Different shipping costs between purchase and shipping label

Question

I sold an item that said the buyer pays for shipping. When the auction ended the buyer quickly paid $37 in shipping fees. Buyer says that is what eBay calculated at the time he paid for it. When I go to get the shipping label, it is coming up with $55. I've also gone directly to the USPS site and it comes up with $55. (its a 15 pound box with dimensions 18x13x15)

I've asked the buyer to pay the extra $18 if he wants me to get the shipping label and send the item. I've given the buyer the chance to cancel the order or submit the additional $18, but have not heard back yet.

What should I do?

jeffrub · Answer

I tried your suggestion and I indeed did not pay enough attention to shipping section. I had created my listing by Sell Similar and it came up with a completely innaccurate shipping section and I missed that.

The listing included two boxes which I had combined into a bigger box and that's why the cost was so high. I have packaged up both items separatly and now the cost to ship them that way is less than the $37 the buyer paid. So I guess I got lucky. I'll pay more attention next time.

Thanks for your response.

Jeff

mr_lincoln · Answer

Hi @jeffrub

You cannot ask a Buyer for more than what they paid for on the transaction, we see this issue and it typically is a Seller error on the listing in the Shipping section on either the weight or more often the package dimensions. You need to eat the cost of your mistake and ship the item to the customer and figrue out what you did wrong.

A box with dimensions of 18 x 15 x 13 = 3,510 cubic inches. That gets surcharges for Volume weight (used to be called Dimensional weight). Any box up to 12 x 12 x 12 = 1,728 cubic inches is NOT charged Volume weight. Prices go up quickly with Volume weight.

Buyers cannot change anything on your listings so again, the mistake is on your end. Use the Sell Similar link on the sold item and create a duplicate listing and review the Shipping settings you used plus the shipping method, etc. Once you figure out where the mistake was you can save the listing to your Draft file and then delete it from there.