I won several items from the same seller of ebay. Primarily figures kits. In fact here is a total list with what the guy wants to charge me for shipping and handling:

Tamiya 1/35 Steyr Type 1500A/01 -item# 3167640995 @ USD 13.99+5
Dragon 1/35 German Heavy Artillery Crew 3167640281 @ USD 4.99+3.99
Dragon 1/35 HJ Div Pz-GRENADIER (1944) 3167640849 @ USD 3.99+3.99
Tamiya 1/35 Africa Corps KUBELWAGEN TYPE 82 - Item #3167641509 @ USD 9.99+4.99
Dragon 1/35 HJ Div Pz-GRENADIER (1944) - Item #3168985531 @ USD 3.99+3.99
Dragon 1/35 German FALLSCHIRMJÄGER on Tank A - Item #3168993936 @ USD 4.24+3.99
Dragon 1/35 German FALLSCHIRMJÄGER on Tank B - Item #3168993945 @ USD 7.5+3.99
Dragon 1/35 German Heavy Artillery Crew - Item #3168994122 @ USD 4.99+3.99
discount $10
total 77.61



I did the math and he wants to charge me $23.93 for shipping and handling. Now, all of his auctions state that he is located in the US, but when I did a little digging around by checking his account information, he indicates Malaysia. I would have never bid on these items had I known that. His feedback is also a little rough.

I have to be honest, I'm thinking of not paying this guy and turning him into ebay for the deception about where his auctions are located. I really hate to tarnish my feedback (100%).

That is alot of kits. Dependong on the method of shipping. (UPS or USPS) it doesn't seem that high to me. (the bigger the box the more shipping is) The Location thing does make me wonder..........

This is typical of what is constantly happening on e-bay. Frankly the place is becoming a sewer. If I was you I would cancel the sale altogether. There are loads of these people on e-bay at the moment. I have seen several from 'England' in Singapore for example. if you don't get the stuff what redress do you have-NONE...Jim

seems that the guy has several different ratings on his selling behaviour, The Malaysia stuff also wonders me . I sthere any other source to get the kits. The Ship costs is not so big but , maybe youll have to wait 2 months to get em ....

I am seeing this more and more, where the location is US but they 'drop ship' from over seas AND charge a huge S&F

First question - do you want the kits? If you do, you got some decent prices on them. The shipping if it is coming from over seas isn't so bad I recently shipped a Data CD over seas and one individual CD cost $1.60.

Second question - can you part with $100? If the answer is no then you have a hard decision to make. If it's maybe then I'd suggest bitting the bullet.

I'd honestly bite the bullet a little bit and go ahead and pay him. I'd pay in a way that you have recourse - credit card if possible. I'd get the insurance too. I'd be more worried about the shipping feedback he's had and if the product is going to be shipped. If you don't receive the product then you can call the Credit card company and have them stop payment so to speak.

If in doubt cancel.
It's not worth the risk. But I would contact e-bay and let them know and why.
Good luck
Hope you get it sorted.
Peter

I wouldn't pay, unless i really really had to have it. I got burned by an ebay seller 2 years ago. seller was auctioning off the mrc 1/35 uh-60 blackhawk. I won the bid, sent them the $ and nothing. 2 weeks go by and i contact the seller and she tells me that they are sold out of the model. How can you sell out of something that you have up for an auction. well to make a long story short, 2 months go by and i got my $ back. Was the seller reported---yes. Have I seen them as sellers again----no.

Personally, I'd report him to eBay since he advertises that he is in the US. Sorry to our international members, while I do on occasion bid on overseas items, eBay is too vast to want to pay $10 for a DML kit plus $15 shipping when I can buy the kit locally for $25 or from a US eBayer for $20+5 s/h.

Again, in your situation, you should have checked his feedback first, but right now it does look like a gamble if you send him that much money. Some folks didn't get any kits. I would contact the buyers who left negative feedback before parting with my hard earned money. Perhaps they eventually got their goods. $23 shipping isn't bad from the Far East for that many kits, but I understand your position.

Several of our Armorama members here have eBay and online shops. Robert (Alpenflage) Burnside has an online shop and he does great business via eBay. He also started the Nordland AMPS chapter up here. I met him through eBay and eventually joined his club, much like I joined your IMPS and AMPS clubs in Virginia.

EBay is a great place, but it is self-policing. You have to trust the feedback or past buyers and be able to weed out the one or two disgruntled customers from the successful ones. My feeling is that most users are hesitant to leave neutral feedback. If they pay and get their items, eventually, they will leave positive feedback. When something takes two months to get to me from the same side of the country, I'll leave neutral feedback in a heartbeat.

I cut out the worry,i buy at the local hobby shop. :-)

My only problem with that is my local hobby shop is pricing above retail on many of its items! Not to mention that their customer service (particularly on the phone with other customers while I've been there) is far worse than any experience I've had on eBay. Having said that, I find the shipping cost on eBay is hard to recoup unless you can get a lot of something from one seller. Since that's usually not the case, I've found it more economical to buy in large batches from an online house. For example, Alanger has an online store and an ebay store--why use ebay when you can get basically the same prices without any uncertainty about what you're going to win?

In general, I've had a great experience with ebay. For some reason, the model sellers on there are less competitive than other areas. I've been very hesistant to order from overseas on ebay for the reasons brought up in this thread.

Hope it works out for you pcmodeler!

Stephen

Pc - I have dealt with this guy before and had a similar experience. He did send me my kit but had to send a postal order. He does send the stuff it may just take some times. I waited bout 3 weeks. But i didn't mind because of what i was saving.

So I did the math, and you could get all of the items listed here (except the tank riders - I estimated their cost) from greatmodels, for a total of $77 ... without shipping. You'd end up saving some $7 for continuing to shop with this guy.

Doesn't ulitmately sound like that great of a deal. Sorry.

Mika

I kind of agree with Stephen. In fact, I just placed about an order for about $100 worth of stuff from Alanger a few days ago. That's for about 15+ kits.

Sounds lke another name for the fella plugging store666
I bought the german transporter off him although it was advertised as being in the UK it actually came from Malaysia I paid for it by credit card and it arrived a week later bit annoying to find uot that it wasnt were it stated but I got a great deal and would use again remember if you pay by CC you have cover by the card company if the items dont turn up
and to be fair the P+P was Ok (£7) I saved about £22 on the kit with P+P included

I'm of the same opinion as some of the other guys, if you do pay use a credit card, at least if the kits don't arrive you have some recourse to get your money back.

Exactly. I would have never bought the stuff if the location hadn't said US.

mikeli125, it is the same guy. In fact, I had bid on a few items, told him I was going to bid on more and he responded with an email saying that he also runs that site and I could buy directly from there.


Oh well, I went and paid him Just a bit upset about the whole thing as for the money, I would have chosen to spend it locally then.

I don't know if this is the same guy I bought from a while back or not. I ordered three kits, had them combine the shipping, and then waited for them to show. I wasn't crazy about the fact that combining the shipping only saved me a little bit. I expected a bigger discount, but I didn't know for sure. When the kits hadn't arrived after a couple weeks I started getting concerned. It was then that I found the small print indicating if "might" be shipped from Malaysia. When I got the kits I gave the guy a nuetral rating and made sure from then on to watch for the small print on auctions.

All that said it doesn't seem to me that $23 is that much shipping on all that stuff. The thing is you could cancel the order, and risk having them give you a bad ebay rating. I would say bite the bullet, buy the stuff, then give the guy a less than good rating. Chalk it up to "live and learn."

Sounds like the same guy.

I had the same problem with anohter seller a couple of months back. I contacted eBay right away, told them I was displeased witht he fact that the seller was misrepresenting where he was from.

eBay contacted back in about 2 hours with a responce. They told me to get all of the selelrs info, wait for delivery. If I did not get my items, to contact the seller as usual, but to also let them know every step of the way. These responces from eBay were from a real person, not an auto-responder.

eBay told me that if it did not work out that it would be covered. Luckily I received my items (at a pretty good savings), but took a couple of weeks though. Even though it worked out, i am still leery. I usually send an e-mail to the seller asking where he is really from, and stating that if I win, and he has misrepresented where he is from, I will withdraw my bid. The eBay rep said that is perfectly OK, and that is grounds for witrhdrawing a winning bid, as it falls under misrepresentation.

Hope it works out for you !

I've considered buying from this guy a few times myself, but never did due to the number of negative feedbacks that he has gotten. I would never buy from an Ebay seller that has less than about 98% positive feedbacks and even then look at the number of sales the person has made. (There will always be someone who is never satisfied.) This guy, if he is the one I'm thinking of, has a number of negative feedbacks because the customer has not received their package. If you have won the auctions, you have accepted the risk of buying from the seller and unfortunately you do have to keep your part of the bargain.
Get a tracking number for the item and keep a close eye on it's travels until it gets to you. It may cost you a few bucks more, but it's really worth it. And check out the seller BEFORE you buy anything from him or her!

You shouldn't pay, and should complain to ebay. It is deception. How much for the delivery charge doesn't matter here. It is a matter of principle and integrity.

This sounds like the same guy I got my kits from...I got a Trumpeter Chinese Type89 Anti-Tank Gun, and a Trumpeter Chinese Type82 152mm Self propelled Howitzer, got them for $7 each....$7 each for shipping as well....most people will combine shipping, and you may pay like $1 more than shipping just the one kit. Well this guy wanted $14 to ship them both...which I told him that I flat out refused...and had said I got 2 Tamiya Challanger kits from California and it only cost me $9 to get them shipped to me, (New Brunswick, Canada), so there was no way that it would coat more than that from anywhere in the US other than Alaska and Hawaii. So then he told me that he wasn't in the US, that he was in Malaysia....to which I responded that that was his problem and not mine...as he advertised that he was in the US, and that if he didn't give me the kits for a decent shipping price that I would turn him in to the Ebay police. In the end I got the 2 kits for $7 each....and $9 for shipping.....don't know how much he lost on the deal....but I don't really care.

One thing I do, is keep all of my e-mails from the ebay sellers, especially the ones with the amount for postage in them...and when I get the parcel...I check the amount that the seller actually paid to send it....and as long as its with in a dollar as to what I was quoted....then I don't make a big deal about it, as I know it costs for tape and boxes and such, any more than that...and they get an e-mail...and if they don't want to do anything about it....then bad feddback ensues....the way I look at it....its no different if I walk into a store and get bad service and get treated badly....not going to have very high praise for that place...and will tell people to stay away. You are the customer...and the customer is what keeps these people in business.