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Sales: truth in weight?

I see many listings for the same item and weight can go from an actual weight to insane numbers up to triple its actual spec. Do you feel some abuse this estimate in an effort to profit and if so do you call out sellers on this?
I made a purchase once and the shipping quote the seller gave me from their own weight estimate was almost three times its actual value so I asked for the item to be re-calculated. The seller was gracious and all was fine but do many buyers accept what the seller tells them, and if you do when item comes have you ever noticed the item is way off from what you were told?
Should part of a sellers integrity include an honest estimate of weight (knowing that actual double boxing and protective packing can add a bit to the total)? I am mainly talking about items such as Music disc's, CD players, amps and items that typically dont have super high weight and should be fairly easy to estimate accurately.
chadnliz
fatparrot
1,314 posts
 
Viridian, your butcher should have been more careful with the cleaver :-)
ckorody
643 posts
 
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.
chuck
203 posts
 
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.
sc53
719 posts
 
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.
foster_9
1,638 posts
 
Chuck, you said, "For this reason Fedex tends to be a bit higher"

I've calculated shipping cost at UPS.com and Fedex.com on more than a few occasions for the same package using dimensions, weight, and destination point. Each time Fedex comes out cheaper than UPS. For me, the online calculators for Fedex have always been very close to the actual cost and I've shipped audio gear many times.
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