They're sharing their increased costs of operation PLUS trying to cover the severe drop off of shipping/business volume.
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Seller beware
- Thread starter Rolling Thunder
- Start date
Many boxes have the dimensions printed on the bottom so it would be a good idea to take a photo of the finished package with the dimensions.This will prove your case. Good luck.
The algorithm does take into account dimensional weight.
I’m willing the bet the OP thought the same as the poster I quoted.
THE DIMENSIONS PRINTED IN A BOX REPRESENT THE INNER MEASUREMENTS. NOT THE OUTER ONES. As a result, an 18”x18”x18” box ACTUALLY has external dimensions closer to 18.5”x18.5”x18.5” BUT you have to round up so, an 18”x 18”x18” will really get treated like a 19”x19”x19” box, bumping it into another dimensional weight category.
That’s the way it is. I’ve shipped 10’s of thousands of boxes over the years. You can try to be cute and play with dimensions and weight but these days shipping companies have sophisticated methods for catching your errors and they will.
I think USPS has a max of 108” for packages. All your package had to be was just a little over for them to reject it. I’m curious did you actually measure your box or did you buy a box that stated those were the measurements. I ask because usually the dimensions quoted in a box are internal not external dimensions.
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UPDATE!!!!
Reverb is crediting my account the $91.08 shipping adjustment. Needless to say I thanked the chat mod pretty heavily and commended him/her on Reverb's strong customer service compared to the many other used gear outlets.
Reverb is crediting my account the $91.08 shipping adjustment. Needless to say I thanked the chat mod pretty heavily and commended him/her on Reverb's strong customer service compared to the many other used gear outlets.
You were fortunate. Reverb must have figured it was better to keep you as a happy customer. I’m sure UPS or FedEx is willing to take a hit every now and then for a large account like Reverb.
But folks, read the fine print, take accurate EXTERNAL measurements and don’t rely on what it says printed on the box. If you are unsure go straight to the shipper’s website and read their policies on dimensional weight. It isn’t something new or something nefarious, these policies have always been around and, to be honest make sense. A large package simply costs more to ship than a small one. It doesn’t much matter the weight, rather how much space a box physically takes up in a plane, container ship or even a delivery truck.
Yep. I pulled my listings almost immediately after getting the notification. It also helps to not go full Karen-mode. I felt I was reasonable and could back up my statements with numbers and facts, not abstractions or gut-feelings.
Needless to say, a learning experience. Some here have a clear working knowledge of shipping policies & procedures. I'm just a dude selling his bass cab.
But the Airline would have charged you for oversized luggage
Again Sorry dude.It's a shame you feel that way simply because you don't understand how the shipping industry has worked since.....forever.
Just because that's how it's been forever, doesn't mean it's fair.
We really should be fighting back against this type of stuff. Vote with your feet, stop using them!
Yeah, they are liberal with how they measure things, on their behalf.
The same seems to happen with airlines, if your bag is 19.5 kg they'll tell you it's 20.5 & you need to pay $200 for the extra baggage.
We really should be fighting back against this type of stuff. Vote with your feet, stop using them!
Yeah, they are liberal with how they measure things, on their behalf.
The same seems to happen with airlines, if your bag is 19.5 kg they'll tell you it's 20.5 & you need to pay $200 for the extra baggage.
I just bought my deceased friend's tuba from his widow a couple of days ago, and that's an example of when dimensional weight really kind of hoses you. For the amount of money it'd cost to ship it from NC to FL (around $500), it's actually less expensive for me to fly up to NC on my Christmas break, rent a car, pick the horn up, and drive it back home. Plus, I get the bonus of not having to worry about the shipper damaging the instrument in transit.
Even if I understand how it works, it’s still possible to disagree. Shipping policies aren’t commands from on high.
I don't understand it either. When you take a package to a shipping office and they weigh it and measure it and tell you the price, and you pay it, that should be the end of the transaction. They shouldn't be able to add charges later.
But, you understand why dimensional weight in used on larger boxes and containers, right? You do accept the fundamental issue here in that a larger box takes up more space and thus needs to have the cost of its shipment calculated in some other way than just the physical weight, right? You also understand that a corporation is able to charge whatever it wants but needs to be mindful not to lose too much business because they are constantly viewed as overcharging, right. Finally, you also know that, as you stated, you can vote with your feet and try another shipping company, there are plenty out there, right. Given all of this, I really can't wrap my head around all this outrage. Nothing has been done here that couldn't have been explained away with reading the shipper's website about how dimensional weight gets calculated.
Glad to hear. I've had similar things happen. Plain and simple: Reverb needs to update their shipping calculator.
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Commands from on high? Seriously, I'll repeat myself again. A visit to any of the popular shippers in question will reveal exactly how they calculate shipping rates for oversized packages. It's not anything that is concealed from the consumer or something that changes while the package is in transit. UNLESS, the individual packaging and shipping the package made a mistake with the dimensions. Like taking what is printed on the box as the external size rather than the internal size. As I mentioned below, that mistake is on the person shipping the package not the shipping company. Years ago, you might have gotten away with that kind of mistake. Today, the shipping companies have sophisticated methods for checking the external size of the package and charging accordingly. There really isn't any mystery here.
You're talking about two very different things here. If you the a package to UPS or even a UPS Store (which by the way is an independent franchise, not a store owned by UPS) and they quote you a price, you will not receive a charge later due to the ineptness of the person at the counter.
What you have with Reverb is someone mistakenly taking a size printed on a box as an external dimension. I've gone through this before so I won't repeat it all, but, what is printed on the box is the INTERNAL dimensions not the external dimensions. Hence, the person shipping that box inadvertently undercharged themselves the cost of shipping base on mistaken dimension. In many cases, that won't have any impact on the final cost of the shipment. In a case like the one in this thread, the small difference in dimensions was enough to bump the package into a higher rate bracket. Keep in mind, when you're talking about large, extra large and anything bigger, the rates can really jump up dramatically. If you go over total size of 108" for length and girth, the cost explodes and that is pretty much what I think happened to the original poster.
In an instance like this, because you've purchased a label through Reverb and they trusted that you entered accurate information into their shipping calculator (which does calculate dimensional weight rather accurately), should the shipping company come back to them with additional charges, they pass them on to the original seller. This kind of thing happens all the time. If Reverb didn't have a way to recoup the cost of shipping mistakes from sellers on their site, what's to prevent sellers from saying that Fender Precision was shipped in a 10"x10"x10" box and weighed 5 pounds for a total cost of $22 from NY to CA? Obviously, if you try that kind of thing, you're going to get caught and pay. I can't believe this is such a hard thing to understand.
No, but I sold on eBay for over 22 years, shipping expensive, rare, classic car auto parts all over the world. I learned my lesson the hard way and I learned it well.
