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A Question for Buyers About Shipping
One of the great things about BO is that buyers know shipping in advance and can pay immediately when checking out. However, this convenience comes at a price. That being fixed upfront shipping will often be more than actual postage paid by the seller. And a lot of members here are BL imports who are used to sellers charging actual or near actual postage for shipping. I suspect this pay only actual postage mindset will linger here on BO for a long time.
So I am wondering what buyers here will think when they start receiving BO orders where the actual postage paid by the seller is less than the shipping buyers paid here on BO. I am not talking a few coins difference. I am talking about upwards of a few dollars difference.
Yesterday I received four BO orders. And for all of them actual postage shown on the stamp is less than the shipping they paid me. To be fair, all my orders on BO are now being insured via InsurePost - and the additional amount I pay for insurance is not shown on the stamp affixed to the buyer's package. So, for 3 of yesterday's 4 orders, my actual cost was about even or a little more than the shipping I charged. But for one buyer who placed a very large order the postage I paid was around $5 (or 2% of the order amount) less than what the buyer paid for shipping.
As many here may know, US domestic postage varies considerably depending on weight and distance. BO does not yet have the ability to determine shipping based in part on distance. So my shipping is based solely on weight. But rather than charging all my buyers the highest postage rate based on the furthest distance for each weight band, I charge the AVERAGE postage amount for each weight band. This means I lose on some orders and profit on others. Overall, however, I hope to break even when shipping is spread out over all orders.
However, this still leaves the potential problem of less distant buyers paying more. I could, of course, refund this overpayment. But that would destroy my averaging and mean I take an overall loss on shipping. I am sure other BO sellers are going to run into this conundrum. So what do you plan to do about it? And, again, what do you feel about this as a buyer?
Thor
P.S. Since DadsAFOL has been using predetermined immediate shipping the longest, it would be particularly helpful if he could share with us his experiences and how he handles this.
So I am wondering what buyers here will think when they start receiving BO orders where the actual postage paid by the seller is less than the shipping buyers paid here on BO. I am not talking a few coins difference. I am talking about upwards of a few dollars difference.
Yesterday I received four BO orders. And for all of them actual postage shown on the stamp is less than the shipping they paid me. To be fair, all my orders on BO are now being insured via InsurePost - and the additional amount I pay for insurance is not shown on the stamp affixed to the buyer's package. So, for 3 of yesterday's 4 orders, my actual cost was about even or a little more than the shipping I charged. But for one buyer who placed a very large order the postage I paid was around $5 (or 2% of the order amount) less than what the buyer paid for shipping.
As many here may know, US domestic postage varies considerably depending on weight and distance. BO does not yet have the ability to determine shipping based in part on distance. So my shipping is based solely on weight. But rather than charging all my buyers the highest postage rate based on the furthest distance for each weight band, I charge the AVERAGE postage amount for each weight band. This means I lose on some orders and profit on others. Overall, however, I hope to break even when shipping is spread out over all orders.
However, this still leaves the potential problem of less distant buyers paying more. I could, of course, refund this overpayment. But that would destroy my averaging and mean I take an overall loss on shipping. I am sure other BO sellers are going to run into this conundrum. So what do you plan to do about it? And, again, what do you feel about this as a buyer?
Thor
P.S. Since DadsAFOL has been using predetermined immediate shipping the longest, it would be particularly helpful if he could share with us his experiences and how he handles this.
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Comments
As shipping rates increase with every added kg, I haven't found a workaround yet since I don't want to charge someone that orders a 2-300grams set + 200grams box shipping for parcel up to 2kg, but on the other hand I have to charge that for someone ordering a 900grams set + 2-300grams packing material.
It only gets better if someone orders 3 or more sets, thus increasing the weight of packing.
Any suggestions might help.
I started out averaging and decided against it for some of your reasons. What I am doing now is to charge the maximum amount for shipping a weight category to the farthest part of Canada and have a policy to refund to exact shipping costs. I put a shipping chart on my page that relates to this so amounts can be reasonably estimated beforehand. (wow was that ever easy to make a chart here!)
If a buyer does not like that, not sure I would unless I had a trusting relationship with the seller already, they can ask for a quote and get exact that way.
Basically I am attempting to have exact postage costs for all buyers by doing so, at least in my mind. Thankfully our envelope shipping was easy to set up domestic and international.
I did add extra room than needed with these, and some parts that should fit don't yet, and have the same reasoning that if anyone over pays I will refund.
Joe
Brian
This does seem to be specific to BrickLink though. I've never had a complaint about it on amazon, and amazon uses fixed shipping rates that start at $4.99 for the first pound. Sometimes I can ship a polybag in a bubble mailer for $1.66. Sometimes I have to ship a box to California for $6.20. Nobody ever questions it.
I will likely go with the average method myself until we can get zoned shipping working. Some will overpay, some will underpay.
Troy
I did start with some really messy code I put together, the most and only I have done since I made my name flash on the screen for my Vic 20. My daughters shoes have more memory than that computer did.
Anyway, little is left of that after I saw I could just pull things around and right click the options. I think..
I took a width= part of the code out, saved, and it looks the same to me.
Better for you?
Joe
For example shipping rates to US looks something like this:
Parcel up to 1kg: EUR 16.40
Parcel up to 2kg: EUR 20.10
Parcel up to 3kg: EUR 27.50
Parcel up to 4kg: EUR 31.20
... and so on, it increases with EUR 3.7 for each added kg.
So I don't really see a way to adjust these not to overcharge some buyers.
As I mentioned earlier, if someone orders a set of 500 grams with packing material it will be under 1kg, so shipping cost is Parcel up to 1kg: EUR 16.40.
But if the set is 900 grams with packing material it will be over 1kg so Parcel up to 2kg: EUR 20.10.
I don't see how I can adjust this so I don't have to make the buyer in situation 1 pay the shipping cost for situation 2.
So far the only options I see is to make a free shipping method and charge the buyer the actual shipping cost after placing the order and leave the tiers there for buyers to see approximately, but I'm not really pleased with this.
@vitreolum you alter the shipping method weight bands based on your packaging, don't use the exact amounts from the shipping company. So if your band is 1 kg, work out how much packaging you normally need to ship 1 kg of Lego, and reduce the band by that amount. Do the same for each other band.
Additionally, you do not need to have free shipping, there is the request a quote functionality which lets buyers request a quote for the shipping but still use the checkout process after you have given the quote.
up to 800g
800g-1700g
1701g-2600g
2601g-3500g
...
This will leave enough weight for packing materials.
Brian
It's also pretty impossible to assume what the packing weight will be for larger orders, I'm not using certain types of boxes all the time and recycle as much as possible. I also try to find a box to keep the parcel weight as low as possible.
If I can't find any other options I will try lowering with 200-250 grams for every tier or something.
Understood, you just have to try and make an educated guess and err on the side of caution.
Thanks for all the suggestions, I will settle with this for now.