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Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

So Im just curious how sellers can sell some items so cheap and still pay for shipping.. Just for example Ill tag a link below.. First class shipping is at least, $2.50, which is more than the product its self with free ship..
Do you think big sellers use this type of product just for feedbacks?

WARNING EBAY LINK


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-USB-Por...item25a32d54eb

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

Well, there are a couple different scenarios here when I used to be a buyer from eBay and not a seller! I sometimes would have sellers semi products just like this in a regular envelope lol not sure how they got away with it but they did!

Also the other scenario could be they are buying in bulk which they might be only paying $0.10 for this item or maybe less!

Also, they could be going through a commercial shipping company which they could be having this huge savings!

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

I have bought many items that come in a regular envelope, or in a very small envelope. A First class letter can be UP TO 3.5oz and 11-1/2" long 6-1/8" high and up to 1/4" thick. The cost for that would be $1.15 retail, there may even be a commercial base discount (I am not sure). Even if it was considered a large envelope, it would only cost $1.64.

Some of these small items in bulk can cost 10 cents or 20 cents each. You probably won't find that price on DHgate or ALiExpress, but if you contact a manufacturer because you want 10,000 pieces, they WILL negotiate a much better price. Alibaba is the place for that.

What I have never been able to figure out is how they are often able to enter TRACKING NUMBERS that eBay will accept. I have ordered items where there is a tracking number in eBay, but it does not show up on the USPS website and a note on the bottom of the listing says their tracking numbers are non-trackable. If you try entering a tracking number into eBay that is incorrect, usually it will reject the number (there is a scheme to tracking numbers where each digit represents something - I don't remember the specifics, but the last digit is a check digit). I'm sure they just re-ship in the event a buyer complains they never received it, so THAT part of it I DO understand, but I don't know how they are able to generate those phake tracking numbers.

I was always meaning to look into this, but decided that I would rather not deal with the ultra-cheap items. If an item sells for $2.50, eBay will get about 25 cents and PayPal charges 30 cents for the transaction plus 2.9%, which works out to about 37 cents. So eBay and PayPal take 62 cents, the USPS takes $1.15, so that is $1.77. If the item costs 23 cents, then the cost for the item is $2 and the profit is 50 cents, which is not bad all things considered. But you have to pack and ship A LOT OF ITEMS to make it worthwhile.

Not to mention, if they have thousands of sales a week, they can use bulk mail, or pre-sorted mail to lessen the cost further. I used retail rates from their website in the example above.

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

wow. you have really good math!
I just calculate ebay and paypal take 15% and do not know these detail numbers.

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

I learned a while ago that they DO sometimes ship 1st class mail to it's origin zip code & then start the delivery process. I for one am convinced that it does result in slower shipments.

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

It looks like they are doing Bulk Business shipping based on some of the negative feedback. I've ordered stuff similar to the item in the ebay link and it took 10 days to go from NJ to Calif. I didn't really care because I didn't need the item but If I had...I might have been pissed.

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

What's some more info on Bulk Business shipping? I've never herd of this..

Just curious :bounce:

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

I often send cheap items, so they actually cost me money, losses, no profits. But they generate feedback. 0.5 Eur / feedback seems fair for me when DSRs are in danger.

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

it appears to be a feedback buy in a sense. If your going to be a big numbers seller bthen you have to mix teh cheap items even at a small loss to then sell the big items in larger numbers.

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

EBay Seller performance evaluation system is really retarded. But we can't change it, so we should play by it's rules.

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

The USPS has all sorts of bulk shipping rates for high volume mailers. ANYTHING can be discounted if it is pre-sorted, bulk mailed, etc. To learn more about this, just check out the BUSINESS section on USPS.COM

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

Nothing can explain guys sending out iphone cases for $0.99 with free shipping NOT from China, except DSR and feedback manipulations ;)

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

Shipping from Canada is insanely expensive.. selling those $1.00 items would have us bankrupt overnight.

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

RIGHT?! I've always wondered how they are ok with it. Curious how much shipping costs them.

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

these cost 25 cents.

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

Google Pitney Bowes

You will need to purchase software from them That will presort your mail, so when u go to the post office you will have all your mail separated into,different bins, doing some of the work for the post office and you get a cheaper rate

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

Cheapest I've ever seen something other than a flat is $1.67 up to 3 oz. for first class mail. That is the commercial plus rate. So probably with fees and cost of goods they are breaking even or losing just a bit.

Re: Curious about shipping & cheap items
 

Very much so - even with corporate discounts...the losses incurred are significantly higher