Eeep! That's High Shipping! O.O

[Vroomfunkel]

I'm sorry to say that those prices look depressingly accurate to me. Although, if it is any consolation, I sent a package via Royal Mail Surface Mail to the USA not long ago, and not only did it arrive in good condition, it arrived NEXT DAY!!

Must have gone into the airmail shipment by mistake :)

Vroomfunkel

[sisko]

My question is, is the package REALLY 26.5 kg? That's just under 60 pounds!

Seems a bit high to me, but I've never weighed a Snow White house before. :)

Its a GIANT snow white house.

Approximating the dimensions based on the provided height (15X15X30) and the fact that it weighs 60lbs, that means that 1 cubic foot of hollow plastic weighs around 18lbs.

Thats some heavy plastic..

[Daria]

Ok this isn't a "WoW look at this!" thread, I just need some advice from anyone familiar with ordering or shipping items from Europe.

My mom recently won this auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=5914334006&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT

And she gets an invoice from the seller telling her shipping will be £95.50, equally $183!!! @_@

So she emails the lady and asks if it's a mistake. She gets this email in return:


Hi Melissa,

We have re-measured the measurements for the parcel (70cm * 45cm * 50cm)
and DHL is now quoting a non discount price of 173.77 GBP as the cubic
weight of the parcel is 26.5kg ! (www.dhl.co.uk). We use a shipping
agent that can get us a discounted price but the discount is usually no
more than 20%.

We have contacted RM parcelforce worldwide and they have quoted:

International Economy £55.00 Delivery Aim 28-30 Days
International Standard £74.00 Delivery Aim 5-8 Days
International Datapost £86.75 Delivery Aim 2-3 Days

The economy surface service offers NO compensation and NO insurance and
NO tracking.
The standard service offers £150 insurance and NO tracking.
The datapost service offers £150 insurance and tracking.

Therefore the only service we could accept via paypal would be
International Datapost (£86.75) as paypal insist that we have online
tracking of parcels.

If you paid via bank transfer, USD cash (1GBP=1.92USD) or
www.auctionpayments.com we could accept standard service.
Please bear in mind your bank may charge for Bank Transfer which may
loose any savings over datapost.

We would not advise Economy service as we have a responsibility to
ensure the parcel reaches you safely and can not afford to compensate if
the parcel does not reach its destination when NO insurance is
availiable.

If you could get back to us we will try to move forward with this item
and create you a invoice.


Brenda

Does this look accurate to you? I mean my mom should have excepted shipping from Europe to be high but $183 seems really excessive to us.

[StartTheBiddingLow]

Well, just recently I sent a parcel from the UK to Oman (with Royal Mail, same shipping rate as UK to North America) and for a package of about 7lb (barely 3½kg) it was nearly £25 economy rate, US$45 or so.

Sorry if you didn't want to hear that!





Warning! Shameless plug:
Check my items on www.ebid.co.uk
Thank you!

[Daria]

Well, just recently I sent a parcel from the UK to Oman (with Royal Mail, same shipping rate as UK to North America) and for a package of about 7lb (barely 3½kg) it was nearly £25 economy rate, US$45 or so.

Sorry if you didn't want to hear that!


No, it was helpful. Thank you. (:

[dreams]

My question is, is the package REALLY 26.5 kg? That's just under 60 pounds!

Seems a bit high to me, but I've never weighed a Snow White house before. :)

[Daria]

Well package arrived today and thought I'd update.

Not only was the weight grossly exagerated, and the shipping much less then what the seller quoted my mom, it was also packaged without an outer shipping box. Yep, brown parcel wrap over the "mint in box" playset. Not only was it pretty beat up in shipping, the plastic on the house was even cracked in a few places due to lack of sufficent padding.

O_O

How in the world do you justify gouging the shipping price by $60 and then not bother to take a few minutes to wrap it up properly?

I adivised my mom to work this out with the seller for a refund of the shipping difference. Worse comes to worse she gets her fist neg, which as a buyer no one's going to care about.

[Griking]

It sounds like your mom unfortunately got screwed but international shipping has gotten very expensive recently.

I've recently sold a Bunch of PC Games (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=8125259177&ssPageName=STRK:MESO:IT) on ebay. Nothing really special in the lot. The auction ended at $26 but the winning bidder lived in Austrailia. Shipping for the 9lb package came out to be $26.70 for surface mail or $48.20 for air mail.

I supplied a link to the United States Post Office's International Shipping Calculator (http://ircalc.usps.gov/weight.asp?Contents=1) to show the buyer that I wasn't price gouging him. Its a pretty handy tool for overseas bidders to use to figure out how much shipping will be before bidding.

[SoulBlazer]

Yeah, I've noticed that also. Shipping overseas has gone up no matter who you use or how you try to send it. I advise everyone who buys my stuff from outside US/Canada to pay for the AirMail, though. Surface mail to ENGLAND has taken six weeks! O_O