Sometimes I have to shake my head.....

[corsair231]

Any "profit" should be built into the ITEM not the SHIPPING.

I agree and not to change the subject but something else that gets me from private sellers is, "I'll take pay pal (usually for an already over priced part) but you have to cover the fee or send it as a gift."

Com'on what is the seller's fee?? 3% maybe? or $3 on a $100 part. If the $3 dollars is a deal breaker on the $100 part then price it at $103 to start with. Or am I supposed to send it as a gift and that way my $100 dollar part comes in broken and I've got no recourse when the seller says "You bought it as is, Sucker. Oh I meant to say sorry"
Sorry, but I'll give up the $3 dollars for the $97 in my bank account any day.

 

[DavidM]

What's funny is the 3% is the seller's fee but the buyer has to pay for it. Lol

 

[TT/Ameasap]

Summit and Jegs are the worst sometimes. I usually end up throwing various parts I want in the cart to see if it affects shipping rates and go from there. I play the same game with our vendors too.

 

[DavidM]

I have never paid for shipping at Jegs. I have at Summit.

 

[Stage24u]

I agree and not to change the subject but something else that gets me from private sellers is, "I'll take pay pal (usually for an already over priced part) but you have to cover the fee or send it as a gift."

Com'on what is the seller's fee?? 3% maybe? or $3 on a $100 part. If the $3 dollars is a deal breaker on the $100 part then price it at $103 to start with. Or am I supposed to send it as a gift and that way my $100 dollar part comes in broken and I've got no recourse when the seller says "You bought it as is, Sucker. Oh I meant to say sorry"
Sorry, but I'll give up the $3 dollars for the $97 in my bank account any day.

3% or 30% PayPal does not protect the SELLER from the BUYER filing a fraudulent claim, then getting to keep the item AND the $$$$.

PayPal is NOT seller friendly, and favors the buyer 99 times of 100........unless you do MASSPay (no fees, no charge-back)

PayPal's motto should be "A fool and his money, are easily parted"......

Sorry, but I'll give up the $3 dollars for the $97 in my bank account any day.

$97 is better than $0.

 

[TexasT]

PayPal's motto should be "A fool and his money, are easily parted"......

A fool and his money are soon partying, that's the way I see it most of the time.
PayPal , just tryin to gouge a living.

Posted from the TurboBuick.Com mobile app

 

[GNVenom]

Let me offer my perspective as a business owner:

I had a discussion years ago with a reseller of Caspers parts. He asked my why I charged him $5.95 for a part sent to him. It shipped UPS ground. He looked up the rate chart and showed that the package clearly cost $3.31 - he felt he was being ripped off, so why am I "overcharging" him?

So I had to explain. If you have a retail store and you sell an item, you don't charge shipping, so the customer pays the sale price plus tax. Overhead is worked into each sale. That's cut and dried.
However -
If you have a business, you need to ship the items. But, the UPS charge is not what it actually cost. You have MANY other costs involved; here's a list that I rattled off the top of my head:

1. Weekly cost paid to FEDEX and UPS for the convenience of their trucks picking up the parcels.
2. Packaging: You need to purchase cardboard boxes, packing paper, bubble-wrap, gummed tape in bulk to ship packages.
3. Shipping Department: A space in your warehouse with furniture, electrical connections, a computer, and other things dedicated ONLY to shipping and receiving.
4. Shipping Department Clerk: A salaried employee there every day, all day, to handle the shipping and receiving needs.
4. Employee insurance, vacation time, sick days, training time: Costs involved in that shipping clerk. Add a total typical hourly rate of at least $21 to the cost of shipping. And that's being cheap...
5. Heating, air conditioning, lighting, maintenance, insurance, and cost of the building: That all applies to every square inch of that shipping department.
6. Packages "lost in shipping" or "damaged in shipping" or "I never got the package, it was left on the front porch". Guess who eats the cost on most of those?
7. "You should insure the package before you ship to me". Customers don't want to pay extra for this, so guess who eats the cost?
8. "I ordered this Sunday night, Next-Day-Air, and it didn't show up Monday morning! I want another one shipped TODAY or a refund". Yes, we have seen this stupidity many times. Who eats the cost?
9. The business has to pay shipping charges for the incoming raw materials, generally worked into the profit on the item. So that's usually not a concern. Unless you need an item expedited.
10. If you can't get the post office to stop by and pick up parcels, you need to send an employee out to drop off the parcels. Gas, wages, insurance...all costs added.

This was just off the top of my head during that conversation. I'm sure there were some things I missed. So, it got me thinking. I did an analysis of the money collected in shipping vs. the real costs associated with it. At that standard shipping rate then (this was back in the mid-90's) and by the end of the year, the company actually took a $24,000 LOSS in the shipping department. So I adjusted the "Shipping and Handling" charges so that the end of the year netted a zero loss. Today, even that is a difficult task.

Economics 101. If a company nets a loss due to shipping, it should not be shipping. If a company nets a loss in sales, it should not sell.

Down from soapbox. Just rattling off some observations.

 

[Turbo Negro]

That's why the fees are generally called "shipping AND handling".

I went through this will several buyers on flee bay a few years ago. Nevermind they were buying used stuff for pennies on the dollar to begin with most the time.

 

[corsair231]

3% or 30% PayPal does not protect the SELLER from the BUYER filing a fraudulent claim, then getting to keep the item AND the $$$$.

PayPal is NOT seller friendly, and favors the buyer 99 times of 100........unless you do MASSPay (no fees, no charge-back)

PayPal's motto should be "A fool and his money, are easily parted"......




$97 is better than $0.

You're right on all four accounts.

"PayPal doesn't protect the seller", people always say this and they are right. Some people are crooks, plain and simple but if you own a store front business then you have just as good of a chance of someone walking in and robbing you. This is one of the dangers of selling things. Of course the anonymous through the mail thing does make it easier, but just for the less violent criminals.
"PayPal favors the buyer." This is to encourage buyers to use it. If it was very difficult to use or heavily biased to the seller then people would not use it. It also protects the buyer from spreading his credit card numbers around to a lot of low volume and possibly shady sellers. High volume, dedicated business can use credit cards but there is still a fee involved in those and it is difficult for a person with an occasional extra part to sell to justify a contract with a credit card company. PayPal makes it easier for those sellers to get their money quickly. If not for that then you are back to money orders or personal checks which just slow things down for everybody.

Mail order selling requires a certain amount of trust and in a community as small as ours it doesn't take long for a reputation to be made, good or bad. If you are that private person who has the occasional part to sell PayPal may not protect you from a crooked buyer but that buyer will not be able to buy from people here for long before everybody knows he can't be trusted. I know sometimes you don't know who the buyer is. An example, the buyer is someone who just signed up to swindle you out of your part. After he's done that the word gets out not to deal with that guy. It may have cost the seller but in the end the knowledge helped the rest of the board. Imagine now a crooked seller. He joins and hangs around a few months and all of a sudden he is parting out a pristine GN at very good prices. Ten or more members buy parts from him worth several hundred dollars. Sales are check, money order, and PayPal but the buyers must send it as a gift. The guy disappears and the buyers get bad parts or no parts and no hopes of money back. Point is one bad buyer may swindle a few sellers but one bad seller could swindle a lot of buyers. I think it is more important for a buyer to feel safe than the seller, I mean without buyers can anyone be a seller?

Truthfully "A fool and his money" being easily parted is every seller and every business' goal.

$97 dollars in my bank account is better than $0. Absolutely no argument there.

 

[Slp223]

if you do end up buying one make sure it is in stock I waited over 3 months form mine to show up.

 

[4timesT]

Personally I don't see why in the world a basic letter to send to canada is I believe a $1.15 versus what it is in the US.

denniskirban@yahoo.com

It probably costs more to send a letter to Canada because the Canadian postal service has to sort and deliver the letter (labor/transport) once it arrives from the US.