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Sellers; beware Ebay's escalating fees

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RichRMA

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Sell something for say, $200.00 to a far-flung place and the shipping is $200 also.

Think Ebay's fee is about 10%? Wrong. Try 25%. Ebay sales fee, Ebay shipping fee (yes, you pay a fee for your shipping costs, as if they were sales profits), Paypal's fee for you receiving the money. All adds up. If you don't live in the U.S., tack-on another 2-3% for their cut over and above what they pay for the exchange of funds rate. The only way to recoup the fee on shipping is to overcharge the buyer on shipping, which isn't a good idea.
 
Unfortunately people were abusing the nil fees on shipping by charging 0.99 for an item an 10 for shipping so it is understandable why they did this. Annyoying yes but from a business perspective it is closing a loophole.

I have started trading my kit in. Its a little more costly to me in pure terms but tranfers the risk of the onward sale to my LCS and the ultimate new owner gets a 12 month warranty (warranty laws are a little different in the UK to the US).
 
Carl Icahn is absolutely correct. Ebay owning Paypal is a conflict of interest. I'm surprise SEC hasn't step in to split the two company

 
I'm the opposite.

I sell a lot of ( mainly plumbing ) gear on Ebay and find it very profitable. It reaches buyers others cannot. Of course as a profitable business I have to pay taxes on my profits from Ebay.... :-(

I don't sell overseas though as its simply not worth it.

The initial advice from the OP is good though - you need to fully understand the real costs before you find out the hard way. :-P
 
I've stopped using eBay for photo gear for several reasons, ......time lost waiting for an auction to end, various fees added, large number of scammers to name a few.

I've had no issues buying from reliable enthusiasts and pros alike on sites where feedback is easily found and disclosures with pics are provided and the transactions are completed in minutes.

Find something you want, PM the seller, agree on price, send pmt,........ done.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/board/10
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=14

--
"Five out of four people have trouble with fractions."
Regards,
Hank
 
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dannybgoode said:
Unfortunately people were abusing the nil fees on shipping by charging 0.99 for an item an 10 for shipping so it is understandable why they did this. Annyoying yes but from a business perspective it is closing a loophole.
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I know they did that, but they also invoked a maximum fee of $6.00 to ship any kind of book (as an example), which obviated the need to tack on a sales fee on shipping. But it doesn't work 100% that way either, if you try to ship a 10lb book through a courier, you are looking at a $100 or more, and the post offices are about 1/2 that. But it could wipe out profit or even getting back what you paid!
 
You can ship electronics wherever you want, completely free trade. Whereas Amazon lives in the dark ages of the 1970's where they WILL NOT ship electronics outside of the U.S. (you have to go through Amazon.ca or .uk where prices and variety suck) so they are completely anti-free trade. You could probably make a case against them for restraint of trade against NAFTA.
 
RichRMA said:
You can ship electronics wherever you want, completely free trade. Whereas Amazon lives in the dark ages of the 1970's where they WILL NOT ship electronics outside of the U.S. (you have to go through Amazon.ca or .uk where prices and variety suck) so they are completely anti-free trade. You could probably make a case against them for restraint of trade against NAFTA.
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I live in Singapore and occasionally have Amazon US ship electronics to me, the recent items were from Plantronics, Jabra and Western Digital. They won't ship some items to Singapore, not only electronics, I expect this is due to distribution restrictions by the manufacturers.

I use a service call Vpost, they provide a US shipping address. Amazon ships to them, they consolidate & forward, works OK for the items Amazon (and other companies) won't ship to Singapore. There are a number of these consolidators/forwarders that serve various countries.


Cheers,
Doug
 
This kind of ancient, protectionist B.S. isn't confined to Ebay. I had one company that couldn't ship to me in Canada because of some stupid agreement where the production company was "protecting" dealers here. It cost me $800 shipping to ship to an American intermediary and then on to me, but I still saved $1500 over the cost in Canada.
 
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I avoid all dealers that have (Customs services and international tracking provided), camera costs 500$ and you pay extra 200$... for customs and stuff. I´m euro btw

I´m suspicious that the custom tax does not goes to the country customs, because I never had equipment stopped by customs, it always slide.
 
... shipped to me in the US, China, and Korea for years, and have never been charged a customs fee. And that includes Apple computers. Only one time, as far as I know, did the customs (Beijing) even look at something, which was a new, high-end Sony dSLR. I had to go there to pick it up, but they didn't charge anything.

I've looked at retailers using these services that supposedly take care of customs fees, and I understand why they do...it is security for them as far as shipping to non-domestic locations. But, I decided I wouldn't go that route unless it was some small item that I couldn't find anywhere else and really needed.
 
Corkcampbell said:
... shipped to me in the US, China, and Korea for years, and have never been charged a customs fee. And that includes Apple computers. Only one time, as far as I know, did the customs (Beijing) even look at something, which was a new, high-end Sony dSLR. I had to go there to pick it up, but they didn't charge anything.

I've looked at retailers using these services that supposedly take care of customs fees, and I understand why they do...it is security for them as far as shipping to non-domestic locations. But, I decided I wouldn't go that route unless it was some small item that I couldn't find anywhere else and really needed.
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