Insane postage cost from the UK.

[firko]

The only shipping problems I've had are out of the UK. The pricks love to charge you for every little extra like tape, cardboard box, foam packing etc. I bought a seat for a friends Fantic trials bike resto and for a 12 pound piece of moulded rubber he hit me 20 quid to send it. On top of that the prick tried to extort more money from me after buying the seat on 'Buy it Now' with PayPal by hitting me to pay his PayPal costs. We argued back and forth for days and in the end my mate told me to pay him his precious extra 2 quid just to get the seat. He then gave me a bad feedback but I reported him to eBay and they pulled the negative feedback. To make it worse, the dickhead sent the item by slow mail and when it got here five weeks later it had a 4 pound stamp on it.  He now has a big spiel on his items for sale saying that he'll never sell to Australia or New Zealand ever again as we are uneducated scum (his words). What a tosser!

[Quicksilver]

Thats all good Doc, but a most of us have a USA contact like you do mate. We have to rely on seller to post things one by one = shits loads in post costs.

[YSS]

I just hade a good sample the other day . A forum member requested some dustseals for a foreign brand of shocks. I hade no stock , so I hade to order them of a rival company. They only cost $3.53 each +GST,but their minimum charge is $18.50 with Australian Air. If I went along with that , the two seals would have cost him $28 + GST +Postage to his adress.
In order to avoid being called a ripp off merchant , I decided to order 20 pieces , share the freight and supply the seals for $10.00 each.  (how long it will take to use the other 18 pieces , I dont know)
Today its not so much the cost of the initial part , its the handling , packaging , spending time on the phone or answer E-mails to sell a $5 part .
The answer to that is . for small items buy more then one piece or pay the price for someone to handle it .
It cost the company oversea the same to send one small piece or 10 or 100. But to the enduser that can make a huge difference.

[Wombat]

But just getting back to the boots, these appear to be from an individual eBay Seller - not a Company.
The ideas for multi item parcels are all good advice (and that's a pretty decent thing Walter did re the dust seals).
It's the 'one off' items that are the killer, particularly from the UK.
I just can't picture the Pommy Postal Worker asking old mate for the equivalent of $150 to send a parcel to OZ!

I have relos in the UK and we'd never receive a parcel at Christmas if it cost them $150 to send!

[Suzukal]

There are some good people ... & then there are some scum..  I bought a TM400 crank assy of Ebay for $35 & it cost me $30 from the US. The thing weighs half a ton so I thought that was a good price .  I ordered an alloy DG muffler from another site in the US for $75 and the thief charged $65 to ship something that weighs under 1/2 Kg ... not good.

[VMX247]

www.rgmmotors.co.uk  bought piston ring set $34 valve stem oil seal $1.70 and  32mm widebelt for the Norton sidecar ..$9.00 freight .
Another great company is www.britishspares.com which is in NZ.
All ebay sellers have been positive for Norton.See its the company you keep in other words you are all ridin/collecting the wrong bikes/paraphernalia   

[MX?]

Nothing worse than knowing you can buy at bargain prices OS....but get killed by the shipping.
As said before, generally US postage is pretty good, UK/Europe can be a handfull. The main bug is that a lot of postage is "Postage & HANDLING" Had a price from a major US company once for nearly USD$40.00 to ship a countershaft sprocket!!!! Other times had small packet stuff sent from UK for 5 bucks....go figure?? it's a minefield, but at least it keeps ya interested.