Anyone care to explain? (ebay auction I noticed)

[cac1959]

Thanks for the clarification, John... I've had a couple of positive transactions with John and would deal with him again... I'm sorry to hear that you had trouble with first class International shipping but it does happen... I've had 2 packages coming from China that never made it out of customs from New York City; I've been fortunate that none of my international packages never got lost... if I ever had a problem with someone claiming they never got a package sent via First Class International Mail, I'd never use First Class with that person again.

While often shipping from the UK to the US (and vice-versa) takes a week, there have been times where it's taken up to 6 weeks... it was around the time John mentioned - I think that's when there was an incident with a terrorist attempting to smuggle a bomb aboard a plane so no packages could travel on passenger flights... Come to think of it, that's the time I didn't receive my 2 packages from China.

Once a package weight gets above 4 pounds, the only shipping options are Priority Mail and Express Mail... and in a strange situation, I sent out a package that weighed 18 pounds to a friend in Canada a couple of weeks ago...I could also send it to a US address for him... Parcel Post to the US was the cheapest at $28.00... But Priority Mail to Canada was cheaper than Priority Mail to his US address by $35.00!

[MarknotaMack]

Like I said what are you shipping with a single car. I was in the states in July and shipped a large box back to myself, containing almost 50 cars. This cost $85 with express mail. I wouldn't call professor Z rare or expensive but if your charging $36 to ship then I wish you luck in future sales. Unfortunately its ebay and there stupid rules again. Buyers don't want to pay high shipping costs but ebay seem to think they control the shipping of items when they don't, so your stuck trying to sell items with reasonable shipping only to be told the item hasnt arrived.
Im sorry to hear there are so many con merchants out there but that is a way of life. If you make mistakes and someone notices then someone will take advantage. It happens everyday. If your selling something worth alot of dollar then you're the seller and have to tell buyers this is how much shipping is because the item is worth so much. If you don't send correctly you will always get chargebacks, ebay don't always take the buyers side as I found out recently. If you charge this much shipping it reflects on taxes too. The UK add this amount to the customs duty and we here get charged 20% on the shipping & item cost plus an £8 ($13) fee just because sellers put a $36 shipping cost. Are we put off yet. YES is the answer and this is if you ship to the UK and you wanna know why you get chargebacks. It looks like Im not the only one who is put off by your charges, but its good to hear your side. Not only are your items cheaper in the US by about half you wanna charge alot to ship too.

[John in Missouri]

Sounds like you'll never understand my position, but for what it's worth, I use to charge $6.95 First Class International for a single Car.

[wintermelon]

There was a three-week stretch in late 2010 / early 2011 where I had five PayPal chargebacks totalling almost $300 for First Class International shipments that the Buyers claimed never made it to their destinations.

I learned the hard way that the United States Postal Service was fooling all of us with those little tracking numbers on the First Class customs forms -- THEY WEREN'T TRACKING THEM AT ALL!

So not only was I out the cost of the postage, but the original item's cost and my exhorbitant eBay & PayPal fees as well. And eBay and PayPal both denied any of my appeals since I could not provide proof of tracking.

So now my listings are geared to International buyers who wish to buy in bulk from me, or to those who don't mind paying a lot to ship a rare and/or expensive item.

By the way, a single Professor Z would run about $36 to the UK, so $25 to Canada is nothing!

Where did you send those to? Italy? France? India?

I am a buyer that deals very often on Ebay and i have been to your shop very often too bad like what Mack mentioned your shipping is what ticked me away. Believe me or not i did consider to get your elmaterdor in the past. After weight in other options i decided to go somewhere else. I can related to your situation... Sometimes is hard to have a Win Win situation. We buyer of course want cheap shipping and sellers rather have less headache because of a sale.

This is just a suggestion and some of the seller is doing. Items that is cheap i will go with First Class and maybe after achieving certain value like 50 USD and above i will go with Priority. So far over the last 1 year i had like 300 packages shipped from USA and it always went well. None had went missing. The First Class sometimes is even faster than priority. Take less than 10 days to arrive. Pretty impressive. I guess this had got to do with the postal system of both my home country and USA.

2 transaction that went bad was Europe. One was con artist and the other one was not sincere at all. I paid my due and learnt my lesson.

Good luck with your sales and i hope i can deal with you in the future

[John in Missouri]

I had to look them up in my old email, but they went to Brazil, Turkey, the UK, France, and Germany.

Four of the five packages were less than $50, but it was the back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back chargebacks that scared me away from First Class International, and eBay itself for a couple of months. I thought that one day I might change back to First Class, and when a frequent customer of mine from Canada begged and pleaded with me to ship First Class and when I did, THAT PACKAGE got delayed and he opened up an eBay case on me! The package finally arrived, but at that point I swore off ever using First Class International ever again.

[DeceptiCog72283]

My apologies John...I didn't mean to start up a whole discussion on the topic of shipping.

I was just curious as to the pricing...and like you confirmed..it was a typo and is now corrected.

[John in Missouri]

I meant to add this, but speaking of Italy, I actually started blocking all Buyers from there about three years ago but then turned them back on once I went to Priority Mail-only. Getting a First Class package to deliver there is like a game of Russian Roulette.

[steffanie175]

I hear you John. First Class Mail International is a very tricky thing to deal with. A wide range of ever changing delivery times(1-8 weeks), lack of tracking outside the US, and lack of protection through eBay/PayPal make it unattractive to the seller. We actually sell enough volume to make it worth our cost... but we literally have to assume so much loss each month to chargebacks/refund for items that don't arrive. We have no idea how many of those are orders that really don't arrive, or just people saying they didn't as there is no proof of delivery. At any rate if you are going to ship 1000+ parcels a month then it is probably okay to lose on a couple. If you aren't selling a lot internationally, then 1-2 chargebacks a month really kills any profit you might make. If our volume of shipment dropped or we downsized our business we would consider doing what you do... Priority Mail only. For now we get away with offering First Class Mail internationally, but I think every seller has to decide for themselves if the risk is worth the reward and hopefully as more buyers out there read these type of posts they will understand the difference in shipping options and cost.