MREInfo.com

I've been lurking for quite a while on this forum, but finally decided to register - one of the reasons was to voice my astonishment at some of the shipping prices a minority of ebay sellers are trying to foist off on buyers. One was selling a single MRE meal and charging $26-ish (don't recall the exact price) for shipping. Another is selling 13 NREs and the shipping is $56.70.

What do you think - are they insane or am I missing something that is causing this apparent abberation in shipping prices?

BTW - I like CC Chicken.

[/url]

No you're not crazy. They'll sting you with excessive shipping. I've been buying a lot of MRE's and I've found that if you call them on it (via asking a question before the auctions over) they'll usually come down. If not, there are other fries in France.

Welcome to the forums, wolfmonk.

We have a special thread for eBay sellers like that:

eBay Asshats
viewtopic.php?t=236


I understand your astonishment at the shipping charges some eBay sellers charge. I think some sellers are genuinely stupid and think it's perfectly reasonable to charge $20 shipping for a $5 item.

But I think other sellers are just clueless and when they set up their auctions, they use the eBay shipping calculator and tell it to figure USPS priority shipping plus a little "handling" fee for themselves. At the same time, they probably "thumb the scales" by saying a 1 pound MRE weighs three pounds to ship. And then all of a sudden, you have a $20 shipping charge for a $5 MRE.

Fortunately, these asshats seem to be outnumbered lately by decent sellers. Even the ones who used to charge $25-$30 flat-rate shipping for a case of MRE have started to go back to actual shipping. Personally, I say take advantage of the low prices and fair shipping costs while you can. All it's going to take is one hurricane to drive prices back into the stratosphere.

I actually did call both of those sellers on their shipping prices and both claimed ignorance and said that they were charging actual shipping charges. In my email I even suggested that they take a look at what everyone else was charging for the same items - neither seller will get my cash (even when I emailed them I had no interest in purchasing from them - I just wanted to see what they'd use to justify their crazy-ass pricing). For the most part I've had good luck on ebay.

I think they hit the nail on the head when they said "ignorance". They sound like they really might not know the difference between pricey priority shipping and parcel post. Oh well, either they'll find a sucker for their auctions or the items won't sell and they'll lose their listing fees.

I don't recall the item numbers right offhand but there's a guy on eBay selling a ton of entrees for about $2.95 each. And shipping starts at $9.25 for the first entree. I think I bitched about it in another thread on here. And this guy isn't even clueless - he runs a fulltime web-based store so he knows the business. This would be an example of serious padding of shipping costs.

Welcome fellow Michiganian Wolfmonk!

deanopilot wrote:Welcome fellow Michiganian Wolfmonk!

Hi back!

Kman - I think I've seen those listings on ebay too. Another one that made me scratch my head. You can simply go to Long Life Food Depot if you want to buy $3.oo entrees - and they include the shipping.

wolfmonk wrote:I've been lurking for quite a while on this forum, but finally decided to register - one of the reasons was to voice my astonishment at some of the shipping prices a minority of ebay sellers are trying to foist off on buyers. One was selling a single MRE meal and charging $26-ish (don't recall the exact price) for shipping. Another is selling 13 NREs and the shipping is $56.70.

What do you think - are they insane or am I missing something that is causing this apparent abberation in shipping prices?

BTW - I like CC Chicken.

[/url]

either they are shipping from china or they are using fedex next day air. or maybe they are just scammers.

maybe he is selling a whole case plus one ccc lol.