Because sometimes the item is worth at least 600 dollars, but they know they’ll get your attention with the $40 price tag. It’s the same on Amazon and other websites. It’s not eBay’s fault, it’s that sellers fault.

Yes, and I take it into consideration when deciding if I’m actually saving money.

This is why ebay has seller ratings. I have a store, and sell with exact shipping. My rating shows this. I don’t buy from anyone “charging” for handling or making their fees/profit on shipping vs. the item. There is a button you can hit to report such sellers. If more people would take the time to report this, there would be less of it.

@SpatzieLover Where/how do you report them?

@MyNewtBoobs I selected a random item because I’m not a “geek” and forget how to upload a screen shot here. Right under the “Other Item Info” box on the right side of the listing it says Print/Report Item.

If you click the report item, you can fill out the report that opens up.

@SpatzieLover Ahhh. Thanks. So what exactly is against the rules?

@MyNewtBoobs Charging more than actual shipping and handling costs. Many sellers think they can charge 0.01 for an item, then charge the actual cost of the item and the shipping in the shipping fee. That’s against ebay policy as it prevents ebay from getting their cut, and it creates big issues when people want to return faulty items (they’d get a penny back and the seller could keep the “shipping”).

@SpatzieLover So then when they charge .99 for, say, a bra extender, and then 3.99 for shipping from Hong Kong, is that ok or not?

@MyNewtBoobs Not if packaging and shipping (which would probably be $2 tops) comes to less. They are essentially going around ebay to make their profit.

I try to stay clear of Hong Kong sellers when buying if I can.

@SpatzieLover I usually do, but a lot of times they’ll be under $5 total, and everyone else will be $20+, so I’ll start with Hong Kong.

@MyNewtBoobs There’s nothing wrong with buying from them, per se. My issue with it is: Is it safe? Has it been tested? Beyond that, to save money, I too, have purchased directly from HK.

@SpatzieLover, would it better to buy from a seller that doesn’t charge anything for shipping but the product charge is more than twice as compared to other sellers? what rule of thumb do you use in this case? Based on your experience doing business in eBay, what do you recommend?

@SpatzieLover Ahhh. Yeah, I sorta figure that anytime I’m buying on eBay – from any seller (since I’m sure many just buy from China and then resell inside the US for a higher price) – it might be unsafe. Really, I’ve just come to terms with the idea that I’ll mostly likely die at 40 of asbestos or lead poisoning or something, and anything after that is just icing on the cake of life.

@MatChup No. I’m not saying that at all. I wouldn’t want to pay more.

I would look at the seller rating. Free shipping is usually added into the price (i do that). If done correctly it’s just a way to avoid having someone give you less than five stars for a rating (which is completely another topic).

I shop with my logic online, always. Does this look like a trusted source? If so, buy here.

@SpatzieLover Wait, are you saying you can’t give someone less than 5 stars if they have free shipping????

@MyNewtBoobs Love that quote: “Really, I’ve just come to terms with the idea that I’ll mostly likely die at 40 of asbestos or lead poisoning or something, and anything after that is just icing on the cake of life”

No ebay already gives the seller five points if they list with free shipping. It’s a ploy they use for store owners to give them more fees ;) It works.

@SpatzieLover Gasp!!!!! I feel so betrayed! Those swindlers!

Ok, now I will make sure to report people who are charging too much for shipping, and try to find someone who doesn’t offer free shipping so that I can have a voice!

@MyNewtBoobs Ebay has more tricks up their sleeves—really. For the most part it’s set up towards making buyers happy. The small seller (like me) loses out in any claim. Which is often made by a swindling shopper that really just wanted something for nothing (in the non-online world we’d call this stealing).

Now, you can still give your stars for the product when you buy w/free shipping. BUT you do need to look at the seller rating. If they do only free shipping listings, they may have an over-inflated number just based on the fact that they always have some 5 stars coming in.

@SpatzieLover I actually ignore the rating and look at the ratio of pos/neutral/neg ratings – I don’t care if they have a 99.8% rating if they have 124 negative ratings in the past month.

@MyNewtBoobs I agree. I tend to steer clear of anyone with a lot of negs at all. It can be difficult when it comes to book sellers. In which case I usually go with a higher price to pay if the comparisons have higher negs.

How can anyone gain the trust of customers if the seller is new in this business? That means he doesn’t have any rating, no previous record of anything

@MatChup I actually go quite a lot with new sellers if the ratings they do have are good, or if they look like one person just selling a few items instead of a store. I want to help the little guy out.