Vic, as you know, I started the thread on this board when I saw your name on a few posts here. I was happy to see virtually everyone sticking up for me, and there was only one guy supporting your postion - one guy whom it seems nobody will buy from any more due to his similar shipping-gouging.

The envelope arrived with the nine chips (in excellent condition, by the way) with a postal sticker showing postage costs were $1.20. You charged me $16.65 for shipping and handling. The amount you spent for gasoline to the casino or the time and trouble you incurred to acquire the chips has nothing to do with shipping and handling. If you wanted to recoup those costs, you should have built them into the starting bid, or else you should have set a reserve price.

I just returned from a vacation trip to Las Vegas and came back with many common $1 and $5 chips. Were I to offer them on eBay, would I be justified in gouging multiple-item winners on unused postage charges, just because our airfare was in the hundreds of dollars? You may think so, but I couldn't live with myself if I even considered doing that.

This was your first experience as a seller (at least with your current account) but as a buyer, you were a winner of multiple lots from each of two different sellers, both of whom gave you a shipping discount. Why don't you extend the same courtesy to your own customers?

You mentioned that "it would not be fair to the other bidders" if you combined shipping charges. I didn't think to ask if you planned on gouging because I've bought literally hundreds of chips from many sellers on eBay, all of whom either combined shipping charges or refunded unused postage charges without even being asked to do so. Perhaps you think you're more of a shrewd businessman than those dealers, but speaking at least for myself, I wouldn't buy anything from you again, because you pocketed over ten times the cost of shipping for irrelevant reasons. But you never did explain exactly what would be "unfair to other bidders" if you charged S&H in line with what your actual expense was.

Would you consider discussing this with eBay's Square Trade? Sure, the S&H terms of each individual lot were met, even though you failed to mail out nine separate envelopes, but eBay doesn't like people avoiding the fee percentage by padding up the shipping costs, which is what you did.

On one more issue you're very wrong. You said "Now that you’ve heard my thoughts as to what to price the item and s&h what does that mean? It means absolutely nothing. Zero. Zilch. In fact, who cares?" I care, because you ripped me off. Quite a few other knowledgeable people on this board care, possibly including a few potential customers of yours. And to assist them in their decisions of whether to deal with you, I will remind them that you gouge on shipping charges. If that's not something you care about, then you're certainly not worth doing business with.

You can make this entire issue go away. I'll give you a buck for your padded envelope, a buck for your gas to the post office, a buck for your time writing out the address, and a buck twenty for the actual postage cost. And what the hell, I'll round it up to the nearest $5. You can give me a refund for $11.65 through Paypal to wmdpks@aol.com, or you can continue to put up with my "negative feedback" on this board. Others have developed reputations of being dishonest sellers that have been hard hurdles to overcome.

It's entirely up to you.

WMD