Options
In the past week GROUND ADVANTAGE shipping has increased 50% on EBAY ?????
Mickey71
Posts: 4,266 ✭✭✭✭
I went to ship a 4 OZ bubble wrap envelope with a $50 card to West Virginia and the shipping charge came up like $8.70 plus remember EBAY will charge a fee on that. If your shipping supplies cost you $.25 then your price is over $10. What am I missing? I'm reading about it on many sites. Many are very concerned. It says something about RURAL shipping areas. I'm getting a bad feeling about this. In case anyone is wondering I purchase the label directly from EBAY which incorporates some type of discount. Unless I'm completely losing my mind....this is not good.
0
Comments
I think shipping has nearly doubled in the past 8 years.
UPS and FedEx raise rates flat by 5.9% each year and with fees and surcharges that is around 7-9% annually. As part of the "Delivering for America" plan USPS now raises rates twice a year (January and July). The 2023 UPS-Teamsters contract was around $30B and raised UPS driver pay considerably and FedEx and USPS had to increase pay to compete - a great example of a systemic price fixing flaw. So Labor was the big move in the past few years and that stemmed from that 2023 contract. The rest is mostly fuel surcharge and we all know what contributes to that. Rest assured the robots are coming.
1) eBay will only charge a fee if you charge the buyer for shipping. You will NOT be charged an ADDITIONAL fee for buying shipping through eBay.
2) I just shipped a 4oz bubble mailer (after the rate hike) across the country for $5.97 Ground Advantage. That was through Pirate Ship, but the rate should be exactly the same as eBay. Are you sure the $8.70 cost wasn't for Priority Mail?
3) UPS may be cheaper now for some sub-1 lb packages, depending on the distance being shipped.
The rural surcharge apparently is for items shipped FROM whatever is classified as a "rural" postal location; there is no surcharge if you ship from a larger city. I guess another way to cause a division between city and country folk.
I'm near Seattle. That certainly isn't RURAL. The buyer was from a RURAL part of West Virginia. It's based upon where the buyer is at. Your response to #1 is that I do charge the buyer for shipping on Ground Advantage shipments. And EBAY certainly takes their cut. All of this is very new
eBay sells discounted postage. Then they charge a final value fee that includes shipping and handling as part of the final value.
You pretty much have to now add another $6 - $7 to what it costs to grade a card to just break even. The days of being able to purchase lower value cards / work on a set registry a card at a time are long gone. I am starting to sell graded cards in lots instead. If you have 10 cards worth $15 each (including shipping), you can sell all 10 for $100 instead of selling each one for $15 and still be ahead. The last graded card I shipped was $5.83 for ebay postage. The same day I shipped a lot of 58 graded cards for $18.90, or 32 cents a card.
I know time flies, but it doesn't seem THAT long ago that I was paying full price at the Post Office to ship a graded card and it was $2.89.
The other thing that's annoying is shipping for low dollar raw cards. 8 cards in top loaders would cost almost $6.00 to ship, or you can use 2 ebay standard envelopes and pay about $3.00 combined. It makes it nearly impossible to know what to charge to ship raw cards that are under $10. You want to be fair but there's actually a point where if the person buys more cards you lose money on shipping unless you use multiple ebay standard envelopes, and that seems kind of cheesy.
I got the heads up email from Pirate ship about the increase:
USPS unified ounce-based pricing for all USPS Ground Advantage packages under 1 lb shipped to specific rural and suburban ZIP codes. All packages weighing less than 15.99 oz sent to these designated rural areas will be charged the 15.99 oz rate. Packages originating from rural ZIP codes are unaffected unless they are shipping to another rural destination.
If it's going to rural, 1oz, 2oz, it doesn't matter. It's going for 15.99oz price.
I live in New York. I usually complain when I have to ship to Texas or California because of the higher rates. I just sent a few packages ground shipping to California, and it was cheaper than 1 package to West Virginia. USPS and eBay are a joke. If they don't lose my package, they are now charging an arm and leg for it.
I'm assuming Pirateship negotiated a new rate when USPS raised theirs. I noticed the high price through Ebay, so I went to pirateship and checked theirs and it was the same lower price I was used to. That was last week, haven't had to do it again. If you see the instance of Ebays higher rate to a rural address, just hop over to pirateship, save your money through them, then upload the tracking # to Ebay. Problem solved.
I’ll be using pirate moving forward it appears. Great service, but never used it for eBay sales.
HOF SIGNED FOOTBALL RCS
I just packaged up cards for shipping and purchased the labels thru eBay. $5.97 from Destin, Fl to LA and Montana and $8.70 to Pensacola, FL. I have no idea what the logic is for this but I might have to start a card delivery service!
TGF Collection
TGF Sports
I just shipped a 4oz package to MI and it was just shy of $9. While all of my other shipments have been higher than previously due to the surcharge, they are at least somewhat predictable. I noticed with the package to MI though that the eBay discount was only 10% whereas I feel like it is usually about 34%. All other packages that I have printed since then come in at the expected discount. So for whatever reason, eBay did not want to give a larger discount on this one.
In other news that makes zero sense, I shipped a package that was 3 plus pounds to FL and it cost less than $6 so make that make sense from the post office's view point. I know this is due to them charging less for heavier packages but there is no reality where it makes more sense to ship heavy packages to Florida for cheap while it costs the same amount to ship a 4oz package to the same state I live in, NJ. To anyone thinking about inflating the weight of their item, many of them are getting noticed in transit and the cost is being passed back to the purchaser of the label even though it is an easier package to ship.
There is something indeed afoot.
I messed around on the Ebay shipping sending an item last night. 1lb 9oz was $8.13 to ship but when I changed it to 2lb 9oz it was only $5.94. Now, the package was indeed 2lb 9oz but I would for sure have upped the weight if it was less but charging me more.
I checked it out....Pirateship had the increased rate also. People keep talking about weight-that's an entirely separate issue. This whole fiasco is centered around "rural" shipping. If your GROUND ADVANTAGE lightweight package (ie 1 PSA card) and it's going to a guy in a cave on a mountain in West Virginia that's considered RURAL then you will be paying dearly. Instead of usually $5.50 it will be $8-10. If it ends up being about 1 out of every 10 packages then I might just make the shipping charge $7 across my listings instead of my usual $6. It should even out. Hopefully RURAL is not like half of the addresses. This is all a major change.
Registry is a thing of the past. I agree. Whatever is out there from 1991 and older is what you have to work with and that's it.