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I am with you Antarestar: I run short on dealing with jerks. I don’t get into dialogue but will tell my wife Susan, let’s go, nothing here for us.
Every now and then I will throw in a ‘ boy you have this stuff priced on the high end”, but you can’t fault them for trying. we went to a yard sale amount 2 summers ago. Whole drive way was lined on both sides with roll out shelving and covered with pop up tents. His whole garage walls were lined around the perimeter with shelving. The roll out shelves fit back into his garage in the middle. He had old antique booth tags on everything and still had the prices on everything at list prices. Every time I throw a number out he would say things like, I don’t take low ball offers, or you are way off the mark. I said well you may have the correct price on these for an end use collector who has just got to have this thing but how do you account for resellers or dealers such as yourself that would like to buy from you? His reply.. I have all the time I need to find the right buyer and guess you are just not it.
All I said is and we will never be, good luck and left. He is one of those perpetual yard sellers anyway and this is his version of his own home business. Who knows, maybe he sold online or craigs list also.
I am not a big yard sale pickers anyway. Tons of people always moving around Atlanta, no shortage of Sales, but high end houses or lower end houses, all seem to just be dumping the real junk out of their closests, basements or garages and it all seems to be the same thing. We have found some nice higher end pieces occassionaly but most of the time, it is not worth the time, effort or expense to drive all over creation for greasy, used tupperware and kitchen utensils.
Just as Jay says .. “Welcome to the world of online selling!” 🙂
I just thought of something… Ever seen those videos of the crazy, weird Walmart Shoppers? The ones in raincoats and rubber boots and see through everything I didn’t want to ever see? Well if brick and mortar stores get their fair share of crazies, I guess online sellers get our fair share, they come in different forms and hit us in different ways.
But unlike Walmart, we don’t have our own “Security” people to usher dead head online buyers out of our store. So we have to pull, the old.. “Shoo, shoo, you crazy people get off my lawn” routine for ourselves. 🙂
Sonia.. the water cooler idea is not a bad one. Years ago I was on a forum, that had a section actually called the “Water Cooler”. Maybe Jay and Ryanne may just add a category called the “Water Cooler” or “The Hangout Corner” or my old favorite back from high school, “The Smoking Tree”.
Just a thought. A section for some humorous or lighter stuff, or weird stuff we all see and or read that doesn’t fit any of the other categories.
“Not Kidding”..”All True”.. “What a dumass!!!!” .. Not Kidding.. All True!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
mike at MDGFA
We had a good one this week also. To make 7 or 8 messages from this lady very short, she was trying to tell us how to run our business and how she wanted to see us handle a bulk order from here.
She made one offer, we accepted. It was sitting on hold waiting for payment. Then she proceed to start shopping our store and sending us email messages of all the things she wanted. The catch was, she wanted us to pull about 8 items and send her an invoice for how much the total would be with us including a bulk purchase discount and what the combined shipping would be.
Us, no, we are not pulling and boxing all that up, no some of the items are delicate and we choose not to combine them, no the box would become over sized have to go FedEx and would fall into the dim weight pricing, we don’t know where this may ship to so basically no, no, no.
She has a feedback of over 13,000 and buyers a ton.
She replies, you can do anything if you want to, so just put all of it in a box, weigh and measure it and tell me how much it will cost.
Basically she was indirectly telling us to shut up, do as i tell you to, and what part of this don’t you understand.
We told her to just click on putting everything she wants and put it into her shopping cart and ask for an invoice. Nope she didn’t want to do that because Ebay can’t do more than just combine the weights we put in for single box shipments and in reality when objects get combined in real time, they always come out lighter and smaller boxes than Ebay’s estimated-calculated combined shipping which results in cheaper shipping than what a Shopping Cart Invoice will be showing. [actually she is right on that point]
Susan said she didn’t like this lady’s tone at all and to just kill the listings on everything she was asking for and open the case for the one offer accepted item but I chose not to get into an “in your face” scene.
We went silent, waited 48 hours and was just minutes away from opening an unpaid item case and she buys it all at list price and we have Instant Pay turned on, so she paid in full.
Now, we pull, pack and ship and combine as much as we can as we would normally do and after all was said and done, we refunded her $5.51. All of this non-sense and attitude toward us just to save $5.51.It is entertainment up to a point, but what a waste of time. The only reason we even engaged with her was due to the first purchase, we had to be polite and try to accomodate her if she was going to buy the other items.
She is a seasoned buyer with that many feedbacks, she knows the drill and ropes very well. for sure and bet she pulls this tactic on all the sellers to see who she could bully into doing what she asks.
Mike at MDCGFA
Steel will be very magnetic. A decent magnet will jump right to it. Alloys with silver plate over it will usually be non-magnetic in most cases depending on the “alloy composition”.
Jay you mention testing ‘precious metals”. Does any body know how to test non-precious metals such as bronze, Copper, brass and pewter.
We know that the brass has a little tin in it at times and a strong magnet suspended on a thin thread will sway toward the brass when held very still and close. But on bronze and copper other than color we are always stumped.
Steel, cast iron are all magnetic and attract the magnet right away and strongly.
On some dull pewter vs. dull, cast aluminum it is also hard to tell.
So other than color and feel it sure would be nice to be able to “test” to be sure.
This week we had several buyer requests for verifications. One was on a 3 pc. terra cotta set of shell fish bowls that looks like they are used to cook Jambalaya over an open fire. They are all charred and soot covered from smokey wood burning or being placed over coals. The buyer wanted to know if we had tested the pots for “Lead Content” and we should put that it was or wasn’t tested in our listing. So we discovered there are “Lead” testing swabs and got a pack of 2 yesterday.
The very next day we have a very old hand made trophy cup with deer antlers. It is not brass but said it was either bronze or copper with a heavy patina. The buyer asked which it was because if it was bronze she would buy it at full price, right then and there and if Copper she wasn’t interested. Well how do we “test” for sure?Any help along these lines would be apprciated. We probably will just have to change the listing to say a generic term like “old metal with a great patina” and leave out the type since we can’t be for sure.
Thnaks…
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Thanks for the update.
Online people are saying that a recent Windows 10 update is causing some issues with .pdf files printing and that is what the Ebay label is. So I did a reprint and had it open in a new window and I got it to print. Things still are right and are slow.
Yep certainly different from the Worthpoint photo. Good luck on the search. Maybe someone here will come up with something.
Nope. I believe Imgur has a free account. All you do is regsiter with an email and create a password. But may be wrong. I have used PhotoBucket for years but just don’t use it much.
Go to http://www.worthpoint.com and put in the search terms I used and at least you can see the items i was looking at or that link I attached should take you directly there.
Also Google image search will help you research, Pintrest but that gives you a ton of images to sort through, TerraPeak which is free if you have a premium or higher store. We have started using that fairly regularly. Gives one full year of what sold on Ebay instead of just the 90 days worth that Ebay provides. TerraPeak also provides some pretty good analytics for the sales trends, averages on dollar amount sold, and other stuff.
mike at MDCGFA
Thanks and will do T-Satt. I have a list of questions for you written down. Had 3 remote call in and remote control sessions with Dustin at SB. Great guy. The second sessions was supposed to be about an hour, but we went from 10 AM until 4:30 PM. It was on SBs side so he was scrambling to get it worked out. I helped him a little [I think] and he wrote up two requests for the developers to add a few things to SB on the next update.
I video recorded his remote session [with his permission of course] but ran out of video space on my phone 2/3rds of the way through. Really cool program though. Still have 41 older listings to get out of WL and into SB that have to be done manually, then we will cancel WL. Have our senior helper up and listing on SB and will start training the newer helper next week after some “Batch editing” of old WonderLister Costs into SB.
Oh, and be careful on that “older” laptop. I had to get a new one for the helpers to run SixBit on. It needs to clock out at over 3200 min. benchmark. If the processor runs slower than that SB will just slow down after one or two entries then stall. The new laptop is clocking at over 60,000. When I caught that and mentioned to dustin as he was doing something on the “network” he said, “Oh yeah, even with Windows 10, the motherboard has to run and process at a certain speed”. In other words SB does better on a newer motherboard and chip set than an older machine even if it has Windows. But we got a good deal of a new one and i had it up and running in a couple of days. Had to do all of my SB customizations I had done on it all over again after the fresh upload, but I was quicker now that I had done it a few times.
I will be getting back with you via PM in the near future.
Later gator.. mc in atl.
Me too! She is our photographer and main purchasing and procurement officer of the company. Can’t run it without her, actually I wouldn’t want to run it without her. After 50 years, I can’t remember her not being in my life. It would be a lonely trek all by myself.
MC at MDCGFA
Thanks.. At 70 years old, I keep plugging away. Actually keeps me fresh and alert. Up at 6:00 AM and work until 6:30 PM , seven days a week. The model of a retired Baby Boomer!
Anybody want to start another business!! LOL 🙂 Just joking, enough is enough for the coming years.
mike at MDCGFA
