OK, I’m not interested in getting involved in somebody’s auction dispute. I’m not taking sides. What intrigues me is this guy’s ingenuity, and the questions it raises.

Background: The guy wins a little statue (about a foot tall) with a winning bid of about $13 USD. The shipping, however, will be well over $100 USD. (The shipping was listed in the item description.) The item location is listed as Shanghai.

First off, nobody should EVER bid on an eBay auction without understanding what the shipping charge will be. That’s just common sense. But suppose one day you slip up. Maybe you misread it, or maybe you mistakenly thought you had checked it, but however it happens you buy an item for ten or fifteen dollars only to discover that the buyer is charging over one HUNDRED dollars for the shipping! What now? Aside from giving yourself a quick kick in the arse, what can you do?

Well…
(1) You could pay the invoice total and promise yourself to read more carefully next time.
(2) You could not pay anything, figuring that if the seller files a complaint with eBay, he– not you– will be the one in trouble. (Offically, at least, eBay frowns on excessive shipping fees.) You can hope that eBay agrees with you, but what if they don’t? This option is a gamble.

But maybe there’s a third alternative, and one that I would never in a million years have thought of: Pay for the item but NOT the shipping, and tell the seller to keep it!!! That’s what this fellow did:

Ha!

True, you still lose a few bucks, but at least you don’t lose over a hundred bucks. And the seller can’t complain, can he, if he’s got the money and gets to keep the product too?

Hmmm… well apparently the seller might complain….