| What is worse, a great many sellers offering media mail are ripping their customers off by charging 2 or 3 times the actual charges. |
I just wanted to pop in here and help beat the dead horse. I'm a full time comic merchant here on ebay. It's all I do for a living and I've shipped literally thousands and thousands of packages via media mail. I have NEVER had a problem...until today. For the first time I got an email from a customer who had his package opened by the postal inspector at his post office and he had to pay extra for the postage price difference. (We of course refunded him the extra cost.)
Anyway, I wanted to respond to two people here. The posts are old but nevertheless I thought it important to point a couple things out.
In regards to the person who claims all top rated sellers are being dishonest by shipping media. I'd say that's not always accurate. My return address says my company name on it (which has the word "comics" in it), and all the postal employees I deal with on my end all know exactly what I ship. I ship about 60 packages a day between ebay and my website, so they all know me personally and I've also asked them numerous times if comics qualified for media mail. They've all said that they do qualify unless I'm personally advertising in the comic. Now clearly it seems these postal employees are not correct, but if they are going to allow me to ship them and I'm being completely forthcoming about the contents of the package, then I'm not being dishonest. It seems the post offices across the country need to get on the same page as it's not the public's job to be postal "Lawyers". I rely on my postal employee to tell me what i can and can't do and anything further is not my responsibility. My only concern is whether or not my customers are being forced to pay extra by my use of media mail. Up until today that hasn't been the case.
I also wanted to respond to the person who said sellers who use media usually overcharge their customers. I can't speak for ever seller, but you guys need to keep in mind, that postage is not the only thing that goes into the shipping rate. Boxes alone can cost anywhere from 60 cents up to a few dollars depending on the box. Also,the corrugated boards we use to sandwhich our comics inside the box also cost about 20 cents a piece and we use at least two of them. Then there's the bags and boards, the tape, the sticker label, etc. All this stuff costs money. Additionally we also are responsible for any package that does get lost or damaged in shipping since ebay no longer alllows for optional shipping insurance. There's no way I'm sending out a $100 order without shipping insurance, so I build that into our shipping rate. Even with all that, we still only charge a flat $4.99 for as many books as you want. Technically speaking we actually end up losing money on shipping for about 25% of our orders. If you buy 50 books from us, and we send it media mail, $4.99 is a fantastic bargain for the buyer. Yeah, it's not so much of a bargain when you buy 1 book, but still, we really don't make money on shipping even with the single book orders since packaging does add so much to the cost. We don't skimp on packaging like a lot of sellers. We want our customers to get their books undamaged. This costs a little extra for us, but it's usually worth it.
Oh and yes we do use first class whenever the weight allows, but that's usually only for orders of two books or less.
Anyway, just wanted to give my two cents on this topic.
