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San Pedro Cactus
Trichocereus pachanoi

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February, 2004
• We only sell lots as described on eBay.
• We ship USPS Parcel Post for best price/service.
• No local pick up. (We're not a retail store)
• We cannot lower shipping costs—that is determined by your ZIP code.
 
Selling on eBay is like "the death from a thousand paper cuts"

• To be able to ship USPS I pay $18.95/mn to Pitney Bowes to rent a postage meter, plus have to pay $24.95 for each ink cartridge (if I have a discount coupon—otherwise it is $33.00), plus pay $20.00/box for those paper peel off postage strips. Then I have to buy all that postage, or course.

• I thought I'd save money by becoming a UPS shipper. Big BROWN mistake. They charge you for their boxes ($.86 to $1.20 each), then add tax on top, then charge a delivery fee to bring the box I have already paid for with tax to my house.  Yikes! Boxes are completely free with the Postal Service, no tax, and free delivery.

• If I want UPS to pick-up from my house (The UPS terminal is a 12 mile round trip) they charge $4/box to come out here, unless I pay $16/week! Not a single charge of $4, but $4 for each box. It costs more if you phone in the request. $5 for a phone in and $4 for an online request to pick up. Yikes! The Postal Service picks up 6 days a week for free.

• Then UPS bills back to my credit card weeks later for "residential BROWN delivery", "Rural BROWN delivery", "Oversize BROWN", and my favorite "BROWN Fuel Surcharge." The UPS cost estimator is less than the true shipping cost—so I lose money on every eBay UPS shipping calculator charge.  Yikes! The Postal Service has never charged me more money after shipping.

• UPS is more expensive than USPS and they lose or screw up more packages by far than the Post Office ever has. That is a fact. They are a bad choice for low weight, low volume shipping. Not for eBay type shipping at all.

• Ebay charges me about $.85 for an auction listing if I host my own pictures. But then they charge a Final Value Fee % on the total sales. It adds up! Right now I owe eBay over $1,300 for this months auction listings and fees!

• When people pay with PayPal they take about 2-3 % out of the transaction. But wait—eBay owns Paypal and already charged me a % of the sale...isn't this double taxation from eBay? Yes. What can I do about it? Nothing.

• If I process a credit card payment independently it costs $20.00/mn for the Verisign account and $35.00/mn for the Merchant E-solutions, then the credit card company takes a cut of 2-3%. Yikes!

• When I pack stuff I have to use bubble wrap, unprinted newsprint, 3-mil clear tape, and for Parcel Post you have to use your own boxes—all of this from a packing materials supplier who gets another $138.00 check this week for more supplies. So far this season I have paid out over $400 for packing materials.

• eBay "maybe I'll buy" people send about 4 emails a day complaining about the shipping cost for a 10 pound package going to the east coast. Like, what am I supposed to do about shipping costs? You live 3,000 miles away!
Give me a break!
Shipping basics
• To save money for heavy weight items over long distances I use UPS ground. But UPS sucks—read this
• Parcel Post is OK for heavy weight over short distances, for long distances it costs almost the same as Priority Mail. But Parcel Post is almost always less cost and better service than UPS.
• I do not do "rush shipping" under any circumstances. Never ask me about FEDEX, UPS AIR, etc. I consider that both a waste of money and "high blood pressure" business for stressed people and I cannot handle it anymore. If you can't plan ahead, or wait a few days, then do business with someone else.
Freshly cut tips

Lengths available for shipment are from 1 foot to 3 feet.  Keep in mind that sections longer than 12 inches need to be staked so they stay upright while rooting—just as trees from the nursery are held up with stakes until they grow in.
Mix of 2 to 5 foot lengths, blemished and unblemished.

You can see the white snail bite marks on the blemished sections. But for growing purposes this does not matter. The new growth will always be unblemished as long as you protect them from the evil little snails! Also, snails are slow and lazy. As your stand grows tall they will not be able to reach the tips. Therefore, the really tall tips never get snail bites.

1-2 foot Logs
Logs have no tip. You can plant them vertically and they will bud into 2 or 3 tips. This is not very cosmetic because the blunt cut end will always show as a scar, but this is an excellent way to obtain nice fresh tips to cut off and propagate. Or you can "log" propagate them (below).

These logged naturally without any help. Simply lay a log where it can be bit buried in debris such as leaves and compost. Nature will take over and do the rest.

Russell R. Robinson, Russell R.@matthewhenson.org