hopefully you will straighten this all out. shipping charges can get outrageous too, and like another poster said, after a while, you pay close attention to the charges and make few mistakes. for my own situation, it's bad enough they were charging me 10.00 to ship something that, despite the weight, should have cost about half to ship (i mean honestly, how big can a chain be???). but it was such a pretty chain, i was willing to go on and pay that amount in shipping. so i bid, and a few days later (it was a 9 day auction), i check, and bamo...the shipping and handling charged basically tripled.

at first i was like, "wow did i bid on that?!" and then i was like, "nah, i know me! i would never bid and agree to pay that shipping!" then i flipped through his feedback, and although it was 99% positive, sure enough, both negatives he had remarked about how he hiked up shipping charges at the end of their auction. and his response wasn't one saying it was a mistake. he was basically saying, 'so what, the item was still pretty cheap!'

so i retracted my bid...and the reason i gave was, seller signifigantly changed item description.

__________________
mom, wife, doctor, lawyer, veternarian, friend, sibling, CEO, banker, advisor, chauffer, maid, interior decorator, artist, author, social worker, entertainer, video gamer, gymnast, gardener, scientist, genius, psychologist, psychic, sidekick, and superhero...all rolled into one! angel to James! make a difference in someone's life--adopt a U.S. soldier!

I'm a Momma for Obama!

once again a SAHM, but now starting my own home based business! support small, minority, and women's businesses!

First of all, and way off topic, I can't stand it when people can't write in a grammatically correct way (as far as the email you received, it was TERRIBLY written!!). I don't think it's that big of a deal to not capitalize or punctuate in a place like this, but when you are supposed to be sending a formal email (customer, seller relationship), you should have the decency to write properly, and frankly, that person sounded like an idiot. Sorry.
Secondly, no! You should not have to pay for their mistakes. I sold a book on amazon one time for $40, and my DH shipped it out, but never got a tracking number for it (his mistake), and we got paid for the item. A week later, the buyer emailed to say he still hadn't gotten it, and he wanted his money back. We told him that we hadn't gotten it back (return to sender or bad address or anything), so we had no way of knowing that he hadn't gotten it (like he just wanted his money AND the book). In the end, it was our mistake for not getting a tracking number for it, and we had to eat the price of the book, because he complained to amazon and they got his money back for the book. To this day, we still haven't received the book back, and I am pretty sure he got it, as I don't EVER mislabel addresses since I pay careful attention when it's one I don't know. Anyway, moral of the story--ours anyway--get a tracking number; in other words, if it's your mistake, oh well. lol. No, you should contact ebay and complain OR at the very least you should get to keep your money and not get the item, KWIM?

I would try to work it out with the seller. From what I understand from the email you received, the seller offered to remove the handling fee or cancel the auction. Just contact them, accept their offer to receive shipment without the extra fee, and all should be good. Good luck!

__________________

This is what I would do as well...

I am trying to work with the seller. I have sent the following reply

I want the tea kettle at the price it was listed. I am sorry for your mistake but shipping was stated in the listing and it was not changed prior to the auction ending. There were 5 days from my bid until the auction ended allowing plenty of time to make changes to the listing.

Please send a corrected invoice for $12.84 so that we can get this transaction completed as soon as possible.

Thank you.

I will make every attempt to work with the seller before going to ebay. I have never sold on Ebay and only just recently started buying so I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something I was missing.

I agree completely. I went back to make sure I hadn't bid on something from overseas.

Where is the seller located? That was my first reaction when I read it, but somehow feel the person is just ignorant. LOL, I'm rude, sorry.

Lincoln, NE

The email was difficult to follow to say the least.

Does this seller have good feedback? Contact ebay, tell them you have contacted ebay, if they have good feedback they will not want -feedback, but what I don't agree with is even if the seller is wrong and you leave them -feedback, they can also give you -feedback which is just wrong since it sounds like they are the ones who changed the terms and you did nothing wrong, I had a seller end a listing early when I was the only bidder because I believe they didn't get more bids and didn't want their items to sell so cheap. I basically couldn't do much, but you should. Can you go to the invoice and change the fees yourself and don't forget to add insurance because they could then say the items were sent and were lost by post office if no insurance is added or maybe tracking, this person doesn't sound too honest.

Ah, Nebraska...that explains how I was able to understand the email...I'm fluent in Nebraskish....lol. J/K!