Sales: truth in weight?

I will include packing expense [either double boxing, or a special kind of expandable foam] in my shipping charges, although usually it costs me slightly MORE than what I actually charge. And don't forget that there is usually an extra charge for "oversize" boxes [watch out when UPS and the USPS pulls out their cloth tape measures]! This can substantially add to the shipping charge.

I try to photo first, THEN pack and get a weight and dimensions, so that I can give a reasonably accurate quote for shipping...very easy using the UPS website.

Viridian, your butcher should have been more careful with the cleaver :-)

Interesting post -

I am just waiting for ebay shipping practices to move on to audiogon. Take a look at how often the shipping for an ebay item - regardless of cost - is fixed at $30 or 40 plus insurance etc etc. Talk about buried profit. And also talk about knowing the true cost of doing business...

As Tvad points out with his usual precision, the real cost of peanuts, packing tape etc has nothing to do with what you have to pay to the carrier, never mind the time to organize it all, figure out why a label is not printing etc.

Half my garage is filled with potentially useful packing materials that I recycle from shipments to me. One more reason that with their free materials, free online tracking and total integration with Paypal, USPS Priority is the best deal in town for most smaller items.

There is one other great deal out there if you tend to buy a lot from Amazon, and that is Amazon Prime. Basically a flat fee which buys you two day shipping on every single item you buy from Amazon regardless of size or weight for a year. Trust me, its saved Christmas and lots of birthdays at no cost to me.

Just read the fine print because items that do not ship from Amazon are not eligible.

Nice topic. In my case it is a matter of which carrier you feel more comfortable with. I tend to gravitate to Fedex. they seem to have less breakage in my area than UPS. DHL, BAX and others are not players in my area. Fedex charges dimensional weight whereas UPS does not. For this reason Fedex tends to be a bit higher because the dimensional weight pushes the package into a different weight category. Thus, maybe sellers inflate the weight to cover incurred shipping costs. In my experience an online quote on shipping rarely matches the final shipping cost.

eBay shipping quotes are FAR more expensive and abused than anything I've ever bought on this site. I've sold and shipped enough items to be able to guess what shipping cost would be to me and I've never been scammed here, that I know of.