I am so smart!

[coxengines]

I am so smart!

I am smart because, in order to save myself a lot of work, I average shipping costs for shipments within Canada.

Being on the West Coast, I use Toronto as my median for shipping costs.

If the buyer is further East I lose a bit. If the buyer is further West, I gain. At the end of the month, it's usually a wash.

Using the same logic, I listed our son's used video console with a $16.95 shipping cost (which leaves a $2 profit).

After all, I'm smart!

The little beast sold to a Canadian customer and I made up the shipping label via Paypal.

What do you mean $45 for shipping???

Well, turns out shipping to Nunavut is $45.00

Am I not smart?:^O

True story and a little humour to break the tension on this board.

Xena

[ampurtle]

The only way to Nunavut is twin Otter 😛

[craftycatsattic]

Ouch! Too bad that useless flat rate box couldn't come to the rescue but I am guessing it's WAY WAY too small? On a positive note you should ace the shipping DSR's though!

Tonight I tried something different and broke the tension with a good movie and a nice bottle of vino I treated myself too and it is really showing on these boards I tell yah...lol!

[westernstargifts]

Well, turns out shipping to Nunavut is $45.00

Yup...I sent my first one to Nunavut last week and it was somewhere around $16.00.

Another thing I find funny is the fact that I just posted on the board saying that Canadians buy when something is cheap or there is free shipping. I don't get a lot of Canadian buyers, but today I sent out 6 packages to Canadians and 5 of them had free shipping.

[coxengines]

It's the cost of whale meat to feed the sled dogs that's driving up the Nunavut postal costs!

Xena

[cumos55]

Shipping to Nunavut is airmail..

Should not airmail be an extra charge?

Just a thought. My sort of logic...

[lina-mallows]

As eBay looks out for its own interests- it is we as sellers who must resists the eBay nonsense about offering FREE SHIPPING, or including shipping charges.

SHIPPING is not free- we as sellers have to pay- and what sense does it make paying higher end value fees, when these amounts are included in the base auction price?

Canada, and the US, have many locations where shipping is prohibitive. So many US auctions specifically exclude ALASKA, and Hawaii. Maybe it's time we take a good hard look at the northern reality of Canada, and start to be clear about shipping into the Territories.

We love our fellow Canadians, but there has to be limits. I remember spending time in The NWT. People there talked about how they took advantage of the many SEARS sales that offered FREE CANADA WIDE shipping! It is unbelievable how many people went to Calgary, and Edmonton to do their shopping (In Hay River- there was/is? a catalog outlet there). If you think shipping a game console is expensive- try shipping a full size refrigerator- or a washing machine to the Arctic. (Very often (READ AS MOST OF THE TIME!!!) the delivery costs exceed the cost of the item. Thank you SEARS- while there, my food stayed cold, and my clothes clean! (Regardless of the ever changing colour of the tap water.))

[dipmicro]

Watch for the postal zones 41,42:

http://www.canadapost.ca/tools/pg/prices/rcrz-E.pdf

I recently wrote a script (to be deployed on my website) that calculates shipping. I went through those postal guides many times. Of course I did not enter entire CP database, just enough to interpolate with tolerable precision. Look at this extract (the format is zone;weight1:price1;weight2:price2; ...)

ExpeditedParcelRates =
[
"1;0.75:5.73;4:7.45;16:14.05;30:21.41",
"2;0.75:6.32;4:8.47;16:15.21;30:22.45",
"3;0.75:6.79;4:9.31;16:17.27;30:25.51",
"4;0.75:6.15;4:8.00;16:14.84;30:21.76",
"5;0.75:5.80;4:7.95;16:14.79;30:21.83",
// ... snip ...
"33;0.75:10.75;4:15.50;16:31.40;30:48.28",
"41;0.75:11.60;4:25.82;16:83.24;30:147.96",
"42;0.75:14.48;4:32.21;16:102.45;30:183.01"
];

Interesting is the steepness of zones #41 and #42. If I ship parcel to myself (zone 5), it has steepness $0.53/kg. Zone #42 has $5.46/kg.

I recommed to explicitly state that addresses in zones 41/42 need custom shipping quote. I think all people living in those zones will know what that means.

[westernstargifts]

Mail has to be flown into Nunavut which is the reason it costs so much.

As eBay looks out for its own interests- it is we as sellers who must resists the eBay nonsense about offering FREE SHIPPING, or including shipping charges.

I agree that it doesn't make sense to pay eBay listing and final value fees on shipping. It drives their profit margin up and ours down. Most sellers raise their prices to compensate. My competitor lowers the prices as then gives free shipping. Figure that one out.