quotes for shipping

phill

why do sellers ask for quotes for orders ? when everyone knows how much inland mail is to the nearest 10p ? getting boared of sending emails and waiting to pay for goods , am glad most people have instant checkout , was wondering if this could be for all shops? or just pot luck when we buyers come across them

Calibrick

The decision to setup shipping tables (which enables instant checkout) really falls to each individual seller, as well as which shipping options (weight, location, speed) they want to preset up on those tables. All of us have access to this ability, and all of us have different reasons for choosing to set them all up, some up, or none up. :-)

For example, some sellers have predefined shipping costs in the US cover all US locations, shipping speeds, sizes, and weights up to a certain limit. The downside is this relies on accurate weights in the system imported from LEGO or hand input by peer sellers and the seller's ability to predetermine the approximate weight of packaging materials, building that into their shipping costs. So there is a risk (from negligible to large, depending on how good you are at estimating your packaging weight) that some decide is not worth messing with.

I've seen one seller post they pride themselves on charging exactly actual shipping costs every single time, which isn't going to work some of the time if using Instant Checkout and the shipping tables.

Other sellers may be uncomfortable trusting the weights in the system or their ability to always accurately project packaging material weight. Plus, when you get into larger size or weight items, what may be your normal shipping option for smaller items may no longer always be the cheapest. And some private services change rates more frequently than our Federal service, so there is also the burden then of keeping up with all these rates for system maintenance.

I know for myself, I do a mix: For anything under X pounds (I think I do 15 pounds max), I have all weights and sizes prebuilt int my shipping tables using exclusively our Federal postal service; built into that I have estimated packaging weight, since charges are by the ounce and pound. Most of the time it's pretty bang-on, though there is the very rare occasion where the weight in BO was off - or more typically *I* didn't accurately guess my packaging weight, which bumped up actual shipping to the next higher cost level for me. I lose money in those rare cases, but it's so infrequent it's really not a problem.

But for those larger, heavier items (e.g., sets like Disney Castle or Death Star), I have no shipping estimates purposefully - they'll always show Request for Quote, no instant checkout. This is because there are so many shipping options (all diff costs for diff locations) that are worth the time to research and get a solid actual BEST cost among multiple vendors (USPS, FedEx, UPS) as you're getting into shipping costs of $20 on up, and USPS may not be the cheapest way. So this is for the buyer's benefit in this scenario. I don't want some insane instant checkout cost from USPS for $40 (just making up a number) when if I did research, at that moment, I could get it out for $18. It would cost me the order before the buyer even picked a store to buy from. ;-)

I'm sure every seller has different and good reasons for their settings! Above is insight into just one store and why. :-)

phill

sellers have a right to set there shop as they want and is fine just got stuck on a few sales waiting for payment details and some take a few days to send cost ,was just venting some steam 8-X

somebrickstore

I have a mixture of both, predefined weights and none predefined. Works, well. I try to be fairly responsive with quotes.