Loading ...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..
