Hmm how much does "high" shipping cost actually dissuade buyers | Selling

ricarmic · 2026-03-16T19:06:19.430000Z

I've long believed, like I think most folks here that (relatively) high shipping costs will send buyers elsewhere. My listing practices (.COM vs .CA) are complicated, but for the purposes of this thread, most know that I list stamps which can be very small, at one time easily disguised as lettermail items. As I migrated to the rules that they're parcels, I really can't list individual stamps on .COM because my stuff is free shipping and the tracked cost to the USA built in would mean I'd never sell to Canadians (or they'd be paying stupidly higher prices). So what I do now is list them all on .CA with shipping costs of $9 $C for an individual stamp (or a small set for example) to the US (similar idea for international). What I expected to happen is that the US sales would drop off OR US folks would buy several lots (because with combined shipping they'd all still ship for the price of one lot). This doesn't seem to have happened, which is very surprising to me. Today 3 out of 10 shipments were this kind of situation: US $10 item, $9 shipping, US $10 item, $9 shipping, Australia $12 item $13 shipping. Some of the sales might be from items that are not available elsewhere at this moment in eBayland. I've mentioned it before but I put nice stamps on my parcels, I'm sure that there are some regular repeat buyers who buy from me because of this (even buying only one item at a time) - if the stamps on the parcel are worth as much to the buyer as the price they've paid for shipping, they don't see it as a cost. The combination of the two above might explain a chunk of these types of purchases, but I continue to be surprised at how many of them are coming through in the last year! As we all know the $10 even with them paying the high shipping are a lot of "paperwork" to get them over the border so I'm not nearly as fond of them as I was a while ago! Anyway thought it was worth sharing....

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Hmm how much does "high" shipping cost actually dissuade buyers | Selling | eBay Canada EN