Ridiculous

[amethyst1415]

I lose money (sometimes) on my listings BUT HOW can I compete with the person who is selling their PS3 games for $1.29? I price mine to include free shipping which means that I can take $13 off the money I get (shipping in Canada) and the rest is mine. It's still not profit as my husband paid 40-60 for these games. Why do people sell them for that? There is no way they are making money when they have to ship.

[femmefan1946]

Thanks. I do not have a scale.

Buy one.

Mine was less than $20 at Canadian tire. Its a Starfrit.

Use metric measures. Canada Post went metric in 1974 and any other system will be approximate.

[ricarmic]

Staples has cheap/good +/- 1g digital scales too.....and they've always been the same weight as the scale at the PO shows!

[cumos55]

A scale was purchased even before my first sale....on eBay 

It measured up to 5 pounds.

Then a second scale was found at a garage sale that took me up to 10 pounds.... It was an antique... used by people that were selling candy.... it was government certified as accurate last in the 1970's... It was a Dayton scale  from the Computing Scale Company located in Toronto from before 1920...

This was the same company that was bought out by IBM  and started IBM on its "calculating" direction for the future....

This scale is very close to 100 years old ... super accurate... and a very valuable scale... because of its age...

A scale is very important....  for determining the cost of postage.....  Cannot live without it....both of them....

Everything above 10 pounds,,, was a volumetric measurement  for large breakables

[38e_avenue]

A scale is a must for every serious seller. I am using a Pelouze scale, bought about 10 years ago at Staples. I paid 70 dollars or so.

It saved me probably hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on postage. Several times,  I brought to the counter parcels weighting 0.999. The clerk said: "You have luck!". But that was no luck at all - that was hard work to obtain this 0.999! 😉 Without a scale at home such job can't be done  

[pjcdn2005]

How have you been able to put a shipping price on your current listings if you don't have a scale?

[ricarmic]

38e - you're exactly right! Sometimes I have to wait to put my stamps on my package until after they weigh it at the PO because I'm right on the weight before the stamps are put on - sometimes takes a lot of adjusting to make sure I'm on the weight, but it is worth it for the international stuff!!!

[pjcdn2005]

ricarmic...You can use stamps and still send using tracking methods such as expedited and xpresspost...correct?

[ricarmic]

Pjc: yes, you can use stamps for all the shipping formats from Canada Post including tracked, expedited, expresspost, registered etc (unless you have a misinformed PO employee which does happen from time to time). Everything I ship is with stamps on the package, because my buyers are stamp collectors and they would get quite irate if I were to use the PO labels or PAYPAL labels etc!!!

If you have your own scale, and go to the CP site, you can print off the shipping rates to everywhere each January so you will know how much it will cost before you go to the PO (and you'll know how much to charge for shipping in advance too).

Here is the link:

http://www.canadapost.ca/tools/pg/prices/default-e.asp?ecid=murl07001139 

Click on business pricing and all the tables are in here that you need, you can just print out the pages that pertain to you and the types of shipping you provide.

To use the tables, you'll also need your rate code table, to get it use the "Canada Rate Code Look-up Table" link on the page up above.

[pjcdn2005]

Thanks ric. I use stamps for lettermail/light packet type items and don't plan on using it for other services so my question was more out of curiosity. Based on your answer, if a Canadian tended to ship everything using tracked services so then met the  90% tracking  requirement, they could be a TRS on .com even if they did use stamps. But even when using discounted stamps... I'm sure the the price of using services with tracking that often would be too expensive for most of us.

[mr.elmwood]

My scale weighs the same as the PO. i am right to the gram. This allows me to alter packaging to get to a lower shipping rate.

My scale tells me which are the heavier packing materials and which are the lighter.

My $50 scale has earned me thousands of dollars.

[ricarmic]

PJC: Yes, if you are referencing the conversation in a different thread regarding TRS and stamps, that is a specific anomaly resulting from how .COM counts "tracking" for actually untracked packages like light packet because of the way the PAYPAL labels are interpreted by the eBay reporting, or that is how I understand it. Certainly using actually tracked packages works too, and for certain you can use stamps for that as well (barring misinformed PO employees)....

[cumos55]

My scale for low weights  measures 2 grams less than the scale at the post office...

A scale (original price $65.00) was one of the first that was bought for selling on eBay...  and that was close to 8,000 parcels ago..

That Dayton scale was $20 at a garage sale....  worth about $200 today...  if not more.....

[38e_avenue]

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@pjcdn2005 wrote:

Thanks ric. I use stamps for lettermail/light packet type items and don't plan on using it for other services so my question was more out of curiosity.

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The discussion is more and more interesting. I also thought only about light packet, but why not about small packet? Using "below face" stamps I would save several thousands a year. I didn't even think about this possibility because of the tracking TRS needed, but with the new Ebay rules (starting in August) our "fake" tracking will be not recognized anymore. So maybe it's time to go back to old times, put the stamps on every package, fill out the custom forms (eh, I didn't like it!!!) and save 1.6 dol. on every SP to US and even more on international? I switched 2 years ago from letters to light packet exclusively to get this funny false tracking number.

Another option is to sign a contract with CP (they give similar discount). I almost signed! I didn't like 2 things: I needed to ship a specified number of parcels (what was doable), but also I need to fill out a really very, very complicated form to get a shipping label printed. Additionally, I was not able even to copy and paste the data from Ebay; everything needed to be written manually!, so finally I didn't sign this contract.