Don't blame the sellers


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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.153.24] on Friday, June 22, 2012 at 01:15:33 :

In Reply to: Shipping price rant posted by Tim Holloway [69.54.28.229] on Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 17:29:32 :

At least not most of the time. Yeah, there are some ebay sellers who used to charge $50 to ship "$1" part, which was just their way of dodging the ebay fees, but now that ebay charges fees based on the total price including shipping that practice is disappearing. I think a lot of consumers are getting used to "free shipping" offered by some of the big retail sites. Those outfits get super good rates from UPS and FedEx and they have enough mark-up on their products that they can roll some of the shipping into the product price.

I try to keep my shipping as low as possible by using envelopes rather than boxes and using USPS first-class mail if it's under a pound. Above a pound, though, and I'm looking at about $8 even for parcel post.

I don't understand the guys who say "It was only a 25 cent part and they charged me $7 shipping!" or something like that. The shipping company doesn't care how much the item cost. All they care about is how big it is. I could sell you a rock for a penny and it might still cost $30 to ship it to you.

The bottom line is freight rates are all going way up. Whether it's fuel costs or obscene profits and lack of competition on the part of the shippers, I don't know, but it's not the seller's fault. The seller has three choices: Charge the customer actual shipping, which people don't like because they're used to "free shipping" from amazon.com and such. Eat the cost of the shipping and lose money on the sales (you can do that once in a while, but not most of the time). Or hide the shipping cost in the product price and probably lose sales because their price is uncompetitive. Personally, I'd prefer honesty.

We're going to have to get used to the fact that it's no longer worth shipping low-value items long distances. Remember when prices were quoted with language like "F.O.B. Chicago"? That meant "free on board", which means "this is the price you pay to us, and we load it in the truck or on the train in Chicago. Whatever it costs to get it from Chicago to your door is between you and the freight company." Free shipping is just a sales gimmick.



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