I’m generally a pretty easy going person.. not much bothers me.. but occasionally, someone or something comes along that really just bugs the crap out of me to no end.. case in point, a fellow expat co-worker.. I always tell him he must have lived in a cave because in his 14 years in the United States since he has pretty much failed to pick up or even observe 99% of “American culture”.. in any case, he just called me about tomorrow.. in short, we, the expats, are talking tomorrow off to make it a 4 day weekend (Tuesday is Moon Festival Day.. or Mid-Autumn Holiday or something like that).. the conversation went like this:

Kevin: “Hey Aric, so are we going to work tomorrow?”
Me: “No”
Kevin: “Did you call Jerry?” [Jerry is our inept Project Manager]
Me: “Yeah, Janie called him and told him we’re not going in tomorrow”
Kevin: “Oh. What did he say?”
Me: “I don’t know, Janie called him. Call Janie”
Kevin: “Yeah, but what did Jerry say?”
Me: “I. DON’T. KNOW. JANIE. CALLED. HIM.”
Kevin: “I know, but what did JERRY say?”
Me: “How the hell do I know!? I just told you Janie called him! I didnt talk to him!”
Kevin: “Oh. OK.”

There are days when I feel bad for the guy.. like he really needs someone to show him a lot of “things” at work and in life.. then there are days where I just can’t stand talking to him because it drains me.. mentally and physically.. it’s like talking to a log or a block of wood.. when I first met him, I played a joke on him.. somehow, EVERYONE in the room knew I was joking except for him.. I told him we were going to the Buddhist temple after work to pray for “project success”.. I told him he should’ve received an email, telling him we’re going to pray after work and he needed to bring his robe.. he started freaking out, saying he didnt get an email and that he didnt have a robe.. I told him he should’ve received a robe shortly after getting off of the plane because monks were handing them out at the airport.. he said he didn’t know they handed out robes at the airport.. I told him there were two lines, one for people who owned robes and one for people who did not.. this only freaked him out more.. he started asking the project manager if he could leave work early to go buy a robe.. finally we all started laughing.. he was pretty pissed.. I felt bad afterwards.. but damn, he’s just one of those guys.. you ever wonder what kind of people those eBay crooks and email phishers scam? Kevin is one of those guys.. you could sell sand to this guy in the middle of the desert :roll:..

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I figured the “hype” was dying down over our eBay auction listings.. boy, was I wrong.. I did a search on Google looking for articles or stories about eBay and shipping fees. I found a lot of people complaining in forums about how they feel they got ripped off on shipping. I sympathize with these individuals. However, as I stated earlier, I would’ve thought most people would be looking at the “price+shipping” total to calculate the actual cost of purchasing an item on eBay. Now, if we were selling the SAFC II at “market rate”, say $260, and then charging $50 for shipping.. I would consider that a “ripoff”.. and if I were the buyer in such a situation, I would be pissed. However, our auctions if you recall are priced at $200 for the unit and $80 for Next Day Air shipping. The group of people that have been emailing me are only complaining about the shipping price being too high.. and it is.. but that makes up for the $60 savings over “market rate”. Why dont these same group of people email all the OTHER vendors on eBay selling the SAFC II at $260.. why don’t they tell them they are ripping people off by selling an item for $260 when some guy (me) is selling them at $200?

Anyhow, I got another email today which puzzled me at first.. I’m not quite sure what this potential buyer is alluding to as a “problem”..

So basically, im under the impression that im getting a great deal on a VAFC2 when in im saving at most 10 dollars compared to other people? (Due to your inflated shipping) P.S. [west coast] to east coast next day air UPS, $56.20.

He admits he’s saving $10 (at most) compared to other people (vendors, I assume).. and then he seemingly criticizes my “inflated” shipping..

“im under the impression that im getting a great deal on a VAFC2 when in im saving at most 10 dollars compared to other people”, more importantly, “im saving at most 10 dollars compared to other people”

And the problem is?

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I’ve been helping a friend get rid of some stuff on eBay.. most of the items have lots of other listings selling the same items.. one such item is the Apex SAFC II.. almost everyone sells at, or damn near, $260.. reason is, any price below that and its really not worth selling for a variety of rea$on$.. anyhow, so my friend and I were talking.. and I brought up the idea that maybe we could drop the price a little further and then bump up the shipping price.. the perceived drop in “unit price” would attract more buyers but the added shipping price would make up for the difference.. old trick, I know.. but the added effect this would have is what eBay refers to as ‘eBay fee circumvention’. For example, lets say we sell an SAFC2 for $250 and charge $20 for shipping. Now, lets assume eBay’s “commission” is 3% (I’m too lazy to look up the actual commission to eBay). For this transaction, eBay would receive $7.50. Now, using this method, lets say we sell the SAFC2 for $200 and charge $70 for shipping. In this case, eBay would only receive $6.00 and I pocket the difference of $1.50. Now multiply this by, say, 40 auctions per week.. or better yet, lets sell the SAFC2 for $70 and charge $200 for shipping. We’d save $5.40 per transaction. Now, sure, this is not a nice thing to do to eBay since they need to make their money and they are providing us with this venue to sell our wares.. but they always seemed to allow this sort of thing for cell phone accessories. Take for example, a hands free headset.. or a car charger.. there are tons of vendors selling these items for $0.99 and charging $5.99 for shipping, a grand total of $6.98. Sounds like a reasonable deal except for the fact that when the package arrives, its in a padded envelope with a $0.54 stamp on it. This guy ends up paying eBay about $0.03 in fees and pockets pretty much all of the profit.

I’ve never really had a problem with this since as I said, $6.98 seems like a fair deal for a car charger (especially considering the TMobile store would want to charge you $20 for the same item in a fancy plastic box). Additionally, I can also see why eBay could have a problem with this (although I’m sure our increase in sales volume MORE than outweighs the potential lost revenue.. consider it a volume discount.. if they DID yank our auctions and our sales dropped in half, then everyone loses, the consumer, us, AND eBay)… However, what I cannot understand is why some bidders have a problem with this. After mentioning this to my friend, we decided to try a little experiment. Instead of the regular “$259 + $20 shipping”, we tried $199 + $80 shipping, Next Day Air, even. Not a huge difference, but one where we’d pocket a little extra money and it would be “too close” for eBay to call (otherwise they’ll yank your auction and send you the ‘eBay Fees Circumvention’ policy). To the buyer, they are paying the same price, $279.00. However, I recently have been flooded with emails from eBay buyers telling me how I’m being a prick and trying to screw them over by charging $80 for shipping. Here’s an example:

So basically you fool people to think your offering the unit for $199 when in reality its $279 shipped.

To which I replied:

How is that fooling anyone? You know precisely what you are paying. Let me ask you, how is this any different than paying $279 for the SAFC2 with FREE shipping? Couldn’t you also logically say that a person using this method is also, in your words, “fooling” people into buying a unit at $279 with FREE shipping, when in fact it is the very same? Would it be logical to assume a person selling SAFC2s is able, somehow, magically, to get FREE shipping from UPS or FedEx? You’re going to pay for the SAFC2 and you’re going to pay shipping. How the GRAND TOTAL is divided to reflect those two costs should be of no consequence to anyone. The grand total is what you should expect to pay and the grand total is what I would expect to receive.

Right? Am I being a prick? I don’t think so.. yet everyone seems so offended by the high shipping cost.. but if you compare grand totals, you’ll see that there really in NO price difference at all and our listed “$199″ unit price really only serves to get you interested in our auction.. and *ahem* it circumvents some eBay fees.. but, but.. it differentiates our auctions from everyone elses.. is this any different than the “1 only at this price” cars advertised in the Saturday newspaper? seriously, I wonder about the quality of education these days.. pop into any automotive related forum and note all the misspelled words.. incorrectly used words (there versus their or they’re, the trickiest one).. I’m no spelling bee and I wasnt a straight A student.. but shit, some of the crap I see is just plain stupid.. it would make a person think motorheads are all idiots.. funny thing is, some of the smartest people I know are motorheads..

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