Odd, isn't it...

[ffutures]

...that when I sell a fairly heavy camera lens on eBay I can get it to the USA in a week, with insurance and tracking, for £17.....

...but if I want to buy a fairly light bit of software from a US vendor on eBay (a disk plus manual in a plastic bag) they quote me up to $50 depending on delivery speed, with delivery at that price still taking up to a week.

Are the US postal options really that crap, or do US vendors just not want to do business with British buyers?

Comments

New eBay technique

[autopope.livejournal.com]

What's going on is this:

eBay search lets you rank items in terms of price, "highest first" or "lowest first".

Obviously, if you're looking for a bargain, you select "lowest first".

Something I've noticed when searching for memory recently is ridiculously cheap items from Hong Kong or Singapore (and the USA) where the postage price considerably exceeds the "Buy it Now" price on the item ... and, taken as a gross sum, makes them roughly as expensive as the realistically-priced items (which invariably have cheaper postage).

The reason is, "lowest first" and "highest first" sorting on eBay doesn't take postage into account, so you can artificially ramp an auction item up the search if you put a chunk of the real price into the postage.

The solution is for eBay to fix their price-sorting algorithm to include all costs.

Re: New eBay technique

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

No - this is me going through every copy on offer on ebay.com and finding that nobody is offering postage to the UK. After that I sent messages to the people who were offering the best deals for US buyers. The one who bothered to reply gave me the prices I quoted.

Re: New eBay technique

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

What I really need to do is spend a Saturday going to every computer market I can find and see if I can turn up a copy of Acrobat V5 or V6 at a reasonable price. Unfortunately I'm probably going to someone's (slightly early) 4th of July party this Saturday, so it won't happen this week.

Re: New eBay technique

[armb.livejournal.com]

And eBay's fees are based on the "Buy it now" price, not the price with shipping included, as far as I can see, giving another incentive to artificially inflate shipping costs to subsidise the item cost.
(I assume there comes a point where eBay object to being ripped off, but maybe if they make enough money from a shop subscription they worry less.)

Re: New eBay technique

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think eBay would rather have the fees from a few thousand £1 transactions than a few hundred £5 transactions. I don't personally charge more than the cost of postage plus a jiffy bag, or whatever packaging I use, but I can see the attraction for people selling small items.