Be Honest................

This is one of the reasons to use free shipping. You get the 10% discount on postage if you purchase it through eBay but do not have to pay the 10% fee on it. TC

 

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A small flat rate box to ship a $100 item is $5.05 from eBay and $5.60 if bought at the post office.

If I offer free shipping, no matter where I buy my postage, my final value fee is $10.

If I add $5 shipping to my listing, the FV fee is now $10.50.

Whether I buy postage from eBay ($5.05) or from USPS ($5.60), my FV fee remains $10.50.

Buying postage from eBay saves me $0.55, so, essentially, my FV fee is now $9.95 by buying postage from eBay.

Plus I don't have to drive to the post office to buy that postage as my carrier picks up the package at my door. Extra savings.

 

I'm not sure where the disconnect is here. Are you assuming that if you sell an item with "free shipping", you can't then buy postage through eBay?

That's exactly what I did on my two recent auctions -- listed them with free shipping, bought postage through eBay.

 

Its why people always take shipping costs in consideration. Why not just offer free shipping if you are just going to use a stamp?

 

Read my post (#82) again. Slowly.

 

Some of you are mixing apples & oranges. The original OP’s post said nothing about the shipping methods specified in the ad, only the cost. Like I said, rational bidders adjust their bids so that shipping is considered in the total price paid. If the ad says nothing about “premium” shipping and the buyer received the coin safely, the buyer has no legitimate complaint and should only fault themselves for not clarifying shipping methods with the seller. In others words, the buyer is a little CS. These types of buyers are one reason I hate selling on eBay and rarely do sell coins there.

 

True, but when you agree to pay $5+ for shipping, you expect your item to arrive in something more secure than a #10 envelope bearing a 49 cent postage stamp.

 

No, I don't "expect" or "assume" anything not stated in the ad. I consider $5 to be pretty low shipping, as there are others costs associated, including the seller's time. If the winning bid is $1 and the shipping is $399, I don't expect the seller to hand deliver a $1 coin to my door, nor do I want a $1 coin hand delivered for $399 - I expect a coin worth somewhere around $400 to be delivered safely.

Maybe the OP was really not happy with the coin, as I doubt there would be any complaints if he/she felt the coin was worth twice what was paid.

Edit: I will concede that maybe the seller wasn’t wise shipping a coin the way he did, but then some coins can be sent this way safely. The coin in question was delivered safely – if it wasn’t the buyer would have a legitimate complaint and would receive a refund from the seller or eBay.

 

I did, several times, and I'm still not sure what you're trying to say.

In your original post, you said:

That last sentence is what I don't get.

You've got four choices:

Sell for $100 + $5 shipping, paying $10.50 FVF. Buy postage through eBay for $5.05.

Sell for $100 + $5 shipping, paying $10.50 FVF. Buy postage from USPS for $5.60.

Sell for $100 with free shipping, paying $10 FVF. Buy postage through eBay for $5.05.

Sell for $100 with free shipping, paying $10 FVF. Buy postage from USPS for $5.60.

If you sell for $100 + $5 shipping, you pay FVF on that "$5 shipping", no matter where you buy your postage.

So I don't understand why "it seems like a wash" to you. It seems like you're assuming that you can only buy postage through eBay if you list it as a shipping fee on the auction, and that isn't true.

What am I missing?

 

I'd definitely leave 2 stars for that. My personal policy is to leave 4 stars when I'm charged actual shipping cost (because free shipping is 5 stars automatically, so I believe more than free should be at best 4 stars); 3 stars if I'm charged more than it cost to ship if the handling (packaging, protection) clearly was less than I was charged, but not greatly so; and 2 if it was clearly nowhere near necessary to charge me that much. If it got to the point where the shipping was so unreasonable as to be worth 1 star, I'd never have bought it in the first place (and if anything in the DSR was so bad as to deserve 1 star, I'd probably be leaving an overall negative, or at best a neutral if the actual item was still otherwise OK).

I don't mind covering the seller's shipping costs, but charging more for shipping and handling than it cost you is pretty blatantly against eBay's rules (though difficult to enforce, unfortunately). You don't get paid for your time; you get paid for your item. You're buying a product, not a service; the time it took the seller to list the item, package, etc. is their own problem, not the buyer's.

I also despise sellers that try to pad their profit by upping the shipping/handling cost beyond what it actually costs them to ship and package the item. That's just plain dishonest IMO. (And I don't have any sympathy for those doing so to cover their eBay/PayPal fees; you're supposed to to cover those in the price paid for the item.)

 

Ebay charges 10% on the FV of $100.00 + $5.00 shipping = $105.00 (FV fee is $10.50). You still have to buy postage after that (eBay does not give $5.00 credit toward postage) and eBay does not charge any fee on any postage you buy from them. A flat rate box at eBay is $5.05. Same box at USPS is $5.65. No, you don't have to buy postage from eBay.
The 50 cents of FV fees on the $5.00 shipping is offset by the 60 cent savings realized by buying postage from eBay instead of USPS.
Get it now?

ETA: No matter whether you give free shipping or charge extra for it, you can ship by any means you choose. eBay allows you to enter a tracking number if you chose to ship outside of eBay.

 

As a seller, offering free shipping not only saves you money in fees, it also likely increases the number of bids on your item and as related to the OP, it allows you to send the item any way your heart desires. TC

 

Unless I'm misreading...that's not a wash. You end up 10 cents better off. Now, that might not seem like much...but if someone was selling with a lot of volume that could add up and become significant.

 

...and get 5 stars in the DSR automatically.

 

Like others here have said, all that matters is the total price that you pay for the item.
Would you leave a bad shipping rating if you bought a 1 oz. silver eagle for $10 + $10 shipping? It works out to $20 total for an ASE. Frankly, it's none of the buyers business how much is spent on shipping.

All that matters is the end result.

I have hundreds of items for sale on EBay. I charge shipping on all but roughly 20 listings. I charge $1.95 shipping on most items and this is UNDER my cost for shipping. A buyer should only be concerned with the total cost of the item.

 

What's really funny is that folks will nickel dime you to death on shipping yet not hesitate to spend $100 on a coin.

 

Speaking from the point of view of a buyer, if I paid $5 or more for shipping I would feel ripped off if the item arrived in a regular stamped envelope.

However, when I put myself in the seller's shoes I can see how somebody may look at this question a bit differently. Personally I hate having to go the the post office during my lunch hour, and even going to the front desk at work to address and mail an envelope is a hassle. So if I have to spend my lunch break writing on envelopes instead of surfing the net, isn't that time worth something?

I've never sold anything on Ebay but if I did get into that business I would rather sell a few high value items than lots of low value ones. I value my leisure time too much to spend hours upon hours photographing and listing cheap coins and putting together individual shipments for each one of them. I can't believe how many listings there are on Ebay for coins worth $1 or even less. Don't the sellers have anything better to do? Maybe I'm lazy but I'd sure rather sell one $100 item than ten $10 items...

 

If a seller does this, do they lose out an any seller protection by not having a tracking number?

 

I would think so.

 

This is probably why eBay advises not charging for shipping.

When I have something to auction that could be expensive to ship, I just put a reserve in for that much money. I don't mind giving things away now and then, but I'm not going to pay the shipping too