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Yes, it is complicated. The people who were opening multiple credit cards a month usually were doing something called Manufactured Spend which is basically finding ways to move money between your own accounts and get it to count as spend. Most of the easy ways to do this aren’t around anymore or aren’t as openly shared or are methods that would make me uncomfortable.
And you usually can get more points in good sign up bonuses than in day to day spending which is why people into this get cards as often as they can handle the spend and the credit card companies allow. Over the past couple years, some card companies restricted the number of cards people can get but if you aren’t going crazy with applying for cards, this wouldn’t be too much of a factor.
A related hobby is bank account bonuses. Again, this gets complicated following all of the guidelines and keeping track, but there are a lot of people playing this game. It makes me exhausted just thinking about it again.
There is a whole on-line community that revolves around gaming the system of credit card points and travel rewards. Usually it is called travel hacking (though not really hacking, more like obsessively following the rules of the system to maximum advantage). For those interested, good resources that aren’t trying to sell you something or refer you for their own benefit are Flyertalk.com–go to their forums and there is a subforum on Credit cards with a wiki sticky at the top listing the best current offer for each credit card (many times a card will have multiple offers available–you want to sign up for the best one) and also DoctorofCredit.com.
This can be a huge time sink, but if you enjoy this sort of thing, you can learn how to get lots of points (though it used to be much easier). I found it fun to follow for a while but then it got exhausting and I’d rather just keep my life more simplified.
Never mind–I figured it out by doing a search for how to add a custom label (eBay’s term for SKU) to an ebay listing. I just had to check the box on custom label under the customize options for the display on the active listings. Then the field is available during listing as the third field
Also, in the buyer’s messages they haven’t really admitted fault for the address being wrong–I guess I was supposed to psychically/magically just know to change it. So I’m worried how they will react to asking them to pay to re-ship
I sent the wrong item a couple months ago. There was an option for me to print the replacement item postage on ebay and ebay tracked both items during shipment. If I remember correctly the buyer selected something like received wrong item as the reason and then I was able to select something like accept return and send replacement item. The instructions then said I was supposed to wait to receive back the return and then send the replacement.
But I just waited until it showed the return was shipped and then mailed the replacement since I felt bad because it was my mistake and didn’t want the buyer to have to wait long, but there was a warning that I was acknowledging that I received back the original item when I printed the replacement item postage.
We were invited about 6 months or so ago. There are occasional surveys on very specific topics. But there hasn’t really been an opportunity to give suggestions like listed in the How Ebay can Improve subforum. I’d recommend joining — it is very little time commitment and you do get to give input even if it is usually is on very narrow areas.
There is still a cost to Target, because of the labor involved in processing the return and getting it back out on the shelf. I’m sure Target considers retail arbitrage people who do this to be bad buyers, not that different from the complaints on this thread about eBay bad buyers.
We’re going to be moving across country in a month or two so I am accepting offers that make me cringe a little, but just remind myself that there is still profit and it is easier and cheaper than worrying about packing and moving everything. Also, this will just give me an opportunity to find new and better things in my new location which is the fun part.
I added free returns to my mens shirts that would ship First Class a few weeks ago when this eBay update info came out. Since then 2 have sold and been delivered and 1 of these already had a return request for fit. Sold 3 more over the weekend that shipped out today but obviously haven’t been delivered yet so can’t say if they will get a return request. Too small of a sample size yet to get an real idea of impact on sales or returns but already having a return for fit is discouraging. My overall return rate is 2.66% and sell a mix of clothes/shoes, hard goods, and electronics.
I’m not Retro WV, but in the last 2 quarters of 2017, I was not getting the credit for TRS. I had to call in and go through about 6 different eBay reps over about 2 weeks until I finally got to talk to a supervisor who gave me the credits. For this quarter, I was credited automatically so it seems to have been fixed. I recommend checking your invoices to confirm.
@antarestar — I also LOVE budgetbytes.com. The recipes are easy and budget friendly and of the ~25 recipes I’ve tried, all have been excellent. There also are a lot of recipe options that are low carb or can be easily made low carb (i.e. subsitute another sweetener for sugar).
Yes-there are items I would never want to combine. Either large fragile items like you mention above or earlier this week, I sold ~ 40 lbs of books in one order via media mail shipping which I would not have been able to add a non-media item without losing the cheap media mail rate.
So, mixed feelings –happy about getting the combined sale but a little worried about possible future shipping combinations.
I just listened to the podcast and am posting to answer Jay’s question about how ebay calculated the combined shipping. In my case, it was easy since both items were flat rate shipping so the combined shipping just added the 2 shipping costs together. Fortunately, I live fairly close to Kentucky and the books are just small paperbacks so can combine the books and shirt and ship priority and not lose money on shipping.
I don’t know how ebay could combine shipping on 2 different shipping options if they were calculated and not flat rate.
These two GSP orders are definitely combined. They are combined on the seller hub orders page and there is a single drop-down option to print shipping label and when I click this it brings me to the shipping label page which has both items listed as a single shipment going to GSP.
per the other question, I hadn’t called PayPal since I had to wait on hold for the eBay rep for a long time and was tired of waiting/talking to customer support. Plus PayPal’s account activity clearly showed two payments of the exact same correct amount and one of these being reversed. And the eBay rep confirmed that they are showing these orders need to ship. I still may call PayPal to confirm.
