Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I’m in, no worries. I’ve spent most of this month looking at optimizing storage, which has helped tremendously, and in doing so I’ve put some stuff in the donate pile. I’ll keep doing that and reorganizing.
But to add to the fear of throwing out – One time I did sell a lot of 100 toilet paper tubes for $20 or so. Dang it – now I have a pile of those. But that’s an easy throw – so that’s one for me. I’ve tried to sell since with no luck. I’ll do more when I get home.
Thanks
Sorry, I think we are all saying the same thing, it’s just simply that we are using different words and saying it differently. I’m not saying to turn off free returns, I’m all for that. What I want to do is turn off the automatic free labels that eBay generates when a buyer asks for a return. I want the buyer to contact me. I will give them the label that I pay for, if I want the item back. If I don’t want the item back, I’ll just refund them 100%, no questions asked. That way they don’t mail me back something that is broken that has no value. Why waste the extra postage. I’d just throw it away when I receive it, so I’d rather not have it shipped to me. If I want them to return the item, I’ll pay for and send them a label to ship the item back to me. Once I get the item back, I’ll refund them and simply relist the item.
As I mentioned, what started this was selling a power supply that I thought worked, but didn’t. eBay automatically generated the label that I paid for. I refunded the person instantly, hoping he wouldn’t send it back to me, but he did. So it cost me an extra $10 or so to ship a broken item to me. I’d of preferred to not have the label generated, as it was silly to do.
And like Jay mentioned earlier, most of the time for me this ends up in a mute point, as most of them simply don’t return the item, and then case closed. I have a guy right now who bought a golf club from me, realized it wasn’t the same as his set (he didn’t read the title, it clearly stated what it was), and so he just wanted a refund. He has a label, I’m waiting for him to send it, but he still hasn’t. I’m not refunding him until I receive the club back. I can easily relist and sell, but he has to mail it to me first. I paid for the return label.
I have free returns on all of my items that I have listed in the past 6 months (so not all, I still have some old items that I have not updated, but many). I don’t have a problem with it, it hasn’t increased my returns, but I’m just trying to figure out all the details of how returns work and how refunds work.
To me, death piles stem from the one fact of eBay that is both a gift and a curse (I miss Monk). Once you know that things have a value, and that you can sell them for a value, you lose all sense of being able to throw ANYTHING away. It’s just harder. Last year I sold an old unused copy of Windows 98 that was still new in the package for $95. That’s crazy to me, and it made me realize that I need to look everything up before I throw/donate them. That adds a step before everything – which is simply “deciding if it’s worth selling”. Most of my piles come from that simple statement, in that I just need to decide. Once I’m past that step, the process of listing isn’t that bad for me. I have a small whiteboard that I write item specifics on (weight, measurements if it’s clothing, size for shipping, and where I’m going to store it), that I quickly write down stuff and put it next to the item and take a picture. Then I take my 10-12 photos of the item, store it away, and save listing for another time. Typically when I’m upstairs watching football on a Sunday, I’m going through pictures and listing things, one at a time. All photos are on the cloud, so they go from my phone to my iPad with no worries.
We accumulate a lot of things through this process of life. I’m older, so I have a lot of things in my basement that have piled up over the years. My father recently passed so I have a lot of his things down there now, but there are just other things that we just naturally gather. The day I started doing eBay was when I realized that people will Pay Me to clean out my basement. WHAT??? That’s crazy. But yes, if you are patient and willing to go for the 3-4 year ride, people will pay you to clean your basement.
So embrace the death piles, try not to add to them, and just attack them one at a time. They will eventually go away (a.k.a. Jay and Ryanne, I remember that podcast when they announced that). Everybody seems to be doing a great job.
Keep up the community. This is awesome. Thanks
I don’t think I’m changing the option of free return shipping no matter what – that is still there. I just want the option to refund the buyer and end it first – so that we don’t pay the post office to return something that is broken or worthless. So all I’m hoping to do is take the label issuing out of the hands of eBay and put it in my hands. I have to do it quickly I assume, otherwise I’ll be in trouble and have to go to the principals office, but I’m OK with that, I’ll do it on time no worries. Time will tell. I turned it off, whatever that means, so I’m now just waiting (not anticipating, hopefully waiting a long time) to see what happens next return. It’s the only return rule I currently have, and it was generated by eBay, not by me as I had no clue what eGD was.
eGD are eBay Guaranteed Deliveries. In my return preferences it’s the only thing that I have as automatically turned on. I don’t have any return rules, though I see that I could make some. I just wanted to turn them off, which I think will let me decide how to handle returns. I don’t have that many, so I don’t feel it will be a big deal, but I just wasn’t sure. We’ll see I guess (lesson #8432).
Thanks
When this happened to me I just went to PayPal directly and printed labels. Worked great. Of course it doesn’t help list but at least you can ship while eBay messes with things.
As a side and just as a thought, I had a thing happen yesterday where I wanted to edit a listing I currently have. I’ve had it listed just a month or less (so not long), and I just wanted to update it. When I went to save it and publish it, I got a big red flag from eBay saying that I can’t use the word Kevlar in the title (I’m assuming a VERO related thing). I went back, edited to remove Kevlar, and then listed with no issues.
My point is maybe to try editing your locks, make a small change, and see if a VERO comes up. If it does then act accordingly (change to used, fix it, etc…). Maybe it’s not a related thing and that won’t happen in your case, but I’d be curious to know if it did. I’m not sure how my listing went through the first time, maybe because I did it from a mobile device and their checkers aren’t good that way? I’m fairly certain that Kevlar has been on that list for a while now. I don’t know.
In any event, good luck.
I found an old football that had one quadrant painted as Family Game IU Vs. Minnesota, with the date and a score of the game (IU won that year – it was an old football, I forget the details). It may have been one of the game balls that, after the game they painted it as a memento of the game. In any event, I got if for $1 and listed it in auction format starting at 25 with make offer. A guy offered me 75, and I took it right away. I asked him about it and what it was that he liked and his told me that his friends dad (or maybe his friend) had played in that game, and he was getting it for a nice present for his friend. What luck, first that I found the ball and listed it on eBay, but then that he happened to be browsing eBay for an auction when I listed it. Crazy. I thought that was cool – he was very pleased and loved the ball. That was a good toy story day, item reunited with somebody that will get some pleasure out of it.
I think I just didn’t understand the process. When it came time to process the refund, the default was to just return the item price, not original shipping, to the buyer. Not knowing any better, I of course hit the toggle and also returned the original shipping. It was not an INAD issue, so I did have a choice. No worries, now I know so all is good. Thank you all for the help. I really don’t do these often, and just suddenly got a barrage of them and truthfully learned from every one so we’re good now. I’m curious what new thing I’ll learn from the next one. Can’t wait 😉
Take care
Thanks Jay, that helps. I did have the option to not give the buyer their original shipping, but I didn’t know that was what I was supposed to do. So I refunded them fully. My bad. It was truly my first return in a very long time, so it’s fine, I needed to learn and then figure it out.
I know you all have said, but if you don’t refund the buyer that shipping, then they complain that you didn’t, is that when eBay steps in and helps you? A big light is starting to go off and I’m slowly piecing all of this together. I think I was worried that the buyer would be upset at me not refunding their initial shipping fee.
I appreciate the detail there. Thanks again.
That helps, thanks. I didn’t think to not reimburse them for initial shipping, though that doesn’t seem fair either. For some reason I had it in my head that in cases that are not INAD eBay would reimburse the seller. I saw that as a way to make sellers better at descriptions and selling things as described. But if that’s not the case, no worries, now I know. I’m fine paying for shipping then just dealing with it – it’s part of the business expense and one that really isn’t that much in the long run.
Thanks
So I don’t do this a lot, but at times it happens as I’m selling collectibles. One time I was selling 4 cast iron wall plaques depicting a butter churn, and 3 other things I can’t remember right now. I had them as a set for $40. A guy offered me $20 for one of them, I sold that, and then re-listed the 3 for $35.
Prior to that people would ask me to split things up, I would and then they would never follow through, so I stopped that practice as that was not worth it at all.
I prob won’t do this much anymore, as I just upgraded my store, but when I was limited in listings I would sometimes combine things instead of using 4 separate listings for that set. So it’s a very situational thing, really doesn’t happen a lot, but sometimes people see a piece of what I’m selling and really are just interested in that. If it’s a decent return, I’ll do it.
I agree with you Jay, if I was breaking out a $4 tie from a set I wouldn’t do it. But if the offer is good, I’ll do it every time.
So when a person does eventually purchase an item this way, Once they pay and I ship it off, I relist the original item and change description if necessary and retake photos to reflect exactly what is for sale. I try to make sure my listings do show what they will be getting without confusion (hopefully).
Are you still working on this or is this long over? Sorry, I just saw this and thought I could help if needed. My day job is college prof in a chem department, and one of my side gigs is selling things for the chem dept to earn some money. And my vehicle for selling is eBay, so if you still need, if you gave me a specific order, I could actually make a custom sale just for you on eBay if you are interested. I probably have a lot of the stuff you need. WIth that, as a side question, do things necessarily need to work, or are they just props? I ask because things like Bunsen burners are very expensive, and so I do have some that work, but I also have some that don’t work that look good and would make good props. The ones not working are much cheaper of course ;). Just saying.
Just let me know no worries. Thanks
So as I look closer at the link you sent, maybe this is simply a tribute to the scavenger “List it and forget it” philosophy. While I think we all hope that eBay is getting better and smarter at hooking up buyers with sellers, at the end of the day the list it and forget it philosophy still wins out every time. With that thought, you are simply waiting for that one person to log on to eBay, browse and find your magical listing, and then click the buy button, no questions asked. There is no logical thought outside of that that can explain why Nuts the Squirrel sells for 200.00. The guy listed it, was patient, and eventually it paid off. Even if it took 8 years to sell that silly squirrel, it was more than worth it. He doesn’t even have a description saying that it’s rare or describing the tag flaws. He just lists it for 200, and it sold. How beautiful is that. So hey, go for it, take pictures, put some outrageous price on them, and let them go. What good is it to get 0.99 for a bag of 10 beanies when you can get 200 for one. That’s easily worth the wait in my book 😉
