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It appears that ebay solved this problem, as I received this message in my inbox a few minutes ago. The payments generally take 24 hours to hit my account so I won’t know for sure until tomorrow, but I’m glad this was handled (relatively) quickly.
Dear Seller,There was an issue that affected payouts for a number of managed payments sellers on December 2nd, 2020. This issue has been resolved and all affected payouts were re-sent on December 2nd. We do not expect sellers to encounter any delays receiving their funds. Depending on your bank, your payouts should be reflected in your bank account in the next 1-4 business days. We apologize for any inconvenience.
You may have received a communication mentioning a problem with your bank account. You may disregard this prior communication. There is no further action required of you at this time.
Also reassured that this wasn’t just me, and incredibly grateful that yesterday’s payout with all the weekend sales wasn’t affected.
Curious what message people are seeing in the payments tab underneath their rejected payout — mine says processing, preparing to send. I believe that’s also the default before the payment has fully processed? It would be nice if there was a big, red flag or something that clearly indicated an error, either on the bank’s end or ebay’s.
This forum and community has provided a lot of solace for me this year throughout all of the uncertainty. Thanks J&R and Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.
I’ve noticed a similar blip with unpaid items under managed payments which is likely a related error. I have unpaid item cases set to open automatically after 8 days of non-payment and to close automatically 3-4 days later. Tonight, I noticed an item that went unpaid way back in mid-September. I accepted the buyer’s offer and then they ghosted me — no payment, no contact, nothing. For some reason, no unpaid item case was ever opened, so I didn’t receive a final value fee credit on the item. Worst of all, the item has been sitting in my inventory since, but remained unlisted until I finally saw it tonight. This was just a $12 sale, so I only lost a few bucks in fees, but keep an eye on your unpaid item cases!
I have about 2000 listings, 95% collectibles, and was contemplating downgrading from premium to basic until I went to make the change and saw that eBay does not include Selling Manager Pro with a basic store. Instead, SMP is an extra charge of $15.99 a month, bringing the cost of a basic store to $37.95 with the yearly subscription. Still a net savings of $240 a year, but the shipping supplies coupon is another factor since I use a few hundred of the small padded mailers every quarter. I like them and would probably buy them even without the coupon.
My yearly subscription is up next month and I doubt I’ll switch, though the decision would be much easier if I had an anchor store and was thinking of downgrading to premium since there is such a huge price difference.
This is the kind of buyer who usually, in my experience, leaves feedback which is easy to get removed. Don’t panic. The option to call customer service won’t be grayed out forever and if the buyer drops a neg on you, you will have a strong case to get the neg removed. You have a textbook case for not refunding the full amount since you didn’t receive the item back in the same condition (or even particularly close). Just be patient and kind with the rep and you’ll be fine.
Looks like October 18th is the date that the changes will go into effect, assuming they are approved by the PRC.
Obviously this is not ideal, especially recognizing that we’re likely to see more increases in January, but considering everything going on with the post office right now…this could have been much worse.
if you’re ever debating an as seen on TV purchase, check out Freakin Reviews YouTube channel and see if he’s done a video on the product(s) in question. air fryer comparison
love his channel so much, thorough & fair reviews and a very upbeat attitude. the Scavenger Life of as seen on TV gadgets…I want to add another vote for putting in a request for email updates on a tracking number at the USPS website. In my experience, like clockwork this step will find a “missing” package — usually in a sorting facility near the buyer’s home state — within a day or two. I usually do this after a buyer sends me a “where’s my item” message and it resolves the issue fast enough.
The exception to this rule is that it doesn’t really work for international packages, which is probably not an issue for those of you who use global shipping. But I ship a lot of smalls, so using first-class international and charging buyers a flat shipping rate makes sense for me. Unfortunately, I have had two international packages disappear in the last month and needed to refund the buyers. One package was supposed to go to Canada and somehow got misdirected to Madrid where it disappeared.
I hope it’s not the start of a trend. Fortunately, my local New Jersey post office has been business as usual. One place of normalcy in my life amidst all the uncertainty. The grocery store, on the other hand, makes me glad to be a scavenger and to have already had lots of extra pantry staples and stuff in the freezer.
I just came to this thread today, so reading all the posts was quite an emotional roller coaster. After the OP’s post, I was excited and thought it was a great opportunity. But after seeing the store full of sunglasses and Jay’s post about unbranded sunglasses listings, my doubts crept in.
This seller only has about 187 feedback received over the last 6 months and 447 over the last year. Their solds are fairly consistent at 3-5 items per day and most sales are right around or under $10 with free shipping. The average sales price may be $15 but that is heavily propped up by the occasional $50 “premium” sale. So continued sale of those SKU’s is really vital to how quickly you recoup your initial investment, whether it’s a year (or less)
Did the sellers give you any data on returns? This strikes me as a category that would have a high number of returns. I’m not sure whether high means 2% or 10% or 20%. Whatever the percentage is, that loss will be compounded by the free shipping both ways.
My main niche is smalls (trading cards) which take just a few minutes to package and I built my inventory from a few hundred items to a few thousand mostly primarily through $10 items. I imagine sunglasses are similarly quick to package (and of course you have the listings already taken care of) so I understand the theoretical appeal.
I really wonder how this niche might be affected by the pandemic. I wouldn’t be optimistic that year-over-year sales will increase, that’s for sure. So I hope that you can negotiate them under $1/listing. You really have all the leverage here, and I wish you luck.
Here is a completely wild article about why you should almost definitely avoid dropping clothes in the yellow Planet Aid clothing bins.
US taxpayers are financing alleged cult through African aid charities
Scavenging on eBay is going to be the new norm for at least a little while. I personally love it (it’s how I already do 90% of my scavenging) but I know when it gets more consistently warm, I will miss going to the flea market. Have to figure out a way to do that over Zoom…
I had an item removed for the same reason but here’s where it’s interesting. It wasn’t cleaning supplies or anything related to the pandemic in any way. It was a vintage trading card of a wrestler named Frank Valois who was nicknamed “The Mask.” So, I don’t think it’s competitors reporting things. I think it’s based on keywords.
Hi Jay, I am a weird scavenger in that my main niches are modern trading cards (mostly sports and autographs) and physical media (books, CD’s, DVD’s). So keep that in mind. I don’t know if my methods would translate to ephemera, or clothes, and almost definitely not to bulkier items, but everything you and Ryanne talk about on the podcast have helped me build my eBay store to close to a full-time income, so who knows.
In the last 60 days, I have sold 17 trading card lots totaling just over $400. So, average sale price of about $23, average profit of about $15. I have listed another 48 lots (again over that 60 day period) and I’m confident that most or all will sell eventually. I build them by taking one or two low-priced items out of my store (usually items I spent $1-$3) and fill out the lot with cards that aren’t worth listing individually. I mostly sort the lots by team since some collectors (but not all) build their collections around a fan or rooting interest.
I have a similar system with modern books, sorting by genre, and CD’s & DVD sorted by genre. The last book lot I sold (a few months back) was contemporary poetry, 20 books for $45 plus shipping. The last CD/DVD lot was metal and hardcore (a few months before that), 20 CD’s for $50 plus shipping. I should do these lots more but I live near one of the largest record stores in the US (Princeton Record Exchange) and it’s easier to just bring them a few boxes of stuff and get $50 or whatever in trade-in.
I don’t know if this is a common development for scavengers, but there was a good year of so where I accumulated a lot of inventory that I had bought for $2 or less hoping I could resell for $10 or $20 or more. But after I did the research, it turned out my ‘gut feeling’ was wrong. Either there was no demand or the item would only sell for $5 or something. I grew my inventory by listing and selling those $10 items. I learned so much in time. But I realized in the last few years that if you want to rely on this for consistent income, your average sales price has to go up.
The lot auctions have been a way for me to get rid of some of that excess. Decreasing the frequency of those ‘poor purchases’ is obviously much more important. And I think that mostly takes experience, you know? Scavenging and doing the research and looking things up.
My niches are obviously all huge categories. There are so many worthless books and CD’s and I’m sure most scavengers probably think that sports cards stopped being worth anything in the 90’s. It’s mostly true. You need to know your stuff. But the obscure and unique is (and probably always will be) worth a lot of money to the right collector and there are a lot of people who may not be fanatical collectors but drop $20 or $40 every so often on a card they want or CD box set. My lot listings are stuff that is not as obscure but watching a good number sell has taught me that for the right price, those kinds of items will find a buyer, too. I imagine some of my items are even going to other resellers but I’m fine with that.
I am curious to see how all this holds up across the next few months in an economic downturn and I am really interested to see if this method would work for scavengers in other niches.
Amatino, I started lotting items because I received a promo on my buying id for a $10 coupon (up to 5 times) for every item I sold in my niche category (sports memorabilia). I’m not sure how eBat decides to send out those targeted promos but I’m guessing it was based, in part, on how much I buy in that category on that ID.
I lotted up similar type items and listed 6 or 7 them to end the day before the end of the promo, so I could relist as fixed price (and still qualify for the coupon) if they didn’t sell at auction. But every single auction sold. One went for buy it now price, another was bid up close to my buy it now price and best of all, the same buyer bought 5 of the auctions, so I only had to ship 3 packages total. I made just under $200 in profits total after fees plus the $50 in coupons with inventory that had either been unlisted or stale.
So this got me to take a hard look at my store, which has had 2000 or more items in it for about the last six months. Before that, it was a year of growth from around 500 items to 1000 and then 2000. Really, most of that was just listing anything I could like Jay & Ryanne suggest.
But the last few months were really the first time I actually looked at my listed inventory aside from buyer questions or packing sales. Looking at and touching most/all of my listings over the period of about a week forced me to realize I had some items overpriced and others which I had in inventory for so long that I wasn’t sure how much I paid for them or what they were worth. In line with this thread, I also observed a habit of buying things I “liked” which weren’t very profitable. Things I thought were cool but not valuable, basically.
I experimented with looking at items as they were “ending today” (even though Good til canceled items never really end) and used that as a means of repricing and ending items that I thought were overpriced or unlikely to sell. I think sorting low to high is a much easier method, though.
Reorganizing the physical space — I have one bedroom as an office — is probably my next big project. One of my other niches is media (books, DVD’s, CD’s) and I know I have too much shelf space devoted to low dollar ($20 or less) items. I hate lotting them up because it’s a loss of (theoretical) profit. If I had a larger space like Jay & Ryanne, I would probably keep it all listed. But I don’t. And I also think you can drive yourself crazy chasing the hypothetical “I know it’s worth this much!” especially with less than $20 items.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the thinking of list, list, list that it is hard, at least for me, to spend time on things like organization and maximizing space and repricing. Make no mistake, if you have less than 500 or even 1000 items and want this as any sort of reliable income, the single most important thing you can do is scavenge and list new items until you get to 1000 and probably higher. My sales didn’t really pick up until I got to 2000 listings.
But now that I’m at this level, if my last few months are any indication, the time spent reorganizing and repricing and doing something with the inventory is well worth it. Even if it’s just a few hours a month or a few hundred extra in net sales.
More sales don’t just give me more money to spend on inventory or put me closer to “what I need to live” money, they help me learn. And I think that’s why we’re all on this forum, after all.
I was having problems with seller hub and dashboard earlier as well. Here is ebay’s system status page in case anyone needs it. It’s not 100% accurate and doesn’t always have enough detail about what’s not working, but it’s something.
https://www.ebay.com/sts
