emailed the buyer to offer a refund. Shewashappy to accept and thanked me for offering. I didnt want to risk getting bad feedback for what was my mistake.

That's very reasonable of you. If I'd seen your listing I'd have assumed you'd added a bit to the p&p as "handling charge" or extra profit, and I'd decide whether or not to bid on that basis. Postage overcharging is not uncommon, and the eBay policy is meant for the extreme cases where sellers try to avoid paying appropriate FVF's by listing items with very low purchase prices and ridiculously high p&p charges (e.g. memory cards "99p" but £20 or so "p&p".)
If I'd been the seller of the jackets though, if the reason for the difference is that a different delivery service is used, I'd have said so in response to the first e-mail rather than simply let a potential customer think I was overcharging purely for profit. If I received further communications which suggested that the "customer" was more interested in arguing than buying, I probably wouldn't respond.

Crisam, I would have contacted the seller before paying the excess postage.

crisam

masonic wrote:

... You would have been better off had you not claimed the item, since you would have been able to persue a refund using paypal's buyer complaints process (which covers you if you have not received the item, even without paypal buyer protection)....

i first thought of not claiming it, 'til i read somewhere here that there were instances where it is RM's fault not to weigh properly the parcel. so was supposed to just have it re-weighed. dont really know what made me pay for that additional £4.50. 'was too shocked for that 10p postage, as even any normal letter is costing me a minimum of 27p to post it.

besides, i never thought i could still file for "non-receipt of goods" at this instance where seller can prove she posted the item but i just didn't claim it. if item remained unclaimed for a certain period, it'll be returned to the sender. so might just be a case of returned item where postage fee are not refundable.

?????

mike_paterson

masonic wrote:

I put it to you that rules that state that an item, which can be posted for 30p, are not applicable to an item that would cost considerably more to post. Supposing the item is between 500g-1kg, it would cost £5.35 to send by special delivery (essential for adequate insurance). Thus, by extrapolation of the text you have quoted, ebay would consider £446 to be an excessive delivery charge. So, is the text you quoted pertinent or not?

I put it to you that you need to write more clearly so that people can understand what you are trying to say and the rational behind it. I simplu chose an article that I had been looking for and used it as an example of how rife this practice is.

The rules are applicable to all items sold and are not dependant on weight. I would have thought that excessive postage was just that - excess cost ! You seem to have done some form of calculation that does not show anything. I would have thought that if the postage for an item was £5.35 then anything above £10 would be excessive (obviously £446 would be excessive)

Worth pointing out again that the Post Office is not the only way of sending items. Nor is it the cheapest. For heavy of bulky goods you are likely to get a much better deal from a courier and they even come and pick the goods up from you too !

masonic

mike_paterson wrote:

I put it to you that you need to write more clearly so that people can understand what you are trying to say and the rational behind it. I simplu chose an article that I had been looking for and used it as an example of how rife this practice is.

The article you chose states ebays position on what sort of a markup is required before ebay consider it excessive, and it's a very large markup (MUCH more than double the actual cost).

mike_paterson wrote:

You seem to have done some form of calculation that does not show anything.

That was my point entirely. It is impossible to tell what ebay consider to be excessive from the example they give, so it is not possible to say that ebay would regard postage of £10, £20 or even £50 to be excessive in the case of the OP's example. If you cannot say whether or not ebay would consider £20 to be excessive postage for an item that might only cost around £5 to send, then you cannot say that the content of that article is applicable. If you, personally, think that the postage is excessive, then you are entitled to that opinion, but you can't go quoting ebay policies unless you can show they apply.

mike_paterson wrote:

Worth pointing out again that the Post Office is not the only way of sending items. Nor is it the cheapest. For heavy of bulky goods you are likely to get a much better deal from a courier and they even come and pick the goods up from you too !

I think you would be hard-pushed to find a courier that charges as little as £5 for such a delivery.