First off please let me be clear that I love that Goodwill has an auction website and I think it's a great tool for both consumer and Goodwill. I am in no way trying to disparage them as an entire company and think that if they really cared about keeping customers happy they will do something to fix this mess for everyone once and for all.
Ok here it goes. I have been purchasing from shopgoodwill off and on for about a year now. I was at first excited to see the items and how cheap you can purchase them for. Until I got the bill for shipping that is! I also want to warn other consumers who might get excited and overbid. Be very careful. The items are not always what you expect them to be. The quality is sometimes over stated by the lister. Now they give pretty decent pictures so it's really up to the bidder and I over time am finding less and less items worthy of bidding on. I have learned from severaly things I have won and received which I had a severe case of buyers remorse for. Don't get caught up in the bidding wars. ALWAYS ALWAYS double check the same item against ebay or other internet sites to make sure you are actually getting a good deal. Often times I found that shopgoodwill end price actually ends up higher then anywhere else online. Now since this is voluntary bidding I do not fault shopgoodwill for this one bit. This is just irresponsible bidders going crazy over one specific item not bothering to check if they are over paying or not. However, I would like to just flag this as a warning for new and unsuspecting bidders on shopgoodwill as I wish I learned this lesson sooner then later.
Now I want to give a real life example of how there shipping policies are out right fraudulant. It does state on the listing what their shipping is so be careful when you bid. However, just because they put an inflated shipping cost on the listing why does it make it okay for them to say shipping costs so much when that's not what they actually pay for. Also does it not make good business sense to just be honest about the shipping costs up front? Why is everything weighed at a minimum of 1lb when the actual weight might be in ounces? It's like the management there came up with some silly standard for shipping without actually caring about the impact to consumers. I think most internet auction sites are careful about misleading consumers, why is shopgoodill excluded? Also why do they as a company not come up with some sort of shipping and handling policies that have to be adheared to across the bored. My complaint is this... Your shipping prices are exhaggerated and it's obviously an issue with many consumers. You can see by all of the other complaints on this website. Why as a non-profit organization have you not made any attempts to make this process better. Are you ignorning the complaints because frankly you get enough customers you don't care about the few naysayers? I just don't think this makes long term business sense and I do believe you are leaving yourself open for litigation in the future. Is it you don't have the technology to support shipping options? Is your staff so under-educated you cannot expect them to actually weigh an item while taking a picture of it to get actual weights including shipping material? Are you hedged in with a bad deal using only UPS as a shipping vendor? USPS is the most commonly used shipping method of any seller online. I do not understand why you would not want to make your items more cost effective for the consumer. I don't even care about he over priced beginning prices. I think consumers are picking up on those as well and finally stopped placing bids. I am happy to see these items go with ZERO BIDS over and over. I am hoping your listers are getting the message and also I hope bidders are finally wising up to your downfalls.
Here specifically is an example... I purchase a ring, ONE RING, from your site.
Winning Bid was $12.00 - great deal it's real silver and has a natural stone as well! Very excited..
Now here is where it gets dissapointing..
Handling fee is $3.00.. Okay this is a bit high but if we are talking about shipping material time to package etc. Fine. Total so far is only $15.00.
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