eBay: postage and insurance madness

[Funkstar]

i find this both amusing and irritating at the same time.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1GB-SanDisk-Me...QQcmdZViewItem

Someone selling a 1gig memory Stick Duo Pro. Fine. Buy Now price? £19.95 WOW! i hear you say. Postage? £12 OK, a bit OTT cos i know it will only have a couple of $ in stamps on the envelope when it gets here. Postal Insurance? £20.95!!!!

Holy cow batman! how can insurance be more than the item. I know all they are doing is moving the figures around and it all ads up to a sensible price, but man shouldn't eBay have rules against this so people don't get duped? or is that just being picky and nanny ish?

i've never fallen for the 'bargain' item and not seen the delivery costs, but i'm sure others have.

[Stoo]

report it then

[da_ging]

doubt ebay would take any action against that seller even if he is braking rules not with the amount of money he must be making them

[chrestomanci]

If you buy something priced that way, you save import duty, as you can mail order anything you like tax free, so long as it costs less than £20. If the seller had priced it more normaly (say £55 + £5 post & insurance), then the buyer would pay VAT and duty on that £55.

[mp3c]

yer that is a little extream

[BUFF]

It's a way around paying eBay fees based upon the item's real value & yes its's against the rules ...

[Jonny]

I saw a guitar for £5 - for postage it said check description. The description mentioned - in the small print (very small!) it stated postage at £250!
Crazy.

[nev_payne]

thats how sellers make money - sell the item low, and gain profit in the post. Remember - always read the post label/stamps - you soon see how much they made.

I bought a mini oil filter the other day - £1 winning bid, but the postage was £2...thought nothing of it really, but when I got it, postage was 93p. OK not such a great example, but never trust what you read on ebay bids.

[Aaron]

eBay never take action against these kind of sellers. At most they'll delist the item (and refund the seller).

It's usually sellers with thousands of feedback doing this too.

[Mafney]

Looks like a little bit of a scam to me. Puts loads of required Postage Insurance that some people might miss when buying and bingo, he gets more money, you get pissed off and leave negative feedback, he replies saying that he advertised clearly and hasn't done anything wrong.

[autopilot]

What exactly is the problem here? What does it matter whether it costs £5+£20 postage, or £20+£5postage, it all the same at the end of the day. If the item + postage + insurance still = bargin, why complain? As already stated, it can aviod YOU having to pay import duty and having your item held by custums. It also save's the seller money because the listing fee and comission is not taken from the postage amount, only the starting price and final value.

It's only against eBay rules because eBay makeless money from these types of listing. I am not saying it's right or wrong, but you can't blame people for doing it since eBay put their prices up. eBay is a rip off for sellers these days.

No one is making you buy it. Do the math. If people can't count, they should probably not use eBay anyway and its thier fault.

Not long ago i bought a Sony Pro Duo 512Mb card for my K750i. Cost me £5 for the card + £24 for postage. Came from Hong Kong in 3 days. Bargin. Now find me a offical Sony 512 Pro duo in the UK for under £30.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1GB-SanDisk-Me...QQcmdZViewItem

The guy clearly states...

NO VAT - 5 YEAR WARRATY - BRAND NEW - TOTAL £53.XX PSP

In the subtitle (which is even visable from the search page). And a total £52 (including delivery) for a 1 gig is a very very good price. And you know it's well insured too!

or is that just being picky and nanny ish?

No offenece, but yes, very much so mate. I would not bother with eBay if i was you!

In fact, thanks for the link i might just have to get one myself (they usually go for £80. Look on Scan and Kelkoo)

[Funkstar]

I'm not going to report it or anything, it just gets on my nerves, because to compare prices from several different people for the same thing you have to remember to add everything up.

I'm just lazy and too used to Play.com and CD-Wow where the price you see is the price you pay

[tim_n]

it's a pain when you're looking for the cheapest and the item comes up as £5 but the p&p is £20

It means they get to the top of the cheapest price without being the cheapest in total. I wish ebay would do a approx. total cost, but the calculations would be immense.

[Kaine (AoD)]

The fact on this one is.. its still cheaper then most if not all retailers for 1Gig or that ive see anyways.. so maybe it is worth it

[tim_n]

but to be fair:

1GB SanDisk Memory Stick PRO Duo with Adapter MS 1 G GB
NO VAT - 5 YEAR WARRATY - BRAND NEW - TOTAL £53.XX PSP

He paid extra to add a second line saying that it was £53 in total. I'll give him credit for that.

[eloquence]

The real annoyance is that you can't order items by total price, so when you're looking for the cheapest price for something you have to search through lots of items with inflated postage.
Also, when you're looking at a list of results, the default display doesn't show the postage, and never shows the insurance, so it means that you have to look at all of the inflated pages to establish which are rips and which aren't.
Now eBay could help reduce the problem by allowing display of the minimum Total price, and ordering based on that.

I'd say to report users like this... although with eBay never telling you what action has been taken it's hard to know whether its achieved anything, and they've hidden the reporting away well enough that it's not quick to report a problem auction either, so I've mostly stopped bothering.