Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
It’s not a good idea to reply to negative feedback with a reply that can be interpreted as even slightly hostile by the next customer.
Lie pleasantly- “Have reached out to buyer and offered a complete refund plus an extra 25% compensation for the annoyance. We were sorry we did not check that the item when purchased from a police auction had in fact been seized from an illegal kipper factory, hence the subtle aroma of hickory smoke.”
What’s the buyer going to do? Ask for their cash dividend? They’ve already left the negative feedback.
Yes- found a beer mat from a local brewery in a university bar. Kept it for years and then listed it on eBay as an auction starting at 99 pence, back in 2002. A few days later I checked, and it had been bid up to £99. One of the bidders contacted me and told me that it was a rare pre-war mat, and he expected it to go for considerably more. Sold for £220! I sometimes wonder what happened to that mat…
Of course there’s always the things that go in the other direction pricewise 🙂 Oil painting of an Edwardian lady, bought for £300 at a live auction ‘cos it looked like a John Lavery , sold at a live auction for £40… it wasn’t.
Two or three years back a Leicester eBayer got prosecuted for running his business using (cough) “pre-loved” stamps. I think he purchased bulk lots of stamps on part covers, and sorted through them for the ones that missed being cancelled. The glue’s some kind of synthetic stuff (used to be gum arabic) which can be softened with solvents. Not sure how he got detected- the glue does get weakened so it might be that the stamps dropped off in the sorting machines.
I did offer free postage on all listings, but now I just work on a rough four-band costing (letter, large letter, small and medium parcel) and charge at cost- which of course I have to pay eBay and PayPal fees on. Reason being that I was getting offers on low-value stuff which I’d be happy to accept except that they’d be below the cost of shipping.
Last sale was a match striker to a US customer- cost of striker £10, cost of shipping via GSP to the customer approximately £20 of which £2.90 was for me posting it to the GSP hub. Not sure how much of that £20 was customs fees. I have some objection to people getting charged customs on old stuff- I was advised by Royal Mail staff not to declare the value on the CN22 label because of possible theft and “they’re not interested in the odd parcel”. Problem with GSP is that these fees can’t be avoided, and sometimes they’re exorbitant (Australia).
(promotional letter sent to a certain big-eared royal person)
To Mr H.R.H. Prince, Charles Buckingham Palace, London
Dear Mr. Prince
Imagine the looks of surprise that Mrs. Prince and the Prince family will have on their faces when you draw up outside the front door of Charles Buckingham Palace in a brand new Smart Car!
I think it might be one of the Japanese deities- something like Daikoku, the god of farmers.
Here in the UK there’s the University of the Third Age (U3A)- a friend is a member and takes part in regular weekly walks, there’s talks by scholars, and also informal groups who take part in various activities. She’s a member of “How hard can it be?” who do various things like roller skating, abseiling, canoeing (these are pensioners doing these activities for the first time!)
Within two minutes walk from my house are at least 6 mosques, 4 churches, a synagogue and a Hare Krishna setup. I have to go a bit further for the Quaker, Buddhist, Jain and Hindu meeting places (between 10 and 30 minutes walk). The atheists meet in a pub downtown.
Unfortunately I worship the god Źdźbło, and the nearest (and only) temple is on Rockall.
I just have “Many thanks!!!” or “Extremely fast payment. Many thanks!!!” (the three plings are mandatory 🙂 ) One buyer left a “MANY THANKS!!!” in response. I just squirm if I have to read feedback left for me, which is what turns me off Etsy, with its buyers’ emotional exuberance in composing feedback.
There’s a very interesting DefCon talk on the dark web, which touches on the feedback system for sellers of illegal drugs. The speaker’s point was how can you trust the customers’ feedback when they’ve just smoked “the best meth ever!!!!!”
Ha! Timo got it- old cigarette lighter peeping out in the box (I hope- haven’t had a chance to inspect the lot yet!)
Going to have fun selling that white box in the top right! Especially if it still has its contents.
Just for a bit of fun- I won this lot today. What’s the most valuable item in this tray?
(I’m basing my appraisal on a similar item which, although broken, sold for £80 after I bought it for £1 in a thrift store)
If I can’t identify the artist, I give up 🙂 Took me twenty years to identify a signed print by J. Lewis Stant- I had to wait for Al Gore to invent the internet. I suppose a commercially successful artist thinks of their art like a cheque- you don’t sign a cheque in block capitals but with some indecipherable squiggle.
Came across a listing for a bag with similar strapping- vendor guessed that it was a drop bag for a howitzer part.
Them 1800s digital cameras- you can’t get the right sort of coal these days to run them 🙂
There’s vape pipe collectors, who are all probably millenials 😉 As for the collectibles (and the collectables) Bradford Exchange, Franklin Mint and Thomas Kinkade etc. are still advertising their junk in the back pages of TV listings mags, and Royal Crown Derby are still knocking out their interminable series of Imari paperweights so I suppose there’s still plenty of money in it.
Two-thirds of the way down this Wikipedia page there’s “glass bongs”.
