We have both good and bad news regarding handling fees. We determined that most of our packaging fees result from shipping merchandise first class, media mail or parcel post and/or using large amounts of our own packaging materials. By cutting back or even eliminating these costs in some cases, we have been able to slice handling fees by two-thirds in some categories. (Hurray!) But one of the methods we used to achieve that was to make sure yarn customers have fewer opportunities to buy very small amounts of yarn--e.g.: one ball at a time. Those one-skein orders were killing us and you will find those listings disappearing rapidly.

However, for those who order a pound of yarn or more and make one payment, you will be thrilled to know that your handling fee will be about $1. And in some cases, it will be zero.

For non-yarn orders, well, we are working on those. Meanwhile, we are bluntly honest sellers. We added up what we spend on packaging tape, boxes, bubble wrap, etc. in the course of the year and divided that dollar amount by the number of packages we ship in a year. And we double check each year to make sure our handling fee is roughly EQUAL to our ACTUAL PACKAGING costs.

Here are a few of the things we need to to ship your orders (I'm looking at my local office supply store catalog for actual numbers):

• $27 for a six-roll pack of clear packaging tape if we buy the cheap, thin kind; the strong kind is much more. We use tape on every order.
• $4 for a ream of printer paper, needed to print shipping labels on every order.
• $15 to $49 for a pack of 25 bubble wrap envelopes to protect books and blank journals. Large envelopes are $1.92 EACH.
• Up to $3.05 for a cardboard box. We usually avoid that cost by recycling or using USPS Priority Mail boxes which they provide free of charge.
• 26 cents per square foot for bubble wrap, needed for birdhouses, jewelry, castles and unusual sized books.
• Up to $20 for a bag of loose fill packing peanuts mostly used for castles and odd-shaped breakables.
• $25+ for a cheap black ink cartridge for my printer. This is the big killer expense, because printer ink costs more per ounce than expensive perfume. And by the way, my printer is giving off warning signs that it will bite the dust soon, so I will have to buy a new one. You get to chip in on that.
• $16 a month for an ebay store even if we list nothing in it + another $60 or more a month to list about 500 inventory items + around $2 each for auctions. We must run about 200 auctions a week ($400 x 4 weeks = $800/month) or you will forget we exist but some months we run more than that and some months we spend closer to $1000+. If you ignore our auctions, we lose a lot of money.
• On top of the average $2 auction fee, we must pay a commission to ebay if the item sells, plus a Paypal commission.
• We spend $10 to $20 for a carton of post-it-notes to label the inventory, which is stored in recycled printer paper boxes. It takes hundreds of these boxes to store our yarn inventory alone.
• We pay around $15 per month for an Internet site and picture hosting.
• We use a comcast Internet connection. I don't like to think about that cost, because it is high, but we would be paying for that whether we were ebay sellers or not.
• I was forced to buy a new and very good digital camera because the lens jammed on the old one.
• Our business bank account fee is $8/month and we must pay for business bank checks.

There's more, but you get the idea. If you think anyone on ebay can stay in business without passing some of these costs on to the buyer in the form of a handling fee, the cost of the merchandise, an inflated shipping fee or some other manner, you are being naive. There is no free lunch. At least we are upfront about our costs and we go the extra mile to combine shipping--MORE SO THAN MOST SELLERS WE KNOW. We pride ourselves on our business policies and our star ratings on our feedback page show that our customers agree with our policies. If you do not agree, or if you feel compelled to debate our policies or challenge our fees or make best offers, we would rather you did not bid at all. We mean this sincerely. If anything you read here doesn't sit well with you, please shop elsewhere with our blessing.

 --dj runnels, owner

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