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Digging through my sales history, I realize that my success rate with software is bordering on 10%. Why I continue buying it is alarming. “Retro”, modern, doesn’t matter – the rest of the software I have on stock is about to be staring down the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun.
Some examples of my recent experiences:
Software sold as disc-only, no registration code: “NO CODE? on phone all day with support can’t help. you sold defective software”
Reputable text processing program: “I put the CD in my computer and now it won’t work!!!! You sold me a virus and I will now be sending this VIRUS back to you!!!!!!!!!!!”
WinZip (old version, marked as such): “OLD. Not even new software or the latest version. Why did you sell me old software?”
Now I’m rewinding to 2 weeks ago when I was staring at a complete set of Adobe software tagged at $1.99, thinking, “You know, I’m gonna buy this, sell it, and then the person will return it.” And that’s exactly what happened.
Some people say they’ll never sell one thing or another for whatever eason. For me? Anything on a disc is gonna be blown to bits at 25 yards.
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Wow, that sucks. I’ve been fairly lucky with software. No returns. I have hardly any of it listed anymore, but when I was selling it more frequently a few years ago, I did well with it. That includes software with previously used codes.
The condition/description would include something like “Previously used. I don’t know if this works or if the code still works.” I would put it in both the description and condition fields. Always list it as used/acceptable even if the condition was minty just in case the software didn’t work.
If I ever got any questions on the software, I would just ignore them. Anytime anyone asks if the code works or if I got it working on my computer, you know you’re in for an instant return. I suspect that in a lot of cases the scams would go: the customer would ask if it worked, you would respond with yes or I don’t know, the customer buys it, IT DOES WORK and they have successfully installed it on their computers, they write you back saying “gee, it doesn’t work. You said it would,” and then an immediate return. So, I would just ignore any question period about the software and it seemed to work.
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I’ve never tried selling software and now for certain I never will. I’ve pretty much sworn off vintage audio equipment and VCRs. My breaking point was shipping a vintage boombox to a buyer in Quebec. Didn’t do it via GSP, not sure why or how that went down. Now I recall…the buyer just somehow paid for shipping. It was like $90. I thought it was crazy, since the boombox only cost $100. Anyway, I get a message in French from the buyer saying the volume doesn’t work and he wants to return it. Like I’m going to pay $90 to have it shipped back. I just gave him a refund. God bless those who can make money off vintage AV gear, but I’m done.
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On the other hand… bought a working Roberts valve radio for £5 from a flea market, sold it via eBay for £40 to a gentleman who lived three miles away from the flea market. Delivered it to him, and he showed me his collection of restored Roberts radios, some of which he’d recovered in vintage-design Fablon-type stuff.
As for consumer electronics, I get the impression from watching transactions at the flea market, plus listening to someone telling how the government had raided his shop, that tons of the stuff gets shipped to Nigeria.
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