"Postage gone mad" Topic

I recently looked at some 1/72 scale models on eBay. But the one quote to ship a single 1/72 model (an Italeri 1/72 M8 Greyhound – $9.99 USD) from California to Australia was US$41.50 !!!!!

Sorry guys but for that price I expect it to be delivered in person with a stripper-gram. Is this eBay, the vendor or USPS just getting really stupid?

Not sure in this case but overseas shipping has gotten crazy expensive. From December 2012 to January 2013 the price of overseas shipping doubled or more.

Shipping to and from Australia has been one of the largest jumps in price.

With all that said, the $41.50 USD price sounds more like medium flat rate shipping.

Sometimes the postage calculator on eBay gets a little wonky on overseas pricing. The seller may have some settings in there about required insurance or signature which may drive cost up. Did you try contacting the seller to ask?

I have stopped buying from eBay in the UK as the postage to Belgium is crazy. I used to buy a lot of books years ago from eBay but none in the last year or so. I blame the Royal Mail.

Just shipped a DBA size 15mm Mongol army to Australia, 1st class for $12.75 USD. USPS Priority Mail was $41.50 USD.

Equivalent 1st Class packet to UK $10 USD-12.

Jeff

Okay, I was curious. I live in the US, and if mine were for sale, it would cost either $14.90 USD or $20.45 USD, depending on whether I shipped it in a bubblewrap mailer or cardboard box.

Still isn't cheap, but not $41 USD either.

I have the impression that some of the US ebay settings are completely screwed… I was bidding on (and won) an auction a few days ago, the shipping charges were high but I just had to have that Ogre Mk III-B :-)
And even though my bid was under the Belgian limit for duty free import, ebay did mention a duty charge on the auction page. When I got the invoice from the seller, there were no more import duties mentioned and shipping had gone down by about half.
I don't know how ebay in the States works exactly, but I guess often shipping (and duty) charges are shown waaaaaay too high compared with reality.

Postage in UK is becoming a real issue. Fine if you are selling big lots- 1 kilo for £3.90 GBP, insured up to £50.00 GBP- but for smaller lots, such as many wargaming lots, it's the same price, unless you can squeeze it into a package less than 24 mm thick. To make things worse, EBay and PayPal charge commission o n p+p! which adds about 13%. Result is that fewer people bid on items and prices for the actual items are depressed. Recently sold about 200 28mm Napoleonics in battalion sized lots (12s, 16s, 24s) and averaged about 60 pence per figure. Cost to buyer probably averaged nearer 80 pence when p+p costs are added.
Overseas is just ridiculous. I have a grandson in Singapore. We like to send him the odd book or toy- usually costs between £10.00 GBP and £20.00 GBP depending on weight, and that's without any tracking ( which adds at least £5.00 GBP). We recently sent him a birthday card; because it was slightly thicker than a normal card, it cost over £4.00 GBP Interestingly, we were in Singapore at Christmas and sent cards back to UK- cost LESS than it would do to do to send within UK (50 cents, around 25pence, as compared to 60pence for second class stamp in UK)
Of course, in the UK Royal Mail has just been sold off by the Government (at a ridiculously low price) and the CEO is being paid megabucks plus bonuses- guess who is paying for that!

All I can say is Yup.

Try posting to Dubai. 5 books would have cost £80.00 GBP! And that was the cheapest I could find.

New Zealand Post has this thing called YouShop. It gives you an address in the States or UK that items can be shipped to (often taking advantage of free internal shipping offered to local customers) and the package is re-shipped. The postage rates are there to be seen and they offer multiple package discounts. While this is a NZPost service, I am sure that other places have their own legitimate versions that are not fronts for re-shipping cons.

Thanks guys. Yes I did contact the seller. No answer as yet – but it has now become cost prohibitive to buy wargames items from eBay internationally thanks to the mail costs.

So I am looking for suggestions as to alternate sources of 20mm WW2 vehicle models, and just about anything else :-(

Last plastic kits and some gadgets I bought from China came airmail post free and arrived in a couple of days.