Quote Originally Posted by Borgeman View Post
- I assume the item arrived undamaged since you haven't mentioned otherwise. For something so expensive, I'd happy trade the $35 for the knowledge that it was not damaged and you dont have to fight for a partial/full refund. Also take note that even if he had used a courier with extra insurance, theres no actual guarantee it would arrive undamaged.
See, maybe it's just me, but I don't believe I should pay extra for sellers to go to the nth to pack things as best as they can. Those times when I've sold things, I've always gone out of my way to pack and pad stuff to the nth to ensure it gets to the other end with minimal damage and I've only every charged for materials I haven't been able to scrounge for to do it. So to me, the notion of having to pay extra to get a seller to essentially do their job, kind of seems absurd to me and it's the standard I hold myself to when I sell things.


Quote Originally Posted by Borgeman View Post
- My other point is looking on the auction page, the postage reads "$45 Standard Delivery - Registered." That means he is using stock standard Auspost to post it. If you use eBay a bit you should know this. Even from Perth something that size will not cost $45 to post*. Why would you agree to the purchase with that knowledge? You basically agreed to give him $45 to ship the item using regular post! Doesn't matter what it ended up costing, you agreed to pay the $45. Remember the same applies if a seller quotes $10 shipping, and it ends up being $25 - the seller has to cop the hit and pay that themselves, the buyer is not required to cough up more money after the fact.
If it was to Australia only, absolutely and I completely get where you're coming from here. The problem here is that if you look at the item description, it was listed as the seller posting worldwide, which would still be registered Australia Post these days - even if it's going by surface. As I understand it, Australia Post now give tracking on everything because of the amount of eBay parcels going through their system. $45 is certainly price gouging for Australia, but for somewhere like the US, it's certainly a reasonable ballpark. The dilemma in situations like this is whether what you're seeing is calculated shipping or whether it's a flat figure the seller has put out there to cover themselves; last I checked, eBay gave the option of stating either in a listing.