hey guys, this has nothing to do with linux but has anyone had any experience with paying 8 bucks for shipping (an ebay item) and then recieving it with a shipping cost of only 97 cents , or something real cheap. I was thinking this has to be illegal, false advertising or something?

Its not illegal as the person selling the item can set the shipping cost at whatever they want. Try to pay attention to details before bidding and buying. If they say its actual shipping cost they charge then try to charge more, that can be illegal and you should report them to ebay.

I've once tried to get charged 25 bucks for an item when it would have only cost 10 dollars, I refused to buy pay it after the seller openly admitted to jacking up the cost for him to make profit.. not very smart on his part.

how about $54 bucks for 10 1c cdroms like was on this
site this weekend. 10 cents for the cdroms. $15 for
bubble wrap, $15 for the envelope and label. $4 for
the priority mail $10 to print the envelope and label,
$5 for process the credit card, and $5 for tricycle to ride
the envelope out to the mailbox, and $5 for a calculator
to figure out if you made any money. oh crap what's
-5 mean.

When I sell on ebay (and I do regularly), I usually set a "fixed shipping cost". That way I can ship to anywhere in the US without having to worry if the buyer payed me enough. A lot buyers also like having a set shipping cost so they can plan ahead on their bidding. I will sometimes state in my auctions that I can also charge the buyer "exact shipping" if they want to wait until the end of auction.

Believe it or not, most of my buyers want a shipping cost stated up front, and they don't mind if it is $5-$10 more than normal, because they get a good deal on the auction item. I agree.

My $.02 cents

Peace...

I too often sell my old junk, I mean goods on Ebay. However I do it for free shipping, and just start the bidding out at shipping minimum price (if it's light, I ship priority so that'd be around 3.50) and from there it's all profit. I don't lie about the item(s) either, I make sure if it's broken I definitely say that, and sometimes even refer to the item as a nice looking paper weight or experiemental piece of equipment

Cool

>and $5 for tricycle to ride the envelope out to the mailbox

Lol. That's funny as hell.

there's lots of expenses to running a business.

You'd think they'd try to be more economical and get a unicycle or a pair of roller skates for $2.50.

Those require skill to ride. They needed a tricycle

I like to ship stuff back to myself twice before I get it shipped to the the buyer. I also like to attach bricks to the outside of the package. It makes it more interesting

This is why the term "shipping and handling" is (was?) often used instead.
Perhaps the seller just dropped the item off at a store to be packaged and shipped and that is what they charge, perhaps he did it himself and that is how much packaging plus shipping is, or maybe you are being ripped off.
The price for shipping isn't necessarily the postage amount.

My wife sells a lot of stuff on ebay, and if she is selling something she has never sold before she looks at other similar items to get a good feel for how much shipping is going to be. She usually makes less than a dollar on shipping and handling. You don't want to lose money, and you don't want to over charge people... It's a fine line. If she gets to the post office and finds out she has overcharged for shipping, she just sends it faster.

A lot of people _want_ fixed shipping on anything they buy off of ebay. It just makes things a lot easier. You can pay instantly, it will be shipped faster, etc...

If you don't want to be overcharged on shipping, just look at other auctions and average all of the shipping and handling costs on similar items. If you are going to be ripped off, don't bid. If the Shipping and handling isn't listed or isn't listed as "actual," don't bid.

There are many scams on Ebay. The worst I've seen is selling AOL disks (the free kind). Just make sure you know what you are doing and look at all the fine print before you bid.

Sorry you've been ripped off, but what else would you expect. As another example - I am pretty much in an automotive performance right now, and here what I found out, ebay had quite a list of items for auction that were claimed to be a "hude performance gain" for certain types of cars, hey called it "chip" what it actually was a simple resistor that you can pick up in a RadioShack for less than a dollar, solder it on ECU (engine control unit I believe) and in the best case scenario what you'll get is fooling the ECU think that it is running lean and enrich the fuel/air mixture, so if you are not careful enough you can guess what's comming to you besides horrible gas mileage, I along with some other people tried to e-mail the sellers and potential buyers about the scam (if you fall for it these so-called "chips" would set you off ten or more bucks for a dollar value resistor plus a possibility of blown engine and horendous gas expenses in a long run if you ARE lucky, if you are not lucky you are looking forward for new ECU at least), so do you think anyone listened? 8 out of 10 buyers bid on the items like craziest, and 7 out of 10 sellers threaten us with retaliation (sp?) b/c we drove off buyers.
you can find pretty dumb stuff on ebay as well, for instance someone selling their debt and such, but the funniest and most devastating listing came not that long ago - "Item description: You are binding on what is on this page, pictures of Front Mount Intercooler and turbo kit for a Honda Civic 97-99, all you get is what you see... Please no e-mails about products displayed - you get what is on this page. Buyer pay by MO or certified check, shipping is responsibility of buyer so make an arrangement with carrier beforehand..." And what you see is PICTURES of turbo kit and FMIC, believe me the bid went up to 1500 for the set of PICTURES, there is no limit to people stupidity, End of rant. I'll post the link as soons as I find it.
P.S. The link I was talking about has expired but I found another one, this one is for pictures of body kit for Honda Civic, check it out 255.00 for damn pictures http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...&category=1469