Another rant…
I wanted to buy a vintage crown off someone on eBay. He's in the US, I'm in the UK. He is using GSP for his shipping. In my opinion, GSP is a swindle. It collects the taxes which might be due on an item and creams off some vig for Pitney Bowes, who run the system. Thing is, if I order a crown, a few bucks already, it usually scoots through with no taxes being added. And - because I buy small parts all the time from US sellers on eBay and independents all the time - they can simply pop it in standard Air Mail service and it gets to me really, really fast. With GSP, the seller 'has' to send it tracked (slower) - remember we are talking about a crown, right? - so the postage cost goes right up in inverse proportion to the speed of delivery. This silly little Bulova crown is costing me $30! OUCH.
It gets better. I thought I'd buy two, combine shipping, make it a little less painful per item. Guess what? You can't combine shipping with GSP! (Or so eBay customer service says… So even though the items will almost certainly be put in the same envelope, I get mugged twice. So the seller has lost one tiny sale, as I can dodge the second buy. But not the first.
Better still. The seller, a dealer of some scale, hasn't answered my many emails asking for more information (he has the same item [crown #139] listed 3 times, with different postage rates, and one of them says "signed" the others don't - are they the real thing if unsigned? I think not, I can find a Bestfit crown easily enough… and his one (lame) answer was… "I've been really busy, I'll try to find out." Of course, he hasn't.
So: death to GSP. If you're a dealer and have fallen for this, please know that I would never buy anything using this system - in this case, I really have no choice (long story) and so I grudgingly go along with it this time. Death to GSP, it's rubbish.
End of incredibly frustrated rant, thanks for listening.
I wanted to buy a vintage crown off someone on eBay. He's in the US, I'm in the UK. He is using GSP for his shipping. In my opinion, GSP is a swindle. It collects the taxes which might be due on an item and creams off some vig for Pitney Bowes, who run the system. Thing is, if I order a crown, a few bucks already, it usually scoots through with no taxes being added. And - because I buy small parts all the time from US sellers on eBay and independents all the time - they can simply pop it in standard Air Mail service and it gets to me really, really fast. With GSP, the seller 'has' to send it tracked (slower) - remember we are talking about a crown, right? - so the postage cost goes right up in inverse proportion to the speed of delivery. This silly little Bulova crown is costing me $30! OUCH.
It gets better. I thought I'd buy two, combine shipping, make it a little less painful per item. Guess what? You can't combine shipping with GSP! (Or so eBay customer service says… So even though the items will almost certainly be put in the same envelope, I get mugged twice. So the seller has lost one tiny sale, as I can dodge the second buy. But not the first.
Better still. The seller, a dealer of some scale, hasn't answered my many emails asking for more information (he has the same item [crown #139] listed 3 times, with different postage rates, and one of them says "signed" the others don't - are they the real thing if unsigned? I think not, I can find a Bestfit crown easily enough… and his one (lame) answer was… "I've been really busy, I'll try to find out." Of course, he hasn't.
So: death to GSP. If you're a dealer and have fallen for this, please know that I would never buy anything using this system - in this case, I really have no choice (long story) and so I grudgingly go along with it this time. Death to GSP, it's rubbish.
End of incredibly frustrated rant, thanks for listening.