Hey, pootski! [or anyone else with experience selling on Amazon]

Mar 25, 2009 06:28

Is it just me, or does Amazon's shipping allowance to sellers not come near to covering the postage for anything but small books?

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Comments 7

appleshoelace March 25 2009, 19:00:09 UTC
I don't sell things on Amazon, but what I find odd is that when I buy books from UK Amazon sellers, the postage costs are the same for tiny books as for huge heavy books, and also the same for books posted from the UK as they are for books posted from the States. And if I buy two items from the same seller, which come in the same package, I still have to pay two lots of postage. So it makes no sense.

I've bought huge heavy textbooks from American sellers, and I'm sure their postage cost way more than the standard £2.75 (but then I imagine they still must be making more money than they'd make from selling on the US Amazon, because otherwise why would they be selling on the UK one?). And equally I've bought little books from the UK, where the postage would have cost way less than £2.75. It seems a daft way of doing it.

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pootski March 26 2009, 00:11:58 UTC
Yes. It is true. They keep a good portion of what the customer pays for shipping. Half/Ebay does this as well, though.

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pootski March 26 2009, 00:17:04 UTC
Hrmm... I think it usually takes 3 months for listings to expire. But you might be on to something - I haven't had any listings expire for a while, and usually a few expire every week. I wonder if they stopped doing that, or if it's a glitch, or what.

You can totally get D.C. and insurance on Media. The package just has to be more than 3/4" thick. I buy D.C. on anything over $10. Some people say to put D.C. on everything so you'll never ever get scammed by a customer claiming non-receipt, but it's cheaper for me to just eat the cost of a lost-in-mail book or two per year. I rarely buy insurance, but if it's worth around $100 or more, I do.

If I have a heavy book, it has to be worth a certain amount for me to sell, so I can figure in the extra shipping costs.

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emperor_fool March 26 2009, 00:18:46 UTC
I'm pretty sure Amazon Marketplace's basic shipping allowance is only meant to cover Media Mail--they specify on the buyer's page that that's how things will be sent with basic shipping. (At least they used to--I hope they still do, because I just moments ago listed a bunch of heavy books, and there's no way I want to be sending them first class.) I generally use Media Mail unless it's a very light book. And no, they don't offer delivery confirmation. Only once in six years of selling have I recieved a complaint that the book didn't arrive. When I've ordered books this way, they've mostly come by Media Mail as well. I do offer the "expedited shipping" option w/ my books as well, for which they give you $6.99, but if anyone takes it for the behemoths I listed today, I'll lose money on it. (Not as much as I'll make on the books themselves, though, is the theory.)

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pootski March 26 2009, 12:33:03 UTC
They post office won't even let you mail a heavy book (heavier than 13 ounces) via First Class, so you'd never need to worry about that ( ... )

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pootski March 26 2009, 12:33:51 UTC
"They" post office? Oy. Sorry. I just got 5 hours of sleep for the 4th night in a row. I should probably not type anything until I get a good night's sleep.

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pootski March 26 2009, 12:38:14 UTC
Ugh. Paragraph 3 should say:

"As for expedited shipping - the nice thing about Amazon is that when you LIST your books, you can choose whether or not to offer Expedited - on each individual book".

LOL at my very last sentence in that post. WTF was I doing?? Just...nevermind.

This is FiddlerCrab, by the way, for anyone wondering who this particular moron is. Yeah, it's THAT moron.

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