Exhorbitant Shipping costs!

[scottw]

Anyone seen the tubas for sale from an outfit in SoCal called Bellflower Music? They are adding on $250. + insurance to the horns for shipping cost! AND, they are setting a very high starting bid in addition for Yamahas and King basic horns.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 54794&rd=1

Sounds like a real money maker on the unsuspecting!
Caveat emptor!

[Chuck(G)]

Now here's a listing that I have problems with.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 98789&rd=1
The sellers lists this as a "No Reserve" auction, but lists a high starting bid. This seller also has a few other horns listed in the same fashion. I don't know about you, but when I see something listed as no reserve IMO that should mean no reserve, not no reserve starting at $xxxxx. I'm sure that both these sellers will be sitting on these horns for quite a while.

The horn is from Ed Strege's Badger State Supply and Repair and he's known for his good work.

To me, "no reserve" means just that--that if there's no higher bid than yours, you've won. I prefer this to an ultra-low starting bid with a high reserve. You want the item, but you haven't the faintest what the seller is really looking to get.

The listing cited is a fair price for an overahuled 4-valve Martin, bell-front and all. I'd ask that he include a set of tuning bits, however as the Martins have their own peculiar type.

[Paul S]

Anyone seen the tubas for sale from an outfit in SoCal called Bellflower Music? They are adding on $250. + insurance to the horns for shipping cost! AND, they are setting a very high starting bid in addition for Yamahas and King basic horns.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 54794&rd=1

Sounds like a real money maker on the unsuspecting!
Caveat emptor!

I am guessing that they have a truck freight quote on these horns. I sure hope that is the case. I would certainly sell my 641 for the starting bid on either of those and I know mine plays well and looks a whole lot nicer too.

As to shipping I found that if you put a 641 size horn and case inside a shipping box with even minimal padding, it will be well over the listed Post Office, UPS and Fed-Ex maximum length x height x width standards even at their double oversiize rates.

I was told by my UPS driver that UPS is supposed to refuse this size shipment container but I also know that if you have a UPS store box it up themselves they will accept it for some reason. Apparently there is policy to not accept a box over a certain size but they make exceptions for musical instruments when they verify what is going in the box. Perhaps these sellers took a look at the official policy, saw it was not able to be shipped standard and got a high freight rate from a truck firm. We can only hope that is the case.

[Dan Schultz]

I don't have a problem with any of the listings mentioned. They have told the potential buyer EXACTLY what to expect. If you want it.... buy it. If you don't want the item... then don't bid on it. I don't care who you are dealing with.... It's ALWAYS 'buyer beware'.

[Dean E]

Anyone seen the tubas for sale from an outfit in SoCal called Bellflower Music? They are adding on $250. + insurance to the horns for shipping cost! . . . . Sounds like a real money maker on the unsuspecting! Caveat emptor!

This is called fee avoidance, and can get a seller suspended under ebay's rules, because the auction site does not get a cut of the shipping costs. Also, the seller has zero feedback--worth a caution.

[Tom]

I don't have a problem with the listing...like TubaTinker said, you know exactly what you're getting.

As for the shipping cost itself...it might be a little on the high side. but then again it might not be. I've shipped a very large, very heavy tuba case all over the United States and Europe and shipping is expensive. Motor Freight shipping is WAY expensive if you're only sending something like a tuba. It was setup to deal with mass quantities of stuff...not a tuba case here and there, so you'll pay out the nose for it.

[Lew]

This merchant currently has 3 tubas on ebay that I have seen, 2 Yamahas, and a small convertable King. They are all at the very high end of the price range for what they are, and shipping is at least double what most reasonable vendors would charge. Still, they are up front about all of these things, so if someone buys one of these they are doing so with their eyes open.

I think that this is this dealer's first foray into ebay, and is trying to sell them there as if they were selling in their local market. People pay these prices and more if they don't do any comparson shopping, and don't have any basis for comparison on price.

[Lew]

This is far from his first foray onto eBay. I've seen him listing stuff there for at least a couple of years.

Then I guess that they just started using a new ID for some reason. They have no feedback and have the "new ebay member" icon next to their name.

[Matt Walters]

Okay. I know the value of money. Even before I became a married man with a step-daughter in college, I had a spending plan (budget). But as my Mother used to say it "It doesn't pay to be penny smart and dollar foolish." Because of an occasional complaint about charging $150-$250 to have a truck delivered by Motor Freight, I've tried UPS. If I keep the box size down, I can get the tuba shipped for about $105. Fed-Ex was charging us too much. Airborn Express kept their prices low by not paying on any claims.

We just shipped an awesome Miraphone 186-5V via UPS and it arrived with the bell crushed but the box intact. With Motor Freight, I'm paying the same for the first 200 lbs, so I can use a bigger box and more packing material. Even if I get UPS to pay up on an insured package, an awesome new horn had it's bell crushed!! And, I will spend more man hours dealing with claims and have to eat the return shipping when I ship the guy a replacement tuba.

Anything bigger than a 3/4 tuba is going via Truck from now on. We charge cost but rounded up a few dollars. Sometimes we even loose money on the final shipping bill. In defense of the merchant, do you realize it takes at least 30 minutes to prep and box up a tuba for shipping? I guess we really loose money on shipping a tuba when you factor in the time my shipping manager and I spend boxing up a tuba.

HERE IS MY PERSONAL BEEF and it may be yours. I understand that shipping something to me takes up extra man hours compared to me walking out a store with a bought widget. Where I personally have a complaint, is the mail order (non-storefront) only business that charges an extra profit above their retail price that should factor in the cost of doing business. If you don't have a store front to run, a warehouse is cheap to operate. In that case, they are hiding the final sale price in extra profit at shipping.

[scottw]

HERE IS MY PERSONAL BEEF and it may be yours. I understand that shipping something to me takes up extra man hours compared to me walking out a store with a bought widget. Where I personally have a complaint, is the mail order (non-storefront) only business that charges an extra profit above their retail price that should factor in the cost of doing business. If you don't have a store front to run, a warehouse is cheap to operate. In that case, they are hiding the final sale price in extra profit at shipping.

That, as Matt said, is what bothered me enough in the first place for me to post it. They are charging prime dollars for what should be the assumed cost of doing business + charging insurance on top of that. If their minimum price were more realistic, then it might be a cost worth assuming, but not at those $.And, as DP posted, they may be scamming e-bay, too, with something called fee avoidance! I know Caveat Emptor applies to all such purchases, but this seems a bit over the top!

[MaryAnn]

What we need here is for some enterprising person to invent a shipping box that cannot arrive intact with a squashed bell inside of it.

I've not been impressed with the one highly-recommended custom tuba case I've seen, either, to the point where I sent it back unused and ate almost $300 restocking fee, for the same reason...the only thing held tight in the case was the end of the bell, with the tuba free to swing like a pendulum beneath it.

If someone could design a box where the tuba body was held very snugly around the valve cluster, with the bell having about six inches of air around it on all sides....it might be possible to ship via UPS and not have the poor thing arrive with the bell squashed and the box intact.

I bet people would buy those boxes.

MA

[Z-Tuba Dude]

We just shipped an awesome Miraphone 186-5V via UPS and it arrived with the bell crushed but the box intact.......Even if I get UPS to pay up on an insured package, an awesome new horn had it's bell crushed!!

Matt,

When a bell is repaired (assuming it is a really good job), will the horn play the same, or is there some loss of quality?

[Rick Denney]

My 2 piece Conn cost $37.70 to ship UPS Ground. If I do wind up having to ship it somewhere, I might try Amtrak or Greyhound since they seem to be fairly reputable with shipping tubas. $250 is a ROYAL ripoff. I mean, that Yamaha might weight 70lbs to ship. My horn was supposedly 106lbs total. I don't quite believe that, but if they shipped for $37.70 that's still pretty good.

When I shipped MY two-piece Conn to its buyer in Maine, I told him I'd charge $75 for shipping. The only person I ripped off was myself.

I had to have two boxes custom-made to fit within the UPS shipping requirements but to be big enough for the two parts. The custom boxes were $37 and $42, respectively, for the bell box and the body box. Then, I stuffed them with $30 worth of bubble wrap, bought at Staples, but still had space left over. I filled that space with $15 worth of still-in-plastic rolls of paper towels (which was cheaper than any alternatives for that much space and cushion). I used about $3 worth of tape to assemble those boxes securely. What am I up to? $127. Then, I paid about $70 for insured shipping. The two trips to the packaging store that made the boxes, plus the trip to UPS, plus the time required to apply all that bubble wrap, took me four hours. If I'm a dealer, that four hours is four hours I would not be earning money from another customer. At current rates, that would be about $300 in labor. That adds up to $427.

Yes, I could have done it cheaper. But I didn't have cases to use, and I didn't want to have to exercise UPS's insurance, so perhaps I went a little overboard. Even so, don't underestimate the cost of custom cartons and packaging bought in small quantities at retail.

Of course, a dealer would not have to work as hard to obtain the packing materials as I did, given that he would do it all the time and could possibly get some of it wholesale. But I submit that if you include his time (as he must if he's going to stay in business without building such time into his overhead and therefore charging higher rates to everyone), $250 to package and ship a large, two-piece tuba is perhaps high but definitely not outrageous. New tubas don't cost as much to ship because the price of the cartons and packaging is built into the purchase price, not the shipping costs. The dealer just uses the same materials received from the manufacturer. But used tubas don't usually come with boxes and packaging already.

Rick "speaking from real experience" Denney

[Chuck(G)]

What we need here is for some enterprising person to invent a shipping box that cannot arrive intact with a squashed bell inside of it.

Some dealers ship by a foam-in-place method. IMOHO, this is about the most sensible shipping method there is. It creates a rigid enough form (essentially a block of foam with a tuba embedded within) and doesn't allow anything to move.

Of course, no matter what method used to ship, there's always some idiot who'll figure out a way to destroy it.

[MaryAnn]

The one thing I dislike a lot about this new BB format is that it's hard to get a reply tied to the post it replies to.

In order to do that you have to quote the post you are referring to.
MA

[Dan Schultz]

I posted earlier but I need to say some more.....

I just finished packing an old Conn Monster Eb. It's going Greyhound practically at my insistance. The carton is 20 x 20 x 43.... within the limits of UPS but it anyone thinks I am going to reccomment those gorillas for a shipment that only has 3" of padding they are nuts! Anyway.... I had to build a carton out of TWO 20 x 20 x 36 boxes (city beautiful trash boxes that I snagged while helping to clean up after a concert this summer). I padded the tuba very well with grocery sacks full of wadded newspapers along with some peanuts from incoming shipments. The bottom line??? IT STILL TOOK ME THREE HOURS TO LOCATE MATERIALS AND ACTUALLY DO THE PACKING.... AND i STILL HAVE TO WAG THE THING 20 MILES TO THE BUS STATION!!! What am I charging for all of this you say? NOTHING!

If I did this more than two or so times a month, I would invest in an 'Instapak' system, plastic sheeting, and stock cardboard boxes. The price would go waaayyy up... say to maybe $250... just like the guy says in his ads. Don't complain about a guy just trying to make a living. Some of us are dumb enough to work for what turns out to be $10 an hour sometimes. We're the ones doing the injustice to the guys who actually charge money for their labor.

As some of the others say... 'put that in your pipe and smoke it' and 'I has spoken!'