Viewing post #1006933 by DogsNDaylilies

Horntoad said:Libby, for my swap and future swaps I set a limit of 100 packs of seeds. That is the approximate amount of seeds that will fit in a small flat rate box. If the participants pay $6.00 priority mail to send their seed to you and another $6.00 for return postage, then they are paying a total of $12.00 shipping. Assuming seeds cost at least $3.00 per pack, then 100 packs of seeds would be a $300 value for only $12 dollars shipping.
If you don't want to limit the number of seeds picked then set a sliding scale. $6.00 for the first 100 packs picked. If they go over that then they need to add an additional $6.00. If someone goes just slightly over, say 110 packs and you find you can get them all in a small box then you can just refund the extra.

Thank you for the suggestion! I am glad you mentioned this, too. Like you, I had set a 100 packet limit on my seed swap to help control for this (and to help prevent excessive 'nabbing'), but I really didn't know how many would fit in a small rate box. I sent about 50-60 seed packets to Dave in a small flat-rate box and they seemed to just barely fit, but it might be because of the larger Zip-loc bag I used to send all of the smaller bags in.

I also thought that maybe I could just email people on an individual basis if their packages got too large for the small box and ask them to send more money in, but I don't want anyone to see it as a 'bait-n-switch' swap and think I told them one price and am now charging them a higher one. I'm all about fairness and being as transparent up front as possible...I want people to feel secure going into it and I want them to know exactly what to expect.

... I hadn't thought about a sliding scale idea, though! That's a great idea! It allows for appropriate-pricing, but also allows for transparency upfront. That just might be the solution, , Horntoad! I'll have to give that some thought. If I don't do it this time around, then I'm still going to consider that for my future swaps. (I might stick with the request limit for now and see how that goes and then switch to 'tiered pricing' with unrestricted requests in the future if I get a feel that people are contributing large enough quantities to the swap.)