@i-love-my-sheep wrote:
I never expect to only pay the stamp cost of an item. I KNOW that it is reasonable to add the fees into the postage cost (which a lot of us do, including myself). I KNOW it is reasonable to add a handling / packaging cost into the price. I KNOW it is also reasonable to add in fuel costs if the seller has to travel a distance to the post office. I expect those things
However, when the seller uses a soft drink box and 4 pieces of broken styrofoam to package an item (at no cost to them) and said seller lives 2 doors from the post office (yes, I checked before I sent the message in case he lived out of town and had to travel a distance), then I find charging more than double the actual postage cost is unacceptable. Unless he is charging $25/hr to walk 2 doors to the PO, then it is nothing more than postage piracy and a direct attempt at profiting on postage, which eBay tried to stop by adding FVF's onto postage.
For the record, I didn't ask for or demand a refund in the message I sent. I pointed out (nicely) that I found the postage cost to be excessive in this instance, taking into consideration the added costs I mentioned above. He went ahead and sent a refund prior to replying to my message. If I'd charged $14.90 for a small parcel item, I would expect my feedback and stars to be trashed pretty quickly and rightly so.
I have sent sellers an extra payment a few times when they have quoted $6 for postage and the actual postage was nearly triple. By the time eBay and PayPal took their fees from the final price and they paid the extra out of their pocket for postage, they were actually running at a loss for that sale. Seems you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
You didn't need to explain any further ๐ , at least not in response to me , the majority of my comments in this thread have been in general, and not referring to this particular situation.
But, since I am here, I will say that reasearching what you think the seller's extra costs may have amounted to and making conclusions on their behalf is a bit surprising to me. I don't want to discount the fact that the seller replied to your message, which I am also sure was reasonable, and explained they accounted for more postage than they paid and issued a refund though, and again, my reason for posting in this thread is not to address this specific situation, as such, but to comment on some of the things that bother me when a buyer takes issue with the postage they paid.
Like I said, I have paid $10.00 postage on something only to receive it with $2.10 stamps on a large letter. I had a series of thoughts about that, but ultimately did not make any assumptions on the seller's behalf except the one thing I can be fairly certain of, and that's this:
When a seller sits down and prices the item and postage, I can almost guarantee you without a shadow of a doubt, they don't sit there and go "what's the best way to rip off the buyer on the cost of this item?"
No. They sit there and go "when all is said and done, fees and postage paid, I want to make sure I end up with X amount for this item. I'll make the price X and the postage X in order to acheive that". That also means, in many cases (not yours, obviously), no, the buyer could not have paid less for the item because the seller was going for a total and happened to put more in column B than a buyer thinks is OK.
Buyers (almost) always pay more than what the seller does.
I have just over $2 set as postage on 99% of my items, with all additional items at no extra. Often enough, someone will buy enough items that I need to spend anywhere for around $4.50 (for a 250-500gm large letter, including the packaging I use), up to occasionally a 3kg satchel. Buyer still has only paid $2 - does that make me some kind of postage Robin Hood? (as opposed to a pirate).
I assure you, the answer is no, because - like most other sellers when they price their stuff, whether their charges are deemed unacceptable afterwards or not - I know what I'm doing.
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