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A buyer purchased a car repair manual from me. Looking at the eBay profile, they have thousands of car repair manuals for sale. Clearly, this is a drop shipper, but then I get a message saying the item is a gift.
Hi, Please do not include any paperwork, invoice or promotional material as this is a gift. Please include a tracking number, as long as it has a tracking number and once it shows delivered, positive feedback will be left. If there is no tracking number then no feedback will be left. Thank you very much.
(This is a stock message we send for all of our purchases. Unless you have questions, no reply is necessary. Thank you.)Is anyone else as annoyed by this tactic as I am? Why lie, especially if they are going to make it so obvious as to include the part about this being a stock message? I usually don’t include invoices in my orders anyway, but this message tempts me to make an exception?
Has anyone included an invoice with the order from a drop shipper? And if so, did anything happen afterwards?
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My niche uses a lot of shipping forwarding services since sports cards (especially basketball) are huge in Japan and China. The most well known is Shop Airlines America but there are a number of other similar services which are more specific to trading cards.
Shop Airlines always requests (using a similar “stock message”) that I write the item number on the outside of the package, supposedly as this makes it much easier to sort the package. I forget whether or not they ask for an invoice. I don’t think so, but I’ll let you know next time I get an order from them.
Either way, Shop Airlines always leaves positive feedback, whether I follow their instructions perfectly or not at all. I imagine the same thing would happen with your drop shipper’s “gift” since it will only become an issue if the end user (the buyer who bought the item on Amazon or wherever for higher) contacts the drop shipper and makes an issue about the invoice. I’m sure that is possible, but it’s probably fairly rare, and I would think that any negative or neutral feedback around sending or not sending an invoice would be very easy to get removed.
Drop shipping seems like so much effort (and reliance on other sellers) for so little return.
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I didn’t mind drop shippers until they started sending me messages saying I needed to ship items same-day/weekends, pack a certain way, no eBay tape, etc etc. For the longest time I made very good money off them, but lots of people jumped on the drop shipping trend and there was very clearly a race to the bottom. I’ve since stopped stocking items that they target.
I could write a novel about this one particular guy. He’d buy things on Friday night and spend all weekend messaging me trying to get me to ship. I’d say, “Hey, this is going out Monday as per handling time” to which he’d reply, “OK thanks.” 15 minutes later he’d message again and go, “Hey please ship this now. just pack it and drive to fedex and drop off. give me tracking ASAP thanks so much.”
Really annoying!
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I could write a novel about this one particular guy.
I don’t know about anyone else but I would definitely read this novel! Or at least more posts. I had a similar buyer like this (not a drop shipper just a weird guy) a few years ago when I was growing my store, and it led to a big lesson learned!
This would be a great topic for another thread if we can figure out the right title so it doesn’t turn into a vent-fest (not that there’s anything wrong with that…)
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Drop shipping seems like so much effort (and reliance on other sellers) for so little return.
I remember when dropshipping became a “thing”. I watched a guy on Youtube who worked as a car parking attendant. He sat in a little booth all day. He showed how had an eBay store of tens of thousands of items. When someone would buy, he’d go to some site to purchase and ship. I doubt he made more than 50-cents a sale. Seems extremely tedious with all downside if the actually item seller screws up.
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Seems extremely tedious with all downside if the actually item seller screws up.
This is the part that really puzzles me about drop shippers! One bad sale must wipe out so many good ones. I’m sure there are offshoots of drop shipping (private labeling? is that still a thing?) that are more profitable if you know what you’re doing.
I like the ingenuity of doing eBay while you’re on the clock at another job, but I can picture the YouTube channel you described (even though I’ve never seen it) and I bet the other recommended videos below it have titles like WATCH HOW I MAKE $10K in 87 SECONDS BUYING STORAGE UNITS!!! $$$ 🔥🔥🔥
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I’ve only had this happen a few times, but since when I list I’m never the cheapest option on any item I sell, I figure the drop shipper is either losing money or making way less than I am in profit. As long as the item sells and I’m happy with the price, I don’t fret about the details.
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By coincidence (or not…) after I saw this thread, this article popped up:
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22763901/drop-shipping-explained
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There may be another possibility here.
I have had two situations recently that I can remember. I had a buyer buy my item, but when I went to look for the item, I could not find it.
So, rather than get dinged on my ebay Transaction defect rate, I simply buy the item from another seller, and then enter my buyers address as the shipping address. Then give similar instructions as reported above.
I don’t like to do this and only do as a last resort, but it does save a ding if you can find the item being sold by another seller. Usually I have to pay more and lose a little money, (because if it were less, the buyer would probably already bought the item from them) but I see it as a way to buy myself out of a bad situation.
Mark
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