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It’s bizarre what they consider to be essential or non-essential during this time. You’d think seeds would be considered essential, plus all of the necessary components to grow them. I’ve read that they’re blocking off sections of big box stores by official orders, but you’d think that anything that leads to food (an essential item) would be considered essential.
Yeah, I’m seeing problems with first class & media mail shipping as well. It seems to be taking a week for items to get across the country via 1st class mail. Media mail is taking 2 weeks or longer to arrive places. I’m seeing delays of up to a week for media mail packages just to get out of my zip code – there are clearly too many 1st class, prio and express mail packages to go first. Priority mail seems to be arriving mainly on time at least, 2-3 business days.
Current ALP for my listed book inventory is $32 on my non-Ebay sites. Some books weigh 5-10 pounds easily. That would cost $15-20 for Fedex or UPS to ship? I doubt customers would pay that much, but who knows? I would think even a standard 1 or 2 pound book would cost $5-10 to ship on one of the private sites? Higher rates across the country. I have no idea, I’ve never looked at UPS or Fedex rates for these sort of scenarios. I have shipped really heavy instruments across the country for $40 with Fedex Ground, but I would think that they wouldn’t have rates as low as $2.80 or $3+ for 1-3 pound items to go across the country. I doubt the book market could absorb $5-10 shipping on top of $10-20 books. It would push buyers to buy “brand new free shipping” books from Amazon, if they were currently in print.
It would be a disaster if the USPS was privatized or not provided enough funds and chose not to honor media mail rate packages anymore. That would instantly put me out of business. It would destroy the used book market outside of FBA. The bulk of my inventory is not suitable for FBA, and FBA isn’t currently accepting books from sellers anyway. They have still not established a date for “non-essential” items to be accepted back to their warehouses.
My first-rate 2-5 oz. packages might be suitable for either letter rate for USPS or some form of first class shipment for UPS, Fedex, etc,. I would have to determine that and if it would be worth staying in business for. If it continued with letter rate USPS, a lot of packages would probably end up “missing” if they didn’t have tracking provided. Still, it would not be enough to live on.
Depending on shipping rates and how difficult things might become without the USPS, I would probably quit reselling altogether and try to get a job because I would just be completely over it at that point. However, with 20%+ unemployment, this would be the worst time to get to try get back into the workforce. I would apply for unemployment and delist all of my items from reselling sites. I would also have to figure out some payment system with Paypal Working Cap. if I was forced out of reselling (through no fault of my own) and couldn’t pay them back as scheduled. I bet a lot of other people would also have to do the same.
The rest of the country really doesn’t want to emulate NYC, NJ, New Orleans or Detroit when it comes to this.
Ineffective testing coupled with mixed messages from the government and continual downplaying is what led us to this point. NYC still had Chinese New Year festivities in February and almost had a St. Patrick’s Day parade in mid-March before officials took it more seriously. New Orleans still had Mardi Gras. Spring Break happened everywhere.
People should have been wearing gloves back in February, especially in the larger cities. Masks should’ve been worn in public by early March. When I first started wearing a mask out in public in early March in NYC and the government was still saying “the risk for the average American is low,” I was laughed at on the street. Now I look out my window because I’m too afraid to go outside and the few people out walking are all wearing masks. When I last left the house, discarded gloves littered the streets (its own problem by itself).
The media downplayed what happened in Wuhan in January. The media downplayed the risk here through half of March.
Update on the grocery delivery: I had nearly $500 worth of food in my cart for us and neighbors piggybacking on us. I am only scheduled to get less than $200 worth of food, including a large tip I had added for dealing with all of it. No eggs, hardly any cream and out of most cheese. Surprisingly, I was able to get paper towels.
Now I’m scrambling to get groceries delivered from somewhere else. Not worth walking to a local store at this point since we haven’t hit the peak yet.
Ugh. What a world we’re in when waiting a week for groceries doesn’t sound too long! Hah. Same thing here. You can’t book the next delivery until your original one has completed.
I also don’t know how to figure out when our times go live – sometimes it seems like it’s early in the morning, but other days it’s clearly really late at night when time slots have gone live.
The main problem with thrift stores revolves around their rents. If they are unable to open for two or three months, will they still be able to pay rent for their locations? It’s the same problem all retail locations are facing right now.
Yard sales could go either way – some people may never host them again out of fear. Other people have been bored at home for months and are tired of seeing the same clutter will have their first ever yard sales at the earliest opportunity.
Estate sales will continue in one form or another.
Sorry to hear about your rentals. I’m sure when bookings are allowed again in a few months you’ll get a ton of business – city dwellers could really use some fresh air at this point, and they’ll be heading out to the countryside in droves. It’s going to be hard for some people to go straight back to work – also, maybe some will continue to telecommute and will get out of the city in order to do so with longer stays than normal.
Sales are actually back up to Q4 levels for the moment. It’s really up & down at this point. By tomorrow, they could back down again. I’m really thankful at this point that the post office continues to deliver mail (for however long that’ll last), and that package pickup exists. I haven’t left the house since last Tuesday and I have no interest to with how bad it is here. No one else is really leaving the house either – an occasional car will pass by, but overall it feels like a never ending 5 am on a Sunday morning feeling.
Working through the backlog and the new stock I’ve gotten in over the past few months. At first I was going to try to complete one section of backlog or new stock at a time, but I’ve just decided to dig through whatever box whenever I feel like it. This has also helped me find new stock for Amazon – I’m just shifting what I can to Amazon if it’s suitable for the venue, since sales are increasing on Amazon as well. I don’t think Amazon has entirely lifted the restrictions on non-essential items, so hardly any new books (if any at all) are being sent into the warehouses by FBA sellers. Etsy sales are also up for this time period compared to last year. I’m trying to list as much stock on each venue as I can while the USPS remains open.
Online sourcing has been poor these past 2 weeks – I’ve bought nothing. I do have additional inventory coming in from alt. sources I’ve built up over the years, but it feels weird to come at a complete standstill for sourcing otherwise – online & in-person. That has never happened before.
I was able to set up a grocery delivery order for this week, but the delivery window is 7 hours long! I’m just really happy to get anything at this point. All of the grocery delivery sites are still fully booked up for the next two weeks. Sometimes Instacart slots will open up for a slot a week in advance, but that’s the only one I’ve seen. I’ve had trouble with instacart slots before the virus happened, so I can only imagine how difficult it will be to get groceries through them now. I wish Whole Foods had slot times available for more than 2 days out.
I don’t know, I’ve been buying certain grocery items on Ebay that have been out of stock in my area for months. I’ve also been checking walmart, amazon, other sites for them and they are completely unavailable or very high priced. Way above 10x markup for a lot of grocery items on Amazon, if available at all. Ebay has been sort of saving me for some items, and I don’t mind paying a 10x markup because I’m happy to get the items at all. I understand there are also fees and other things to consider when getting an item off of Ebay that would not matter at a grocery store or big box store. 10x markup is nothing.
It depends on where you live. I got an email the other day that said one of our botanic gardens is tentatively scheduling a July 1st opening. Schools here are most likely shut down for the rest of the school year. Major sporting/concert venues are most likely shut down straight through to the summer or fall.
I’m in NYC and we’re still on the upswing. We have to deal with this first wave and then whenever we get to 0 new cases (however many months that may be), we have to ease back into “normal” life without immediately causing a second surge. There will most likely still be guidelines for the elderly and those with underlying conditions. Also, we’ll have to deal with “imported” cases from other states and countries. Opening up again will also have to coincide with testing and monitoring in order to keep things “normal.” I’m sure in the big cities we’ll start seeing temperature tests for those riding public transportation and going into offices. It will outwardly possibly look “normal,” but it won’t be.
SOLD FOR$29.99
SOLD DATE Aug 28, 2014Description: Nice sterling silver .925 Coleman tribal ring. This ring is a size 8, stones are crushed turquoise and lapis surrounding two circular 14K gold pieces. Is marked CCO. Please feel free to write with any questions!
Caprica got screwed! Season 1 was strong. They could’ve gone good places with that show, but they just cancelled it instead. Didn’t they have 3 or 4 spin-offs planned of BSG and that was the only one they ever made?
If you like Caprica, I recommend Humans and Real Humans if you haven’t already seen them. Real Humans is actually pretty funny and even though the UK rebooted it with Humans, the shows are different enough to make them both worth watching.
Okay, package pickup #2 went okay and the scan forms got scanned. Yessss. There was some confusion at first as my carrier thought that the sheet about the pickup issued by the post office was my package scan sheet, but after asking a few times he finally scanned the my scan sheet and my packages show as being accepted.
I’ve scheduled another pickup for tomorrow. I estimated the amount of packages so I can include what comes in overnight and tomorrow morning to the pickup for tomorrow. Since he doesn’t come until late in the day, I might as well. I’ll go out there tomorrow and Monday to make sure that he scans the right scan sheets, and I’m already planning a gift bag I can give him to thank him on Monday – some snacks, hand sanitizer.
Wow, that was quick. I just heard back from my local post office and the guy said that it wasn’t the carrier that marked the pickup attempt as unsuccessful – it was whoever works in the back and marks them as picked up or not that did it. Weird.
He had nothing to say about tracing the packages, so I guess I’ll see what happens with them.
He also told me that both of my local post offices have been for the most part empty, and they have initiated additional safety features for those that are venturing to the post office – 6 ft. distance markers, cleaning every 2 hours, etc,. He told me that the carriers are pretty much too stressed out right now that they’re not really paying attention to pickups, and told me that they are not scanning individual packages. He seemed surprised when I told him that I had a scan form available for the carrier to use, and told me that I would pretty much have to be down there each time the carrier comes to make sure that he scans the scan form in.
He was pushing me to go back to the post office on foot rather than have pickups scheduled in the future due to the stress of the carriers in my area. I told him that I would continue with the pickup for today, but I’ll see about possibly going back to the post office in the future? I feel like either situation at this point could be risky – face-to-face daily interaction with my carrier to make sure that he scans my form and takes my packages, or walk to the post office and enter enclosed spaces with people that might have the virus. It’s really risky at this point either way.
