Image by mary hodder via Flickr
Several commenters jumped in to say that they think that’s wrong of me. To paraphrase most of the arguments,
- if you don’t like the shipping costs, you shouldn’t buy the item
- the shipping costs were listed when you purchased so you have no right to complain about them
- the seller may have hidden charges you don’t know about (this was in response to the fact that I said I will weigh the packages myself and compare to posted rates and contact the seller if I was overcharged by more than $2)
And… I don’t agree. My objection comes down to a few basic things.
1. All of those arguments are only looking t it from the seller’s standpoint. OK, granted, we are all sellers and that is what I was talking about in the original post… buying when you are a seller, but I maintain that, when I have my buyer hat on, none of those things matter. If I may quote myself from this post:
In the world of customer service, what’s the difference between being overcharged and just thinking you were overcharged? From the customer’s perspective, there isn’t one. Either way, the buyer is unsatisfied and that’s bad for you, the seller.
If I win an auction for a toy car and the shipping cost is high I think to myself, wow, they must be shipping it in a super sturdy box or maybe it’s coming overnight! Then, instead, if it comes in a paper envelope with no padding at all? Yeah… I don’t care how much hidden costs the seller paid behind the scenes… I feel overcharged.
2. The feedback rating doesn’t ask you about the cost of the item. It asks if the shipping costs were reasonable. That has nothing whatsoever to do with what the seller is doing behind the scenes that ups his or her shipping costs… it just asks me to rate if that one cost is reasonable and I define reasonable as “how close they are to the actual shipping cost.” I’ve heard this misconception before. A reader once posted a comment on an article about leaving feedback that she will ding the shipping cost DSR if she think the item itself was too expensive which is just dead wrong. If boils down to this: additional hidden costs need to be built into the price of the item… not the shipping costs.
3. If you truly consider the shipping costs to be part of the price of the item… you set your shipping as free. Period. That’s pretty much the entire point of free shipping.
4. And, lastly, if you go by those things above, am I to believe that some of you think that there is no case in which you can leave a seller a low shipping cost DSR? Because if the shipping cost is always listed, we always have to assume that costs are reasonable because of these “hidden costs” and we only buy the items where we love the shipping costs… when IS it acceptable to leave a low feedback star for shipping costs?
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Shipping fees are usually obvious, especially when the USPS is involved, since they print exact pricing labels. Handling fees are a bit more subjective in my experience. If it is obvious to me that the seller didn’t make an effort to protect my item, I will ding them w/o remorse. Along the same lines, if someone took extra care and exhibited professionalism when packaging, I’ll note it in the feedback as well. The same goes for merchants outside of eBay.
If I’m charged a Priority Mail price and then receive a fragile item shipped in substandard packaging at a fraction of the cost, I will ding the shipping DSR. Absolutely. The seller bears some responsibility here to operate in good faith and to package securely.
Wow – I really hope you don’t ever buy from me. As others have said, quite plainly, if you don’t agree with the quoted shipping price then don’t buy the damned thing. If you have questions about what type of packinng the price includes, ask before you buy / bid.
I’m a trading assistant, and as such I only make a small percentage of the sale. Putting “Free Shipping” on my items just isn’t feasible for a myriad of reasons. I also pay surcharges on the shipping to eBay and my postage provider, I buy my own shipping materials, and blah blah blah. You’ve heard it all before.The point here is that it’s a wide world. If you prefer buying from sellers who bury their costs by offering free shipping, then that’s just awesome. But leave sellers who have selected a different business model alone already. Really, we don’t need customers like you. If we change our minds, we’ll change our models.
(For the record, I’ve been an eBay seller since 1997, and only received a single negative in all that time, from a new buyer who didn’t contact me to express her displeasure. So I’m pretty comfortable in my skin, too.)
I’m a Trading Assistant as well but I’m not following your argument there on why that allows you to charge a higher shipping cost. I don’t offer free shipping on my Trading Assistant items but I also don’t add extra to my shipping cost for those items just because they are being sold for clients. I charge actual shipping plus $1 per payment (ie, if you buy multiple items, you only pay that dollar once) on everything regardless of whether it’s for a client or not. I freely admit that I’m charging a handling fee as well. I’ve been very transparent about why and when I offer free shipping. But you can’t argue that extra costs are part of shipping and buyers need to suck it up… all buyers are rating on is whether the costs seem reasonable to them. I can only get away with my handling fee as long as the buyers think it’s reasonable.
In the end, it boils down to this: If you can pad your costs but it still seems reasonable to buyers, you’ll be fine. But if you think you can charge as much as you want and that buyers shouldn’t leave you bad feedback because you have some special fancy SECRET costs they can’t know about… you’re going to be disappointed. Business doesn’t work like that.
I’ll try my hardest not to buy from you if it will upset you, Angela, don’t worry! ;- ) But you’ll still need to figure out how to earn that 5th feedback star by keeping yours costs reasonable while still meeting your bottom line. Then you won’t have to really hope people won’t buy from you, because you’ll be running a customer friendly business that would allow you to welcome any customer. Being comfortable in your skin doesn’t mean anything if you can’t make customers comfortable enough to buy from you. If your business can only survive by keeping your fingers crossed that you’ll only get a certain type of customer that thinks exactly like you… you’re in trouble.
So much so you may need to upgrade that teeny bobber “Wow” to a grown up “Golly gee wilickers!” ;- )
“So much so you may need to upgrade that teeny bobber “Wow” to a grown up “Golly gee wilickers!” ;- )”
You are a bitch in plain english
Yes!! YES! God, you have made my day by being so textbook. I’ll reply in the next post.
It just occurred to me that this “bitch” comment was probably because I called out the Angela comment above for writing in valley girl like a 12 year old. I regret nothing.
If you’re going to write like you’re flipping your hair at me and cracking your gum, you deserve to be mocked a little. 😉
We’re all grown-ups! Write like one!
Who the hell are you to say what sellers costs are? It’s called shipping and handling for a reason. You are mentally ill if you leave less than 5 stars for the agreed upon costs. You would wreck a persons life ( for a low volume seller, it only takes 2 sickos like yourself) because they had to charge more than the post office charged (bubble wrap, mailers, boxes, label paper, ink, gas to take it to the post office. Sick, sick person.
I triple love this comment. It’s like a masterwork in entitled eBay seller. Let’s break it down:
1. This person’s only reply is to call me “a bitch” above. So, immature name calling rather than reasoned argument. (And, not for anything, but this post is one of my nicer posts. If they think THAT was bitchy, I hope they don’t check out the rest of the site!)
2. “Who are you to say what seller’s costs are?” Person is too lazy to look up half an inch to see who I am AND that I’m an active seller. So, not only epically lazy, willing to look like an idiot online which means they do zero thinking about their brand.
3. Tries to use “metally ill” as an insult. So not just name-calling, hate-speech name calling, the lowest possible form. So, clearly, this person is a class act. See above for destruction of brand with this as well.
4. I’m a “sicko” and a “sick, sick” person for expressing an opinion. OK, you may say this is just more immature name calling but I have to take a second look at this one because this person things like I’m in some way mentally damaged for having an opinion other than theirs (which, again, with the mental illness, um, humor?). Surely they can’t be saying that it’s sick to not expect sellers to rip buyers off? Is it sick to talk about customer service? Sick to question sellers? Either way, if you think buyers deserve anything and sellers shouldn’t be mailed gold for being perfect, you are “sick.”
Love that. It may go on my business cards.
5. This entire rant is based on misinformation… this person was impassioned enough to write up a rant… but not impassioned enough to take half a second to scroll slightly up and see that they are talking to both to a low volume seller exactly like themselves and someone with the exact same costs as them. So their entire rant is based on the fact that they think I’m someone other than who I am… something that would have been easily corrected with half a second of scrolling.
I can’t tell you how grateful I am for comments like this. I think it’s very helpful for the sellers that are really giving their all to understand that when you hear about “sellers having problems” something they are talking about people like this. We’re not comparing apples to oranges here. Someone like this is clearly not worried about giving the best customer service experience. They are looking at it only from an immature, “what can my buyers do for me” perspective which is no way to run a business. OF COURSE people like this can’t cut it on eBay. They aren’t going to be able to cut it in any kind of serious business scenario!
The thing I want you to take away is this: if you actually have maturity, a sense of brand and customer service and business sense, the odds are in your favor. Clowns like this are your competition. If you have even a modicum of business sense, you will be fine.
(UGH. I had to edit this comment because I tried posting it from Outlook and it killed my list formatting.)