[timgetsch]

Originally Posted by ohiomike

My first question would be, what does the statement I've bolded mean? Does this mean all cards marked to be shipped will automatically be gathered and shipped on the first of each month? Or that all bulk orders will be processed on the 1st of the month regardless of when the order is placed? Or something else? I think there could be some potential issues there depending on what the statement means.

We never ship cards until the shipment request is received. Budget shipment requests would wait until the 1st of the month to be packaged. We are thinking of only offering budget shipping to people that have accounts.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

As far as the price structure goes, I think its an improvement over the current structure... but it still leaves the basic issue I and others are concerned about when it comes to bulk orders of stay 400-500 cards. From a buyers perspective, if they are spending $50-60 in shipping for an order that costs around $10-$12 in postage to ship, they are going to feel ripped off.

Hmm... It sounds like we have to deal with the perception that our shipping fee is only paying for postage. On average only 1/3rd of our shipping costs are due to postage. With large orders it is often closer to 10% of our shipping costs are due to postage. That means the majority of what you are paying for is labor. It takes a lot of labor to find, verify, and securely package 500 cards. Maybe we should call this a packaging fee and offer free shipping.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

Now I know your stance is that your actual shipping costs include the cost of paying your employees for the time it takes them to pull cards and package them for an order, and with these bulk orders that can end up being a substantial cost. But what I and many others would argue is that these costs are of no relevance from a buyers perspective, and making the buyer shoulder this burden is leading to fewer sales, especially when it comes to low priced cards on the site.

If your goal in having us reduce shipping fees is to make it possible for low priced cards to sell faster, that is a very tough sell. We don't make any money on low priced cards. If a card sells for $0.25, at most we made $0.05 off the cash-out fees, and in reality that number will be much closer to $0.02 because of all the recycled store credit. It doesn't make any business sense to lose money on shipping for items that we didn't make any money on to begin with.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

We as sellers are paying for full consignment services. That process includes sorting, identifying, booking, scanning, and listing the cards we send in to the site. But it doesn't end there. It also includes pulling cards that have sold and preparing them for sale. Without this process, sellers would not be receiving a full consignment service. Therefore, I think the costs involved with pulling and preparing cards we've sold to be shipped should be shouldered by the sellers. Perhaps the current seller fee structure does not allow for that, but it should. It's part of the process, and I don't think any seller could have much ground to complain about shouldering these costs as selling their cards is an essential part of what each and every seller is trying to do by sending cards to your company.

This is an interesting point, but I am pretty sure this conflicts with the previous point. If we charge sellers an extra $0.15 per card to cover the cost of shipping, that would eliminate all of the low priced cards on the site.

That said several sellers have offered to optionally pre-pay for shipping so that their items could be listed as having no extra shipping fees. This is something that we can entertain.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

Again, I think all users of the site would benefit from this kind of change to the shipping structure, including sellers. So I don't see why any seller would have an issue paying a little more to help take the shipping cost burden off the buyer.

I bolded the "paying a little more" because that isn't really possible. We would have to double the cost of our cheapest processing service to offer what you are asking for. Any labor costs that we incur that aren't covered by our fees come directly out of my pocket. I wish I were independently wealthy and could offer this service for free just because I like you guys... but I can't. So we need to work together to figure out the next best alternative.