Sunday, November 2, 2014

eBay (as of 11/1/15 FORMER) Improvements Regarding Reasonable Shipping Fees & Sports Cards

                                                  11/1/15  VERY SAD UPDATE-          
eBay went back to their 2011-2013 tactics where they no longer care about sellers breaking ANY eBay Rules and they are giving buyers who call them about these bad sellers the run-around for HOURS and it's just a total waste of time.
I had a friend fight a seller who charged him a HIDDEN S&H fee of $1.00 (for EACH additional item won) for one extra regular sized card he won on the same day as another card!  THIS CLEARLY BREAKS EBAY'S HIDDEN FEE RULE AND FALLS UNDER FEE AVOIDANCE RULES AS WELL. The seller's TOTAL allowable eBay Reasonable Shipping fee rules for his 3-ounce package $2.54. It was $2.04 eBay PRINT SHIPPING LABEL postage, and .20 cents for the cheap NO-NAME bubble envelope he used. The top-loaders were USED and had irremovable tape on them, so they could NOT be charged for and no other expense was over a penny or two. THIS SELLER WAS CHARGED $3.99 S&H & EBAY MADE EMPTY PROMISES AND EVEN TOLD MY FRIEND TO LEAVE NEGATIVE FEEDBACK WHICH EBAY REMOVED??? Then the seller left Positive/NEGATIVE feedback against the buyer, and the buyer no longer could get eBay on the phone after trying for over an hour.  
eBay was showing hope there for a FULL 6-months, but they flushed it all down the toilet AGAIN! This should finish eBay for all honest/honorable buyers and sellers very soon.


                                                  11/02/14
I was contacted by a woman who has taken it upon herself to find that there are now three different eBay Customer Service pages describing what sellers CAN and CANNOT charge for Shipping & Handling. She also said she contacted eBay and confirmed specifics with an eBay S&H Specialist. This woman knew what she was talking about because she mentioned things that ONLY a person who really did the research would know. These are things memorized in my memory that confirmed that everything she said was truthful.

      SO eBay COLLECTORS HAVE A REASON TO BE HAPPY! 

Sellers can NO LONGER charge $3.00 to start, then charge you .25 cents, .50 cents, OR MORE  for each additional item (especially with no maximum fee). I've been fighting eBay to reinstate the rules that they removed in 2010 regarding Overcharging Shipping & Handling fees ever since then to STOP GREEDY SELLERS from paying their eBay/PayPal fees with their VERY HIGH Shipping & Handling charges.
For a few years, you couldn't find anything in the Customer Service search box if you typed "overcharging shipping fees", or other similar terms. eBay made it that you had to SPECIFICALLY type the word "Unreasonable" or "Reasonable" ONLY in regards to finding high shipping fee rules. Then the rules were so loosely described that NO ONE agreed what they meant! WELL, EBAY CHANGED ALL OF THAT NOW!  If you are a Buyer or a Seller of sports cards on eBay, you need to read these eBay Rules pages:

 SELLER SHIPPING RULES: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-practices.html#postage

MORE SHIPPING FEE RULES: Type "high shipping fees", or "overcharging shipping fees", or "unreasonable shipping fees" in the CS search box and eBay will take you to a SIMPLIFIED page describing what sellers can and cannot charge in their shipping fees.

SELLER GENERAL RULES: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/rules.html

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NOW WE CAN DISCUSS HOW TO GET SELLERS TO FOLLOW THESE RULES AND HOW TO GET EBAY EMPLOYEES TO UNDERSTAND THE SITUATION WHEN A SELLER OVERCHARGES YOU FOR SHIPPING.

Sadly in the Sports Card hobby on eBay, nearly all sellers old and new are disgruntled at EVERYONE! They are mad at eBay, PayPal, card companies, price guides, the economy, Obama, the government as a whole, the world, and the list goes on & on. I personally made a lot of money from this hobby on eBay in the short desperate times in my life where I couldn't find a job or wasn't making enough to live on when I lived in Florida. There was not one year since 1989 that I did not donate 30,000 sports cards or more in any year! So I am grateful to this hobby forever for the help it provided me, and the ability it gave me to donate a huge number of cards every year for 25-years.

So why are these disgruntled sellers so mad? I have no idea- you'll have to ask them because I can't for the life of me figure out why they'd take out their frustration of the ONLY people (eBay BUYERS) that are still enabling them to sell ANYTHING! With the way the hobby fell apart in 2010, sports card sellers are lucky to still be able to sell anything at all! If these knuckleheads who OVERCHARGE BUYERS for shipping had any common-sense they'd only charge the actual postage cost and eat the rest of the cost just to keep buyers HAPPY that will buy from you again!
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So, OK now that we know sellers will try to get every penny they can from you let's discuss what they CAN & CANNOT charge you for in the Shipping & handling cost specific to sports cards and you should use this guide to explain these things to eBay as well if your seller charges you $4.50 to ship (4) single cards that cost them $2.17 in postage, .25 cents for a bubble envelope and used top-loaders (they CAN'T charge you for used top-loaders!!!). It is eBay's opinion that sellers must try to find the cheapest way to ship, pack, and care for your items. So I'm making it easy, here I'll put the cheapest way (and most effective way) to ship sports cards! Send a link of this page to sellers if they are doing things that are dumb costing YOU MORE MONEY in Shipping Fees because your seller is IGNORANT!!!

Firstly they must use eBay's PRINT SHIPPING LABEL service because they charge the LOWEST price for actual postage, period. You simply print the shipping label on plain paper which you tape to the bubble envelope. If you don't have a printer, YOU SHOULDN'T BE SELLING ON EBAY! Printer's cost $35-$40 these days as you only need a BLACK INK cartridge set on DRAFT and your ink will last to print literally several hundred shipping labels!
The Post Office is still facing bankruptcy, so the LAST THING they want is you to waste their time at the Post Office window causing the Post Office to pay employees to stand there and do what sellers NEED TO BE DOING FROM HOME FOR LESS MONEY! For example, a 3-OZ package will cost you $2.17 ($2.07 for a 2-OZ package) in postage using eBay's Print Shipping Label Service. The same envelope will cost you $3.37 from any Post Office window!!! To those who do not know: TRACKING HAS BEEN FREE FROM BOTH THE POST OFFICE WINDOW AND EBAY FOR WELL OVER A YEAR NOW! So eBay's statement that sellers can add tracking costs to handling fees is OUTDATED and VOID!

*** USE ONLY EBAY'S PRINT SHIPPING LABEL SERVICE FOR YOUR POSTAGE AND TO PRINT SHIPPING LABELS! 


I can't believe that there are still ignorant sellers paying $1.49 or more for shipping envelopes at the Post Office when quality bubble envelopes of many different sizes cost .25 cents each RIGHT ON EBAY in lots of (25) or more. Size #000 is best for a 2-3 REALLY THICK cards or up to (8) cards in regular top-loaders.
 
You no longer need to put something like a Styrofoam Peanut in the envelope to make it thick enough for TRACKING! That stopped when the Post Office made tracking FREE well over a year ago (if not two years!). 

SELLERS: STOP PUTTING UNREMOVABLE "INVISIBLE" TAPE ALL OVER THE PLACE MAKING IT SO DIFFICULT TO GET CARDS OUT OF YOUR UNNECESSARY WRAPPING!!!

The best tape to use BY FAR is blue masking tape on top-loaders as it can easily be removed without leaving glue all over the place! All you need to put is a VERY SMALL piece just on the tops of loaders. You only need to put tape across the open end of top-loaders to keep cards from sliding out. It is never necessary to put tape around several top-loaders and wrap the tape AROUND AND AROUND two or three times: all that does is it DESTROYS the reuse of every top-loader you used. I can't tell you how upsetting it is when I get cards in brand new top-loaders with "invisible"
 tape on top of each one. Even folding over an end doesn't work, especially in winter. Colder air makes the glue UNREMOVABLE with "invisible" tape no matter what! THAT MAKES THOSE TOP-LOADERS GARBAGE! Most (if not all) collectors have their own way of keeping their cards in top-loaders. Some don't put anything on top of the loaders but many do just to keep the cards from sliding out or around if you drop the top-loader. NO ONE wants a crooked piece of irremovable UGLY tape on top of their top-loaders!!! SCOTCH (or any brand of) INVISIBLE TAPE IS IRREMOVABLE!

eBay CONSIDERS .25 CENTS TO BE THE MAXIMUM HANDLING FEE THAT SHOULD BE CHARGED FOR SEVERAL ITEM SPORTS CARDS SHIPPING IN THE SAME ENVELOPE!

To those sellers who think it's OK to charge .50 cents extra S&H for each additional card won: IT IS NOT ALLOWED ANYMORE AND IS CONSIDERED UNREASONABLE SHIPPING FEES BY EBAY! Let's break this down for the slow sellers:

1) We already established that a 3-OZ envelope costs you $2.17 in postage (extra ounces are like .07-.10 cents using eBay's Print Shipping Label Service).

2) We already established that sellers can buy quality bubble envelopes right on eBay for .25 cents each (OR LESS)!

3) We already established that the maximum handling fee allowed for multiple items shipped in the same envelope is .25 cents.

So $2.17 + .25 + .25 = $2.67 & rounding off to $3.00 is OK as far as I'm concerned (to pay for top-loaders if BRAND NEW with blue masking tape ONLY on tops) and that is the MOST any sports card seller should charge you for shipping MULTIPLE sports cards to you safely packaged. That $3.00 amount is for an average package. If you win only one thin card, sellers should adjust accordingly. There are some sellers who understand the new rules, and have common-sense. These sellers are charging $2.32 average Shipping & Handling AND NO EXTRA CHARGE FOR ADDITIONAL CARDS WON! This is the RIGHT WAY to sell sports cards on eBay!!! I congratulate & recommend those sellers who do not charge for extra items won! THANK YOU!

If you explain everything I stated here to a sports card seller (especially more than once or one way) and asked for a refund of the amount they overcharged ($1.50, or $2.00 in most cases- I wouldn't bother for anything less but I still would tell the seller they are breaking eBay rules and send them a link of the Shipping Rules page) and they keep saying "I DID NOT OVERCHARGE YOU FOR SHIPPING!" Then call eBay and tell the eBay Specialist (ask if they are) that a Sports Card seller OVERCHARGED YOU for Shipping & Handling according to eBay's Reasonable Shipping Rules and you want to file a complaint against the seller. You can add that the seller refused to refund the amount that you were overcharged.

To end this page I want everyone to think back to collecting in 2001 when baseball was ON FIRE!!! This was before the steroid era, before Corporate assholes ran card companies, back when anyone could actually talk to card company and price guide big shots on the phone! Remember those great days? I certainly do. Would you sellers who are now trying to get all your eBay and PayPal fees out of buyer's Shipping Fees would have done this WRONGFUL ACT in 2001? Of course not. No one did this (for the most part) until 2009 when the economy began to collapse and cards stopped selling for as much as they used to.

Sellers taking out their anger on their buyers is the stupidest thing any seller could do because: it stops buyers from buying from you, it stops bidders from bidding on items they really don't want- but bid anyway while it's cheap just so they can justify paying the $3.00 shipping fee a little better.

SELLERS ARE LOSING MORE MONEY THAN THEY ARE MAKING BY CHARGING .25 CENTS OR MORE FOR EACH ADDITIONAL ITEM WON BUT THEY HAVE BECOME SO BLINDED BY FRUSTRATION THAT THEY CAN'T SEE IT- SO WE BUYERS HAVE TO TEACH THEM! This is perfectly OK according to eBay's Rules and eBay will no longer put strikes against your account by complaining about BAD sellers who are breaking  eBay rules!



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