11 March 2007

Postage??? or more!!!

As any of you who know me i love my shopping, whether it be at the local shopping centre or in the comfort of my own home - via the Internet - eBay is my friend :)

Lately i have been cruising eBay for a couple copies of an infants picture book that was originally published in 1951 by Rand McNally called "Captain Kitty". The book has a very special place in the hearts of members of M34tb4LL's family. His Nana read it to all him and his two brothers as babies to the point that they all had the story memories.

I found a number of copies of the book on eBay, all in America of course, and priced everything from $2.00 to $75.00 - seriously!!!

But i manage to find a few copies of the book that did not have too much wear and tear or age stains and were a reasonable price!!! the next step of course was to get a quote on the postage. Now people sending from eBay can really ship by any means they like and therefore charge for the postage accordingly. They can also add charges for "packaging" and some people opening admit to adding costs to cover the eBay charges.

However for the same item (the book) I received four very different postage quotes -

1/
Airmail Letter Post = $2.75 USD
2/
Global Priority Small Flat Rate Envelope = $6.00 USD
3/ Ship by Air = $7.50 USD
4/ Airmail Express = $15.00 USD

I ended up buying two of the books, the ones with postage quote 1 & 3. The reason i did not get postage quote 2 is because the price of the book was a lot more than 1 & 3.

Now here is my point - the exact same thing has such different prices for postage? How is this? And if i don't agree with the postage my only choice is not to get the item, can't really bargain the price.

But also, still in the postage train of thought, I have found that things i get from eBay tend to
delivered within a day or two (as long as the item is not coming from overseas that is). However things that i may order from online stores, and tend to pay a higher postage price for, will take on average a week or maybe even two to arrive.

Now here is my second point - the more professional the seller is, the longer it takes to get the goods (on average, there is of course exceptions to the rule).

(: G

1 comment:

Min said...

I just wanted to say you 'Hello'.
M