I have been watching a couple of auctions on eBay for some cards that I was interested in getting. I noticed today that, due to a typo, there was another one of the cards available that I did not notice originally. The cards are coming from Canada (I am in the US), so postage costs were naturally higher. However, on the latest auction, the seller stated "I do not combine shipping." With shipping on each card at over $5.00, I was curious to find out if this was a mistake or if the information was correct. When I questioned the seller about this, I was told, in a nutshell, "I expect a bidding war on these cards, and I will not combine shipping. I expect to make $3-$4 per card with the shipping costs I noted, so too bad." Oh, and he also noted "Perhaps you don't have much experience with these cards and know how rare they are."

I know I shouldn't have, but I let this get to me. I told the seller that I appreciated his honesty in telling me how he was going to make money on these listings, and I was not going to bid on them. This, of course, started an email war with the seller. I know, it was my fault for taking the bait, so I guess I deserve it. The cards in question are somewhat hard to find on the auction site, and are regularly listed for $8.00 and up. These are listed at $0.50 plus $5.50 shipping, so I thought this was a good price, especially if I could get them all shipped together. I did not want to pay $20.00+ in shipping for the seller to only stick a $3.00 stamp on the package, as this seems like a ripoff to me. My final email to the seller was something like "I was just asking a question, and I was quite shocked by your honest response in ripping off buyers. Perhaps you should be more clear in your listings that you will NOT combine shipping."

Was I wrong in pointing out to this seller (apparently a newbie, with very low feedback) how this is normally handled when selling cards? I guess I brought this on myself, but I was just trying to point out that his listings were not very good, and he could run into trouble with bad feedback or problems with eBay. As an occasional seller and frequent buyer on eBay, I know how these things normally work, so his responses to me were perplexing, to say the least.

Any thoughts?

This is likely not his first ticket on what I have seen as the Ebay-merry-go-round. Make some sells have some crappy terms to stick it to people then after a few complains,a new profile and start over and do it again.
I refuse to buy anything from Bossier City, LA just because I know there is a bad, bad seller there that does this and I just don't want to take the chance that one of the new profile he has created is one I would accidentally buy from.
If a seller starts off being rude-then do you really want to give them profit even if it is a good deal?

I just realized I put this in the wrong section of the site. Can a moderator move this, please?

While I dont agree with what the person is doing. ebay has the option to list items by price (with shipping) option. I do this to avoid this issue/ He has every right to charge what ever he wants for shipping and handling (hence why ebay started charging fees on shipping costs over the actual shipping costs) You cant look at just the price of the auction but it as a whole. That is your right to buy or not.

Somethings to think about

- Some people look at bidding as gambling, like a competition and only care about the auction price and sometimes dont even look at the shipping costs. Some times will over bid the value of a an item that could have been bought for less as a buy it now on an other auction.

-You were hoping to get a deal on some cards that a guy was listing for below value. He was hoping to use the low starting value to draw attn to the auction and cover his bases with high shipping in case the cards sell for below their value.

*If I was you I would figure out a price (with the high shipping in mind) that you are willing to pay and pay up to that ( what does it matter if the auction price was $8 +$5 shipping vs $12 free shipping?) its $12 either way right?

This is just a matter of you wanting to save as much money as possible vs him trying to maximize the money he gets back form these cards.

Its your responsibility to figure out what you are willing to spend for everything and stick to that.

[QUOT

Originally posted by MrBlueofnyc:
what does it matter if the auction price was $8 +$5 shipping vs $12 free shipping?) its $12 either way right?

[/QUOTE]

This is the only way to look at an auction. Never assume anything on shipping. If the seller insists on charging a separate postage fee for each item you win then you insist he sends them all seperatly.

Thanks for the posts, everyone. I haven't checked this thread in a while, so I was not updating it as I planned.

The items in question ended up not selling at all, even at the low price. I think the seller ended up relisting the cards at a much higher price, something like $12.00 each, with free shipping. I don't know if the newly listed items sold or not, but I found it funny that he ended up not getting his bidding war that he anticipated, nor did he make any money off of shipping, since none of them sold at the time.

MrBlueofnyc, I agree that it is my responsibility to determine what I am willing to pay. The whole issue came up because I was trying to determine what the total costs would be, including shipping. To have a seller tell me that they are deliberately overcharging on shipping costs in order to make money on the auction seems dishonest somehow. And I also agree with Wolfie--had I bid on and won the auctions, I would have insisted on separate shipping. However, given the seller's response to my question, I doubt that would have happened.

Oh, well, glad I didn't get caught on this one...

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:

This is the only way to look at an auction. Never assume anything on shipping. If the seller insists on charging a separate postage fee for each item you win then you insist he sends them all seperatly.

This is the only way you can handle a ebay seller. If you are forced to pay separate shipping than make him pay separate shipping. If he does not you are fully within your rights as a buyer to post appropriate feedback and ding his DSR's.

Will - It wouldn't hurt to forward those messages to ebay.

quote:

( what does it matter if the auction price was $8 +$5 shipping vs $12 free shipping?) its $12 either way right?

Actually, that would be $13.