If a business has, let us say, "creative" management, it might create a separate business entity to handle its packing and shipping, that way the packing and shipping would be done by a third party, one business entity handles sale, a different business entity handles packing & shipping, but both business entities have the same owner.
It all comes back to the bottom line, and if that bottom line is more than we want to pay, well, we simply don't buy.
So --- what happens?
The private seller, like Detlef, like me, will compress costs, carry costs sometimes lose a little, sometimes make a little. We can do this because we do not rely on what we sell to make a living, we sell for other reasons, and maybe there is an element of hobby in the actual act of selling.
But a regulated business that is compelled to act in a businesslike fashion?
That is a different story.
It is simply not possible to condemn any charge that a business may choose to apply unless we know the internal factors that generate that charge.
From the point of view of a consumer we can appraise charges made by comparable business entities, and if the charges applied by the one we wish to do business with are not on a competitive level with other similar business entities we simply exercise our freedom of choice and avoid doing business with the entity that charges fees which in our opinion are too high.
In your case Detlef, you have bought from a business that in your opinion charges too much. OK, maybe they do. But maybe it is because of their business model, maybe it is because of where they are located, maybe it is some other reason. But we cannot call them ripoff merchants until we know more about the reasons for their high charges.
The easy way to handle this sort of situation is, in my opinion, simply not to do business with any business entity that charges noticeably more than similar business entities for comparable goods or services.
The market place has a way or sorting out those who survive, and those who go under.
|