@pjcdn2005 wrote:
... it does bother me that they promote that we get money for shipping supplies when in reality, if I used the coupon that comes with a basic store, I would have to top it up with more money than it would cost if I bought similar supplies locally.
I received my coupon this quarter, went to buy some tape with it, and quickly realized the price was more than quadruple the price that U.S. sellers were paying for exactly the same thing (and what I'd been paying locally through Staples). Raphael justified the outrageous price difference by saying that it cost eBay a lot more to ship these supplies into Canada, but I can't understand the cost of the individual items being four times what it is in the U.S. Many U.S. companies sell the same products to Canada as they do within the U.S. at close to the same prices. This explanation makes no sense.
I don't see the point in these coupons at all at the moment. A coupon is effectively useless if we have to throw extra money into the purchase. Besides, I'm not willing to pay 4 times the going rate for supplies in order to subsidize eBay's own advertising.
The other thing that has crossed my mind is that some buyers may actually not want neighbours, family members, postal delivery people, etc. to see that a parcel is an eBay purchase, especially if the parcel is left on the doorstep or in an open, unlocked mailbox (like my country mailbox). Such clearly branded parcels might also be more attractive to thieves. For those reasons alone, I already hesitated buying eBay branded shipping supplies -- the sticker shock just dealt the final blow.
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