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I would take my phone, go to the closest PO large enough to have a post Master and show them-report them. That is against the law, even though Ebay doesn’t do much about some sellers that are still selling the free supplies, maybe somebody local will tell Value Village to knock it off or be prosecuted.
Oh or better still, take all the boxes up to the store manager and tell them that you are taking all of these and not paying for them because they are free and selling the USPS boxes is against the law. If he doesn’t agree, tell him you are going to report them and if they want to call the police go ahead. That won’t help them and will only make it easier for you to report them. Then see what the store manager says. Then as a last straw, ask the manager if he will help you load all of the free boxes into your car!!! LOL 🙂
mike at MDCGFA in Atl
Oh and Thank you for the link. $170 is not bad. That maybe the answer. Just go ahead and bit the bullitt and pick one up. Have to read up on that model a little more and see what all it does and is compatible with.
P.S. Not only kiss cut, but perf, score, side guide, bi-fold, tri-fold, foil emboss, rad. rnd. corners, tympan sheet, build up, powder machine, burn a plate or screen, take off, pile wedges [to level], and a ton more if I had time to think about it.
thanks mike
I remember us talking about the old Thompson’s and Kluge presses.
My old partner died last year and I saw where his widow sold off the business in CT. and auctioned off all the machines.
He and i built that business up from doing hand printing work in a single garage to that new building we eventually built.
It was sad looking at all the auction photos of the inside. All the shelving I made, all the die cutters, silk screen presses and guillotines, laminating machine, ink room, everything I laid out and we installed over 22 years together. All hauled off by younger and newer competitors. Those were the prime years of my life all auctioned off in a day or two. 🙁 🙁
Now here selling used candle holders, dishes, vases urns, ceramics and what nots.
Not even fun doing this with Susan as sick as she is with her cancer treatments and me by myself everyday except for a few hours on friday and sat. with our helper. Only one helper now also.
Oh well onward and upwards.
Think you got what I was saying incorrect probably because of the way I was saying it. I meant to say, that I will wait until the laser printer “drum” goes out and needs a new drum which the last drum cost about a hundred dollars, I would use that as the opportunity to buy a thermal printer instead of repairing it.
I replaced the drum head a year or so ago and they usually last about 10,000 copies or so. The replacement drums in some models go for more than a new printer, which is par for the course.
But I certainly prefer a laser to an ink jet any day. For Years I used a four color laser printer because I print brochures and sales materials for my other businesses at that time. It costs almost $400 for toner on it back in those days. About $65 to $90 per color and I printed several hundred, 2 sided, tri-fold brochures on them that we gave to customers. It was like a mini printing press. But it finally gave out and I also no longer needed that service any longer.
As for the current ink jet. I too will just use it until the heads get screwed up then dump it. But may do it sooner rather than later. The person who took over my spray foam insulation business when I retired has asked my to come out of retirement and start doing his advertising and marketing both online and off for him to build up a new residential division. I may get another 4 color laser printer and print the brochures I design for him again on a color laser. At that point the ink jet will be history.
So the thought of decommissioning the laser for the ink jet wasn’t what I meant, it would be to dump the laser for the Thermal printer.
mc mdcgfa atl
Ryanne: So you turned off the GSP for your whole store, if I am reading correctly? Then made the change over to the new International Shipping?
It does seem to work about the same as the GSP program. Wonder if all of the same type of restrictions apply and if they also screen out the “do not ship to” countries like the GSP program does. Our “excluded” list of countries in the GSP prgram is twice as long as the countries our items will ship to. And some items won’t ship to some countries because of the nature of the item.
Our kitchen steak knives are one example. Some countries allow a wood blocket of kitchen knives some don’t. We even tried changing titles to Kitchen Cutlery, still some countries won’t take them but some will with the title changed. Strange.
We all laughed about calling them meat dividers, surgical steak manipulators, precision meat slicers, and on and on. We all had a good laugh! LOL 🙂
So we will explore this further at this weeks Friday Production meeting before we all start to work.
mc MDCGFA
She went on to say that after she read that info. in what she was mulling over online, it was an Ebay, purple header document from some Ebay area, that she then called her Ebay concierge service and talked with them and they confirmed that deliveries could take 6 to 8 weeks.
Then she gave just one example of her own, but the main focus was not on her having one complaint about one package taking a longer time. The package she sent was an experiment she did on her own after talking directly to Ebay. She was to try it herself for a comparison.
But rather than conjecture about it further any of us, if we have the time, could call Ebay and ask them the same question. Are you expecting your new service to run on a 6 to 8 week delivery schedule and the answer should put it all to rest. Personally I am in the GSP but only sell maybe half a dozen orders out of the US per year. Not enough for me to worry about. Will just sit and take the wait and see approach until we all have to deal with the managed payment switch over and then will also probably adjust out the shipping policies some.
But not trying to downplay or degrade the service, just thought I would what that one lady was reading about from the Ebay posting about the service.
Take Care…
Ta Ta for Now … mike at MDCGFA in ATLNow that you mention the phrase “hoarder house”, I do recall some dialogue along those lines and the huge volume you were asking about. Well at least we got some more details about how it all is being handled and stored.
mike mdcgfa
Thanks Sharyn: I suppose I could do a little rearranging and get a board across my main desk area and place it up on top of it above my monitors.
Currently my ink jet printer is by my desk and that’s where the packing lists and or the SixBit Pick List print out. Then the label is already waiting in the Laser printer over in the packing area as I walk over there. Guess I could have both the PL and Label print out here at my desk and walk both over to the shipping area.
Wonder if any one has tried printing out a Packing List onto a thermal label. Format the PL to a size that would fit the 4×6 label. Have the PL print first then the label be right after it. Guess that would be too small and hard to read, if it could even be formatted that size in the first place. Oh well, just thinking out loud.
I probably will wait until my laser printer drum-cartridge gets depleted or the next time I run out of toner will be the time to make the switch. Unsure how much toner is left but usually lasts about a year or so.
Hey Jay:
How about some new photos of you and Ryanne’s new storage building inside now that you have all of your stuff moved over into it? Would like to see how it all worked out with your shelving, how you arranged the rows, new bin system you are going to. Just curious.How does 8k to 10k items stack up inside, how did you finally light it, and / or heat it, how do you off load from your truck in there and so forth?
Do you do any packing and shipping inside the warehouse building or do you pull everything as it is sold and carry it up to the office, up the stairs to pack and ship?
How does the space and distance work out as far as time utilization go and how has the buidling helped in speeding up your overall process besides centralizing everything into one spot instead of all over the local farm?
mike at MDCGFA in Atl
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback. You are now baptized into the group.
Very interesting on the volume of items you still have to list on top of what you have already. If everything was listed over night you would have, what maybe 25,000 ++ items. Just unimaginable from our perspective.
But it is now clearer to how to can post those kinds of numbers. I am surprised Jay didn’t get to you first on those numbers, unless he already did and i missed it.
I also know that SL is wonderful, but if you are very active, then SL can be a time drain if one posts many new topics and reply to lots of other posts. Just think of all the months and months worth of time J and R have put into posting and answering since way back to the Mike and Wendy days.
So thank you again for the insightful details about your business model and how you and your wife run your business. Good job.
mike @ MDCGFA
Hey Guys: Question to all of the themal printer guys, Zebra, Dynamo, Rollo.. are these all wired printers or Wireless. The Brother Laser printer I use is 22 feet away from the main keyboard we use to send labels and it is wireless, two up on a sheet adhesive backed, kiss-cut on a sheet with 1/4″ rounded corners.
The price ranges I see for wireless units are running from several hundred dollars up to the 800 and 900 range. Must be heavy duty. But the one everybody has mentioned here are they hard wired-cable or wireless.
mike – mdcgfa
Sure thing:
It was Kathy Terrill a YouTuber but she has a good Ebay background, she speaks at some Ebay groups, a former QVC presenter and also knows seemingly many insiders at Ebay. But besides that she covers many good technical and topical thngs with what I feel is good information.
The only BUT is her introduction drives me crazy… “Hello Everybody”, Hi, Hi, Hi, Helloe, Good to see you”, UUgghh. but she has a lot of videos with info. I have used a lot.
Here at about time 8:00 minute mark, digging into the details that is posted online by Ebay and you may be able to get the Ebay URL by zooming in on it in the image she is showing on the screen.
Then at about the 11:00 minute mark she falls upon the Guaranteed delivery part and timing.
Hope this is of some interest and helps us all discover a little more about this program.
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
SmartParts Small EquipmentHey Timo… Man time flies. Yep. Had it booked marked but with so much else going on it dropped down out of sight quickly and sorry, but forgot about it and didn’t double back on it.
It may have been an offline phone call with Troy sometime back, can’t remember exactly.
But when he and i talk on the phone, we cover a bunch of topics at times. But my feelings is that the wrappers are better for run of the mill policies and or snippets that you want on all of your listings. But I prefer most of the data to be localized within the description area.
I write the code in the description area and have everything show up there. Mainly because when we cross post to other sites, the Ebay Description is all inclusive and contains everything we want a buyer to know about the item. Yes, on Ebay, that means some of the description data are the same as the Item Specifics. But on sites that don’t have an Item Specific area, then everything is in the description that is imported and we don’t have to edit or add anything else to it.
An example is Etsy. Etsy doesn’t have Item Specifics like Ebay. But in SB the Description area is imported directly into an Etsy description area and as such, the item specifics data is included.
To get any item specific area, the condition area, title and even custom fields all you have to do is enclose the code in double brackets. Example:Go to the Manage Templates drop down in the SB add area, select Manage Templates, select the template you want to add the auto coding to and do the following… if you want everything you typed in the Item Condition area of SB to automatically show in the description, type [[Condition]] in your template in the place you want it to appear in your template and save it in that template. If you want a bunch of Item Specifics to auto show, do the same for each field. If you go to one of newer-later listings and look at the description, the only thing we type is the Bullit point lines of copy, which is usually 2 to 4 short lines and eveything else populates automatically.
Here is an SB Description area with the code
[[Title]]
* We type these couple of lines in.
*
*Condition: [[condition]]
Brand: [[brand]]
Country: [[country]]
Color: [[color, colors]]
Size A: [[dimension, size]]
Style: [[style]]etc, etc. The reason for two codes in a few is that Ebay uses color or if not our custom field says colors [plural] so we include both terms. SB will pick up and show whatever is entered into either one of those fields.
The reason Troy and I both do this in the Description is that as we create various templates for categories that require a whole set of different item specifics such as limited edition art prints, original abstract acrylic paintings vs. home decor and Hard goods it is easier to add data in the custom IS fields and have them auto populate in that specific template. Troy has a ton of templates. We have much fewer.
Then we don’t have to worry about having to attach a wrapper or if edit something, having to make an edit in the description and then saving and opening up the wrapper. Just double work.
But, BUT… If you have a few sayings at the bottom of standard disclaimers, or snippets used over and over you may want to use a wrapper, but we just build it into the description area along with everything else.
As far as formating goes, when everything is in the description area, you can use the built in editor for basic stuff like to highlight, underline, bold, highlight, change fonts, color and size, etc. And to see how it will look, just click the small Preview tab under the editor window. The Edit and Preview tabs are side by side and we just click back and forth.
Troy and I just find it easier and faster to have everything in the one description area and not have to bounce back and forth between the wrapper and description area AND… If you make a change to a wrapper it will change all listings that use it and there may be times you want to custom it or edit and having in the same area is faster.
And lastly, some platforms will not bring over the wrapper to their platform but if everything you want to describe and or say about an item is in the Description area, you will then have a complete listing description on Etsy, Shopify or any other platform that brings in the description only from Ebay.
Hope that helps a little and I was not too confusing.
good Luck and sorry for the delay.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Hey Mark:
So sorry to hear about your mother. Our thoughts and prayers go out for you and your family.Susan and Mike Collins
MDC Galleries and Fine ArtI was listening yesterday to a YouTube poster who was reading through the whole International agreement document and when she got to the fine print areas toward the bottom, Ebay states this program can average about 6 to 8 weeks or longer to deliver to the buyer.
Follow up questions revolved around was Pitney Bowes being involved in some way, was there some sort of secondary process or inspections taking place, but nobody had any real answers. But right there in the Ebay document was the statement about a long time frame for delivery and it may lead to buyer questions or premature “Item Not Received” complaints.
Not much else about it except, it will be less costly in some cases.
