Thread: Watch out for this ebay seller

I found this razor 150011645061 on ebay - the shipping to Colorado is either $12.18 or $14.88.

I sent him an email saying his shipping was too high and got this reponse:

No Problem....Buy it from someone else.....{;^)

His seller terms include this:

Shipping & Handling charges are non-negotiable.



So watch out!

Tom,

Yeah, I hate sellers that have unreasonably high s&h charges. I've heard horror stories of folks charging $15-20 for s&h for an item (like a collectible fountain pen) and then they just throw it in a regular paper business letter envelope with 3 or 4 $0.39 stamps and mailing it. Or course it's usually damaged when it's received. This guy isn't too bad but it should really be about half of what he wanted. For some reason, that razor raised a red flag with me. It looks like it has absolutely no markings on it. My first instinct when I saw it was *Pakistani*, although I don't know if it is or not. No one's bid on it and there's just 5 hours left. Maybe his attitude drove off some other buyers too.

Ed

I heard something somewhere that some of the sellers use high shipping costs because Ebay doesn't take a cut of that part of the sell. They just go after their cut of the selling price. Being that I have never sold anything on Ebay, I don't really know for sure. However, it seems like I heard that somewhere.

Anyways $12 or $14 dollars sounds way too high for shipping for a straight razor to me. Hell, what does Joe Chandler charge over at his new online store for shipping in the US? Ebay wouldn't be too bad if there wasn't people like that seller gunking it all up.

-Pary

At the bottom of every eBay listing is a link for "report this item" and if you follow that link you can easily report an item for inflated shipping fees. You may think "oh, eBay doesn't give a crap" but I assure you, we do... I have personally gotten tons of listings pulled for exactly this sort of thing.

I reported a couple of this guy's auctions (including this one) for fraudulent listings (inflated shipping fees) and I encourage you guys to do the same for both this guy and any other auctions you come across. This one is riding the line, we all know it's inflated but it's not egregious (like the "buy it now" I saw for an xbox 360 for 99 cents plus $400 shipping and handling which I got pulled), however you can't expect them to catch it if you don't report it and at least take a shot.

eBay can't possibly police the millions of items that are listed each day and we rely on people to let us know when shit like this happens. Everyone complains, but very few actually try to do anything about it. Be one of those very few. Please. We *want* a clean marketplace but we can't do it alone.

-- Gary F.

well I have relatives in that town in SC and it is still over ten dollars to ship this item, this makes me really mad as I would have purchased the item and shipped it on to who ever wanted it.

A month or so ago Ebay were going to be taking action on people who were using this sort of marketing technique, or so they said in their article that i recieved, i think action should be taken to report this guy, i recieved two razors from Joe and it cost less than that...

Well I tried to find a more cost effective way, he is just ensuring he is making money by screwing the rest of us....

Sorry i cant help...simon

Originally Posted by gfoster

At the bottom of every eBay listing is a link for "report this item" and if you follow that link you can easily report an item for inflated shipping fees. You may think "oh, eBay doesn't give a crap" but I assure you, we do... I have personally gotten tons of listings pulled for exactly this sort of thing.

I'm not surprised that ebay would pull this, because it affects their bottom line.
Now, don't get me wrong, Garry, a business has to make money, but what are the chances eBay is going to do something about other issues, e.g. obvious misrepresentation, etc. ?

Redwoood

I was brokering a deal for a friend and the guy was asking for $18 to ship the item to Macedonia! A reasonable s&h charge would be about $6, even though I'd go as high as $8 with no hard feeelings. In the end I decided to have it shipped here ($7) and then I'll mail it and it will still come out to under $10 in shipping costs. The shipping fee wasn't listed, it was based on the invoice that he sent me so I couldn't even report him.

Gary,
Didn't know about the button and the link and will probably only use it on stuff that is way over the top however, most likely I will probably just avoid the item and the jackass seller all together. Thanks for the info though...

-Pary

Originally Posted by Redwoood

I'm not surprised that ebay would pull this, because it affects their bottom line.
Now, don't get me wrong, Garry, a business has to make money, but what are the chances eBay is going to do something about other issues, e.g. obvious misrepresentation, etc. ?

Redwoood

I can't speak for T&S (trust and safety) but honestly, as an employee we are constantly hearing everyone talk about it internally (management, etc). They are trying to come up with ways to police this more effectively, it's something that *very* much bothers eBay management. We realize that anything that makes the "eBay experience" (yeah, they actually say that) less attractive takes customers away from us and yeah, it is a bottom line issue. We're a for-profit company, but that doesn't mean the company doesn't care. Profit is a great motivator to care There's nothing wrong with profit motives if it drives you to things like better customer service, etc.

There's a lot of ideas being tossed about and a lot of things people are trying to figure out. The problem is the sheer volume of listings. We can't just police every single listing due to the sheer crushing volume of the number of new listings every single day and you can't catch most of this stuff with clever programming because people who want to scam and cheat will very quickly come up with ways to fool your automatic systems anyway. It's not an easy problem to solve but a lot of things are being looked at (that I obviously can't comment on). When you only have a couple thousand new listings a day it's a lot easier to keep everyone honest. When you have a million new listings a day it becomes a bit more difficult.

In the interim, that's why clicking on those "report this item" links at the bottom of listings is really important. T&S sorts through those pretty quickly as soon as they are reported, and the more people that report them the higher they sort up the list and the quicker a human being with the power to do something looks at it. It's not just for shipping fraud (which yeah, cuts into our bottom line and pisses eBay off) but it's also for misrepresentation, selling prohibited items, or any sort of violation of terms of service (which may not cut into our bottom line directly, but if it pisses customers off and drives them away it hurts us too and yes, we do really honestly care about that).

-- Gary F.

Originally Posted by FiReSTaRT

I was brokering a deal for a friend and the guy was asking for $18 to ship the item to Macedonia! A reasonable s&h charge would be about $6, even though I'd go as high as $8 with no hard feeelings. In the end I decided to have it shipped here ($7) and then I'll mail it and it will still come out to under $10 in shipping costs. The shipping fee wasn't listed, it was based on the invoice that he sent me so I couldn't even report him.

Ilija,
Do remember that International shipping varies greatly depending on the method used. The only method that will carry insurance is Airmail Parcel Post which is nearly double that of even Global Priority. The actual costs on two complete sets I just shipped to the UK and Australia were $29.60 and $29.10 for a 2 1/2# parcel. A single strop to the UK is over $21. I can ship for less but then there is no insurance. The insurance itself is cheap but the method of shipping that allows insurance is high. It's not just the simple $1.30/$2.40 deal on domestic shipping. I give SRP members the choice, insured or uninsured and trust them to take the risk.

EBay buyers however are quick to condem and I will only use insured shipping via Airmail Parcel Post there. If a package gets lost all they need to do is prove it did not arrive and they can file a chargeback via Paypal. They get their money, Paypal takes it from me and no one gets the package. I trust that if an SRP member takes the insurance/shipping method gamble that they will not come back at me.

I agree though that the USA shipping mentioned in the first post is outrageous.

Tony