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MG MGA - Two things that frustrate me

Frequently on Ebay, we will find parts for our cars but only to note that the part has being disassemble and is being offerred for sales ,in bits and pieces. Ex: Currently there is a generator for an MGA with the center core for sale and in another auction the end plates. Well, what if you win the auction for the core but don't win the end plates. Would it not be just as simple to offer the complete unit for a higher price. This would save biiding frustration and extra shipping charges. It's so frustrating.

Why do so many Americain sellers,not want to ship outside of the USA? Shipping to Canada by USPS is one of the simplest ways to get a package sent. It's cheap,reasonably quick and requires no custom brokerage fee (as per the $85.00 charge from UPS / Fed X )becuase the post office does it for the buyer.

There I got it out of my system. Gordon
Gordon Harrison

A lot of them don't want to ship to Alaska, either, which is a completely domestic transaction with no customs involved anywhere. Or they try to force me to use a UP$ type service at grossly inflated cost. I normally respect their wishes and will not do any business with them.
Del Rawlins

George

Picking up on the postage. Over this side of the pond I get frustrated, no, not strong enough - annoyed, with the extortionate charges some people put on heavy items.

We have the traditional Royal Mail and Parcelforce systems that are costly. However, with a little bit of searching on the web I have found various courier services that provide excellent services. The following link for UK users is an example of a company that provides a number of courier options with home pickup at very competitive prices. I have frequently despatched items through them for less than half the price many vendors ask in their auctions.

http://www.interparcel.com/quote/courier-quote1.php?ref=Google_IP_General

Steve
Steve Gyles

Like the 3.9 diff assy on one auction, and the half shafts to go with it on another auction! The seller further complicated the auction by having two separate 'Buy It Now' prices, and a different 'Buy It Now' price for the combination.
People believe (wrongly) that they can make more money if they split items up.
Peter.
P. Tilbury

I have used an excelent company in such circumstances, they pick up from anywhere in the USA, and ship using DHL to Europe at much lower cost than USPS or DHL direct.

http://www.shipping-worldwide.com/

They collected my Judson from George Folchi and delivered it four days later in Switzerland, with insurance.

I have used them since for other heavy items, and never had a problem. They seem to ship all over the world.

ebay sellers in the USA often respond positively to a polite request to entertain an overseas bid.

There are of course the complete ar****les who exhibit behaviour that suggests either chronic xenophobia or just severe mental inadequacy, but you get those everywhere..... (the type that belong to the national farmers/I hate foreigners/keep-us-out-of-any-international-agreements-because-they-are-all-conspiracies parties), but there again you can't expect normal behaviour from anyone who has spent a lot of time holed up in a compound in Montana (no disrespect to the saner inhabitants...) I have also experienced "I won't sell outside the UK" sellers on ebay too.

The one thing about weird auction conditions on ebay is that they often put off a lot of buyers, and you can pick up a bargain. I have picked up things for a fraction of the normal ebay prices by getting lucky on such auctions. Then I get the items collected by a company just like the one above, and get a bargain and no cr*p from the seller.

eBay is also revising it conditions to prevent rip-offs on shipping, and I shall be very interested to see what the effect is.



dominic clancy

Gordon. There seem to be problems with businesses shipping to Canada from the US.

One of our former members here had a problem getting some small, specialty, hardware parts from the US. The company, a large vendor, did not want to ship to Canada, citing problems they had with past shipments. I ordered the parts, shipped them through the US Postal Service and he received them with no problems.

I do not know why there is a perception that shipping packages to Canada is a problem. But, I do know that such a perception exists. Unfortunate. A wonderful and efficient system has been set up for illegal aliens to move the money they earn in the US down into Mexico. But, all problems will go away when Canada, the US, and Mexico are all part of the great North American Union.

Les
Les Bengtson

Domenic, I just got up off the floor from laughing so hard. VERY WELL PUT.

Les, Yes it can be a pain in the a** trying to ship to Canada, if you use a courier service.

Ex: One pair of Nissan rubber door seals(Ebay)$ 19.99 sent by UPS from California. UPS guy comes in my office with a large bubble envelope and says "I bet I am going to be returning this". (ME) Why? (UPS) They brokerage fee you owe us is $85.00..

FED X pkg to Boston (from Montreal) Overnight Express Delievery. I paid the $66.00 required and after I got thru with the FED X custom broker...the pkg was deleiver 6 days late. FED X refused to refund my money for late delievery. That's BS

Too all people wishing to ship something to Canada. Do yourself a favour and use the post office (UNITED PARCEL POST SERVICE). All it requires is a small little green customs sticker on the box and the post office does the rest. The pkg will arrive at my door app. 10 days later with (if necessary) the customs duties calculated (true value not inflated like UPS) and a $5.00 processing charge.

AS for seperating parts ,when listing on Ebay, (so that you can make more money)...it turns me off so much I DO NOT bid ,even if I want or need the item.

And finally Steve, I agree with you. That special part that has a BUY IT NOW sticker for $0.99 but has a shipping charge of $99.00 is a complete insult to my intellegence.

AAAAAHHHHHH So Frustrating. Gordon
Gordon Harrison

As Dominic rightly mentions, eBay are starting to crack down on sellers who charge excessive postage. They have forced sellers to make postage costs more transparent. Having said that, many people still do take the pi$$ and I urge any of you that see anyone charging $10 to send an MG pin badge down the road to report the seller to eBay and they will take action. I think they've finally realised that such people do eBay more harm than good. Only took 10 years :

------------
cheerio
steve
http://www.mgauctionwatch.com
Steve James

My worst E Bay shipping charge story was from a company 3 blocks away. They did not list a shipping fee in the ad. The cost to ship a front shock the three blocks was to be more than $50.00. No pick up even though I could see the part on their shelf.
It was an EBay seller selling off the inventory of a British shop for the owners widow. They were ripping the widow off by turning the shipping into a profit center for them. Under change for the part overcharge for the shipping meant more for them and less for the widow.
R J Brown

I must fit some of the descriptions stated here. I have bought on e-bay for many years but not have had the need or opportunity to sell anything. That is up till this last week. I am in the very infancy stage and have not learned how to set up the auction for variable shipping options. Therefore, I set up my sale at a fixed shipping price to ship in the lower 48 only. I planned on the highest actual cost to ship plus a few dollars for packaging materials. I sold the item and as it happened, it shipped only 20 miles from me.

Del, I know shipping to Alaska is very much more expensive than the lower 48. My son lived in Kodiak for over 6 years. Shipping FedEx 2-day was much cheaper than UPS or FedEx ground based on our negotiated discount program. It would be much more if I were to ship a package as a private individual. The company allowed us to ship personal items a couple of time a year as long as we paid the freight (so to speak).


I hope to be able to get a bit more sophisticated in my listings in the future. But for a first time listing it worked out well for me. I guess there were some potential buyers who were not very happy with my listing. I will get better as an e-bay seller before I start selling any MG parts I have in the rafters.

Chuck

C Schaefer

For years I referred to Ebay, when it first started up, as "The suckers' playground" and although I have bought a few things through Ebay (although not car parts) that opinion still holds. This mentality doesn't just pertain to car parts. I needed some parts for an Ampex tape deck, and had to simultaneously bid on a half dozen different auctions to get them all. You see people tearing advertising pages out of magazines you could buy for a dollar at a thrift store and setting them for 10 bucks apiece. It's simple human avarice, and Ebay didn't invent it, they just found the most efficient way to profit from it.
David Breneman

We ship both DHL and USPS.

USPS to Canada is horribly slow but very inexpensive. We have had items sit for 6 weeks in customs.

DHL to Canada is expensive but no worse than FedEx or UPS.

We can have stuff shipped quicker to and from GB than one way to Canada and it is on the Canadian side of the boarder that the holdups take place. Careful Canadians, You KNOW those of us on this side of the boarder are smuggling in stuff to take you over and when we do, we will rename your state "Northern Montana". (Sorry- its off a Disney movie!) If the USA did that, orders to Canada would be diminished. As is with the weak US dollar, we should have more Canadian orders for what we do, but don't and I suspect its from two items: Canadian due fees and Canadian postage. (I hope I am not out of line here- nothing meant by this!)

There is quite a bit of information you have to fill out to ship out of Country and often not worth it for small packages.

As for DHL, we had one issue with them: A package blew open in shipment. We insured it and every package before it for the cost of retail. When this happened, it was a very expensive package and sold at an almost non-profitable margin for the time we had in it. In order to collect, I had to have all kinds of proof and then they would only reimburse us for the wholesale, not retail. I spent about 5 hours finding every nut and bolt reciept for the system and some parts were recent stock and others were stock that were a few years old so you can imaging finding all the records and getting those sent in and approved.

FedEx- We have not really used them but they have shown expensive shipping from our location.

UPS- expensive but good. We don't use them because they cost more than DHL from here.

A local (Midwest) shipping company called Speedy Delivery is one of our best local options but they only service a few state area. None then less, they are worth local shipments.

Also, in an age where all the computer programs are starting to merge for small business, I am still having an issue with our shipping programs. We have to charge according to the cost of materials (anywhere from free to $5), the cost of time to package (Anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes per package) and the actual shipping costs thus the "handling cost". I personally don't like the "Handling cost" but found that a company that sells lots of small items and does not charge this ends up loosing money and will not be in business to continue serving unless they have a large profit margin to begin with.


Anyways, this is from a small business and personal viewpoint. Hope it helps give a little more insight. I could write quite a bit on this.

-BMC.
BMC Brian McCullough

Hail... The United Staes of Canada.....LOL

Brian, Well siad and no offence taken.

This is not an issue of shipping companies but the frustration I experience when wishing to purchase a part on Ebay,only to find it disassembled and placed in several auction.

It is also not about the cost of shipping. Some people are willing to pay the going rate to have the fastest and best service, but it is about Ebay sellers who do not ship to elsewhere in the world,let alone Canada.

This is their choice and right to make this decision, but with both countries being so "partented' and accessable, why would they not ship.

I attend a convention in New York City every March and I can tell you that alot of my buying is based on this date and having the pkg shipped to my hotel. Sellers like it and I can then access parts I normally would not have.

I also have a company that ships world wide daily (the USA is my best customer) and I only use Canada Post 1st Class Air Mail. This takes app 5-7 days for delievery but I DO NOT refuse to ship my product anywhere in the world.

Again this is about my frustration of non access to certain parts due to restricted shipping practices and multi auctions listings for disassembled parts.
Gordon

Gordon Harrison

Isn't it simply a case of supply and demand. Plus the seller does whatever he feels is necessary to ensure maximum profit, why would they want to make anyone else's life better?
Bob (robert) Midget Turbo

Also, somebody might not want the whole thing. If you only need an end plate to repair your original part, it seems silly to pay shipping on the entire generator if you have a seller willing to split it up. I mean, I would probably keep the part together, but it seems like there would be a market for that sort of thing.

Del Rawlins

This thread was discussed between 15/02/2008 and 16/02/2008

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