Originally Posted by
unterhausen
I don't know if that is really a rip-off, shipping a frame to Australia really does cost $500. And ebay does a horrible job at estimating shipping. I'm really reluctant to ship anything out of the U.S. unless it's through ebay's global program. I'm sure I'm losing out on some sales, but I know someone who sold something for $400 and ended up paying more than that extra after the fact. So he would have come out ahead to throw it away. Little known bug in the system.
The freight quote wasn't from eBay, the seller apparently got the quote from the freight company. Perhaps he didn't explain clearly/correctly what he was trying to ship and where it was going or perhaps the work experience newbie at freight company took the enquiry and had NFI what they were doing and just plucked a (wrong) random figure out of the air.
Not sure how a seller would pay any extra except for eBay and Paypal fees, presuming they got an accurate quote on freight? Maybe I could of pushed my seller into the low freight cost as I had a written quote from him but I accept that an error was made and so paid the extra