Shipping a concertina

[fearfeasog]

There's an Ebay auction I'm watching and the seller lists "freight" as the only shipping option. I'm imagining the poor little 'tina sandwiched between two barrels of pork bellies or pallets of large screen TVs.

 

So, um, is freight a good way to send an instrument? Am I not understanding what "freight" is?

[Don Taylor]

There's an Ebay auction I'm watching and the seller lists "freight" as the only shipping option. I'm imagining the poor little 'tina sandwiched between two barrels of pork bellies or pallets of large screen TVs.

 

So, um, is freight a good way to send an instrument? Am I not understanding what "freight" is?

If you pay by PayPal then eBay says that he has to ship it insured and trackable,

[fearfeasog]

There's an Ebay auction I'm watching and the seller lists "freight" as the only shipping option. I'm imagining the poor little 'tina sandwiched between two barrels of pork bellies or pallets of large screen TVs.

 

So, um, is freight a good way to send an instrument? Am I not understanding what "freight" is?

If you pay by PayPal then eBay says that he has to ship it insured and trackable,

 

well that's suspicious then, because they aren't accepting paypal. you have to call them, they say.

[Simon H]

If they are selling without using Paypal as an option they are breaking Ebay's terms. I'd be very suspicious this is almost certainly a scam.

[Don Taylor]

You could report the seller to eBay as a possible scammer, if the listing reappears with a PayPal option then at least you have purchase protection, if not then it really is a scam.

[fearfeasog]

so I got a response--turns out they're a big accordion outfit in the midwest, totally legit, and probably just not very ebay savvy. Offered more pics and various shipping options. sheesh, would folks PLEASE learn how to use ebay? makes ya look seedy when you don't!

 

http://www.castiglioneaccordions.com/

[Dirge]

If I've read this right you all seem to have deduced that he might be a rogue because he's not taking Paypal.

 

Paypal can be a dreadful thing if you are a seller; the British Ebay's requirement that there is a Paypal option has considerably reduced the amount I use them for starters; I find other ways to offload things where I can.

 

From a seller's point of view Paypal gets you instant payment. However then they take a huge percentage cut; (more than if the buyer used a credit card); there are numerous tales of arbitrary judgements in favour of stupid or sly 'purchasers' getting the system to give them their money back when a refund isn't really warranted. Their rules are Byzantine if you are doing anything slightly out of the ordinary. (remember that fiddle they wanted cut up?) I once tried to get a head office address out of them and totally failed; they don't want correspondance, or even for you to know which country they are based in. You can spend a lot of time filling in pages only to get fed back to the start because you clicked the wrong box.

 

Paypal works well for low value items. The classic car boot sale tat is, in fairness to Paypal, what it was probably really set up to deal with. The seller gets paid before the buyer loses interest and forgets; the value means that everyone can live with an arbitrary arbitration even if it is clumsy and there is less incentive to use the system to chisel sellers; it's hardly worth the return. But when it gets to the high value items like a concertina for instance, it doesn't matter that they are making 100 or 1000 times the money the crude rules and high costs are still applied and I know I'm not the only one on C net who merrily loathes them, and is deeply suspicious of them to boot. The company is indeed the vile spawn of its ill-favoured parent Ebay.

 

Hah! Enjoyed that. Anyway; ranting aside, a seller wanting to avoid using Paypal for a high value item means nothing; it doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's doing either.

 

If anyone knows Chris Algar I'd suggest they buy him a pint or 2 and then get him going on the subject. He's clearly come to terms with wading in the saltwater crocodile territory that is Paypal and I bet his private thoughts on it would make amusing reading!