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Yes, I have had this problem for almost a year. Have spent sveral days in a row, just recently with them. They called me back every morning at 10:00 EST and we worked on it. Had to get a 3 way conference call going with the Ebay rep and their own tech team. It is a problem thay have had for awhile and can’t seem to get it fixed.
They have several tickets open on it and admitted that there are others it is affecting. this isn’t a new issue by any means either and they admitted that too.
I have to run for this evevning but will log back in tomorrow and brief ya’ll just a little more.
It has nothing to do with any of your settings, preffernces, contry excludes, country includes, how you ship, business policies or anything like that. And that came from several Ebay employee going through all of my settings line by line. It was a crazy three or for days. So unusual for Ebay to call me multiple days in a row at the exact time [a call apointment] and keep working on this.
At this time there is still no fix. I have a current open ticket number but so have I had them in the past.
so until, tomorrow.
Mike at MDC Galleries
Jay is correct. SB & WL do some of the things to help keep them in synch and they both are making updates and improvements almost monthly, but 3 or 4 platforms fully automated, not yet but it is on the drawing board and forth coming from them. WonderLister has an Amazon interface, Shopify [which I am helping them with and am having some good success] and an Etsy interface.
SB has their Etsy interface up and going but Troy will have to tell you how much of it is automated.
WL also send all of our new listings to Twitter and we get followers from those almost everyday. They are also working on an InstaGram interface. That we are pushing WL on because as we start listing our portfolios of artwork [we are close to start listing those], we think IntaGram will be good to boost traffic to our Shopify store.
The Shopify interface is synching to some degree. As a test for the BETA testing experiment, I deleted all of our Shopify store day before yesterday. Then I did a synch from WL to Shopify and WL took all of our 1,136 litstings and did a Refresh of our Shopify store and all 1,136 listings were re-populated into our Shopify store in less than 3 minutes. Boom!
Another automated synch is I am experimenting with price and quantity chages in both Shopify and also Ebay and every 10 minutes WL does a scrape of data from both platforms and if it detects changes it changes the blck line of text to red and present a message that a change on one of the platforms was detected and will up date those changes. That is working from Shopify to Ebay and then from Ebay to Shopify.
Now what I am banging on is for the tech team to expedite this same process to include the Etsy platform. But as for now, I we are doing a manual process for our Etsy store.
What we do for an Etsy listing is we do a copy and paste from the Shopify listing directly off of a web browser where we have opened up our domain name. The Shopify listing has the complete Ebay data in it. Shopify holds the title, price, condition, description and Item specifics complete. WL when it creates a Shop. lisint can pull all of this data from Ebay and places it in our Shop. listing including photos. So all we do is copy that “full” listing from Shopify and then paste that whole thing into Etsy. Takes about 10 secs. But we do have to then attach the photos to the etsy listing. So a Shop. to Etsy only takes about 60 to 90 secs. and then publish it. But still a manual process.But WL tech team is working on getting this to also work just like the Shopify module.
In SixBit [Troy and Veronica use it] along with other members, has the Etsy interface up and going better than WL but they do not have a Shopify module going at all and talking with the SB guru JC [Troy’s friend], not going to in the forseable future.WL does already have an Amazon interface and I see a lot of “tabs” for moving data into Amazon but since we don’t have an Amazon store and Amazon doesn’t lean toward one of a kind used stuff, that feature is really of no interest to us.
Now there is a big hitter in the multiplatform field, I think they are called ASA Inventory Management systems, [unsure], but they are a big e-commerce application, and at the time I researched were hundreds of dollars per month=thousand per year and for large companies with, hundreds of thousands of items and listing them on several web sites and large reselling platforms. Way out of our league as well as an average Ebay, Etsy type seller.
I sort of rambled agagin, but maybe some of this will help.
The problem I found trying to decide on all of this is which is the best one to go with. Well, they are so diverse and both WL and SB do have a learning curve and they furnish different types of reports and offers different types of features it takes a long time to make a comparison. I used SixBit for 3 months, then 6 months with WL, both tria versions, was having to learn to navigate both the whole time. Then gradually went and stayed with WL. But I will say I did go back to SixBit a year or so ago due to thinking it would be faster to get the Etsy store going. But after deciding on our own store in our own domain name and seeing WL was further along on that venue I dropped SB agagin, [Sorry JC and John] and jumped back into WL.
But a word of advice and see if troy and Mark agree, it took me over a year to settle in and that is a long time of which I could have been just focusing listing within Ebay itself. So working with these programs will take up some time and I had to look at it as an investment into my full time business. AND I think once you finally decide, you will have to stick with one or the other. Bouncing around will cause some issues. But once lock and loaded with either WL or SB then a full time seller will never look back to just using a one platform approach and doing it all in either the Etsy, Shopify or Ebay internal forms and processes.
When we list in WL and Troy in SB, we use just one form, one style screen and we both have customizable controls to allow us to see only those sections we want and how we want to see them. SB being a little better at that for the time being.
OK that … was the mug and a half of coffee answer along with another wall of text for the Scavengerlife infrastructure!!! 🙂
Mike and the management team at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
SmartParts Small equipment Parts divs. 🙂Jay.. Boy that would add to the avg cost of our goods to add a $25 trip charge to the cost of going to thrifts, sales, auctions.
In Atlanta the Ubers are running $50 for a 36 mile trip to the Atl airport. That’s $1.38 per mile. Atlanta is really spread out as you know first hand. We source all the way to Marietta sometimes. That’s 40 miles west. If we came back with 50 items that would add $55 over there and $55 back or $110 round trip or $2.00 per item to our COG. Yikes,
But just kidding around here. I get your point. Many oldster’s [which Susan and I are], do just need to get to the doctor, groceries, a friends huse a few times a week.
Just to throw an opinion in. The vast majority of accidents are rear end collisions. I think it is way up in the high 70 to 80%. So what I think would be a much faster help in that respect would be a quick modification to the auto braking system already out on the market and that is that your car would automatically begin braking or slowing down the closer you get to the car in front. I believe 10 feet [a full car length] for each 10 MPH. So at 60 MPH your auto braking system would keep you 60 feet behind the car in front of you.
The next suggestion is for pressure sensitive brake pedals, How many times have we seen brake lights in front of us, but we don’t know how fast they are de-accllerating? So if you are just lightly braking your rear brakes lights come on normally, but as you apply harder and harder compression, the lights in the back start to blink, then flash, the with real hard braking, the whole back of your car starts flashing both red, white and blue lights, signaling hard emergerency braking is taking place?
Just asking. Sure it would add to the price of a car, but since cars cost more than my first house, what a few hundred dollars more, especially if it could cut down on the largest cause of car crashes and lives saved. An acctual life saving additive to automobiles.
But what do i know, I am just drinking my coffee and thinking, instead of listing, which I should be doing. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Sorry I am late to the game. Where do I go Coach! 🙂 LOL I have been tied up doing over 30 hours of HTML bulk eiditing and coding to reformat the way our listings look so they will transfer and look better on the Shopify cell phone APP.
So, T-Satt got a lot covered and most of what I scanned is spot on. But I will address your questions by number also to maybe add more to the inquiries.
SO here comes the wall of text.. get ready to have your eyes glaze over.#1. Wonder Lister is not web-based, but SixBit is.
>>> Yes and No. WL and SB use an SQL database and that resides in your Microsoft operating system and cpmes with your windows operating system when you buy or install your operating system. Thus, both WL and SB create a brand new SQL Dbase when you install the programs. They both have their own names. So I had a SixBit dBase and a WL Dbase installed at the same time. Those databases both reside on your hard drive, both do auto back-ups and I have redirected those to my 4 TerraByte external hard drive. In turn I have that HD backed up by Carbonite, One Drive and Google drive in the cloud. That is how you can have quadriple back-ups of your Dbase residing both on your hard drive and in the cloud. I also keep my photos in a seprarte file on the External and have them backed up also. The reason I didn’t let SB or WL both store the photos, it makes the Dbase extremely large and the MS SQL server is limited in size. I maxed out my SixBit Dbase after I downloaded my Ebay store and started getting warning messages I needed to step up and buy the larger version of SQL for $150 a month. Nope, so I broke my photos out of the SQL Dbase and save them on my external. So I host my own photos, but they are backed up in 3 other locations. I can retrieve my whole photo groups in a heart beat should they ever get blown away.
Both Dbases from SB and WL are fairly small without the photos being contained in them and there is no fear of outgrowing those now.store that If I understand this correctly, I have to host my own database for WL but save SB to the Cloud.
>>> NO! This means I’d still have to invest in Cloud Storage. NO! I use the free OneDrive and Google Drive accounts for my photos. My OneDrive Free cloud storage is 1 TerraByte that comes free with my MS Office annual subsctiption.#2. Credit card is required for WL but not for SL. I’m assuming this refers to the trial period. Do either of them work with PayPal?
>>> My WL monthly subscription [$25 per month] is charged to the PayPal account. I can’t remember if they asked for a C/C because that was so long ago.#3. I like that WL offers auto back up. It’s one of my worries with EAT, purchased off Mike’s recommendation, that I miss a week (or something) bc I forget to back up. I have severe ADHD. Forgetting is normal for me and I have to very particularly create systems/routines to remember stuff. Even then, I can forget something important.
>>> Both SB and WL do auto backs of the SQL Dbase and saves it on your own computers hard drive. The problem with that is if you get a HD crash or the Blue screen of death then they will be lost right along with everything else on your rig. I have my auto back up redirected to my external HD. You can select where you want the auto back-ups saved to with both programs. By having them on my external hard drive, then Carbonite auto picks up those files – back ups daily and I always have a cloud back up of them.#4. Features – I don’t know enough about any of these features to know how important they are/not. For example, I like that WL offers delivery tracking and sales reporting, that SB does not, but don’t know how useful order tracking would be, which SB has and WL does not.
>>> Both WL and SB will have this forever. No worries. Both are even on this feature.#5. Integrations – I seem to remember discussion on both platforms having some integration somewhere, I think WL has Twitter for example, so this comparative is incorrect.
>>> WL does have an auto Twitter integration. Every time I submit a listing to Ebay, a short Twitter message is auto sent to twitter with athe Title and short description of the item. I usually get several responses back from those who follow us on Twitter over the next few days. In turn I also follow those people. BUT as Jay always says, “Does any of that actually translate into Sales, and can you prove any of it”. Who knows, but it happens automatically. They are also working on getting integrated with Intagram which would also attach aphotos with the sent message.
I talked with SB and they have no plans for any social media interface in the short term.#6. I have to admit, I like WL’s price options a lot better.
>>> Yes WL is less expensive but once finalized the Shopify and Etsy interface will be an additional cost per module, but still less than SB.
Now, a question: if I get either platform, can I do away with EAT, or do I still need it as a separate accounting program as well?
>>> That is a personal choice, but once I lock and loaded with SB and WL, I ran both for about 6 months, both at the same time, I abandoned EAT. I got everything I needed from these programs and everything was automatic. EAT, you have to manually “remember” to click on it to update it. In WL and SB the updates are automatic and by the way, Instant. They stay synched up with Ebay about every 5 or 10 minutes. But as you say EAT is only a few bucks for a whole year. Just keep EAT but EAT will still have to be remembered to open it and click for it to back up. I went about 4 months before I remembered to manually update EAT and it only can go back 90 days so I had a void in the data at that point, so I just ended the use of EAT.It’s not that expensive and it was a great help in putting together my taxes this year, but do either WL or SB do the same things?
>>> Well sort of yes and no. There is plenty of data available from within WL and SB BUT I run off a more of a standard accounting approach, use a COA and categorize our costs and expenses in that COA. That type of accounting WL and SB both won’t do. And those reports can be used by a CPA BUT they can’t be imported by a CPA directly into their tax preparation software.To clarify something Troy said. I NO LONGER use QuickBooks. It is, as he says, over kill for just online selling. I too use QUICKEN for BUSINESS. Much simpler, very much like Go Daddy and provides everything I need for year end tax. QuickBooks claim to fame is that it includes “Invoicing” so if you are doing outside work where you need to bill your customers and keep track of outstanding materials for those jobs in process and outstanding billings at year end, and prefer the “Accrual” method of accounting instead of going on a “Cash Basis”, a journal entry type of bookkeeping system is just fine. The General Ledger method is more complicated and is moe for other types of businesses. When I owned the remodeling company and the spray foam insulation company I had to use QuickBooks. But not now.
And BTW, Intuit who owns QuickBooks sold Quicken to another company and they have cleaned it up, fixed a bunch of things and it runs great and smoothly. It interfaces with our bank, auto pulls down all checking amounts, credit cards and also interfaces with PayPal.
Hey Sharyn, didn’t think about a mfg. stock photo. I may try looking for that. Then drop it into the mix. We have a couple of blank spots. Then if it doesn’t sell as a 3 pc. party set in decent amount of time, then separate into two listings. especially since we already have them up in our store.
mike at MDCGFA
Hey SS:
The outer box can be opned. It is a tuck tab / flap style. But the inner box is a brown corrugated box that is taped at each end with 2″ wide clear tape. I can tell it was the original factory tape. No tears around it and it is slightly yellowing. If I remove that tape there is going to be tear marks in the brown cardboard or I will have to slit it and then decide if I am going to re-tape it or leave the end loose.
These are not high end anything. They are more of a Stein-Mart, T-J Max, World Market item and price range. They are made in China and stamped Clay Art 2003. I have them already listed at $87.50 [I think]. So maybe too much fuss about nothing but then agagin, if they would show better out of the box and being able to see the 3-d [dimensional] angle and help sell them as a set faster or as tTt said above, sell the pitcher separately from the tray and dip bowl.
All very good “chatter” [points] tTt. That’s why I did a double take this morning. I got up very early to get caught up, but after listing this, I just kept looking at it and it just didn’t sit right with me.
The ladies will be coming into the pffice shortly and I think I am going to pull and re-route these back through the photography station and bust up the listing.
The original thought from Susan [wife] and Lisa [assistant] revolved around a buyer possibly wanting a chip and salsa-dip set and a Margaretta Pitcher in an all in one matching Tropical set. i think maybe they both just got started thinking about tortilla chips, salsa and Margaretta’s themselves and got thinking with their stomachs. It’s a wonder we didn’t wind up going out for Mexican dinner the other night. 🙂 LOL
Any one else care to chime in?
Mike at MDCGFA
As a follow to my post above. If you bought somehting at a big box store, had an issue when you got home and you called the store and told them about it. What do you think you are going to hear?
“Oh, we are sorry to hear about this. Please bring the item back and go to customer service and we will address your concern”.
So you have to bring it back, they will refund you, but they want the item back and no they will not also reimburse you for the gas, oil and wear and tear on your car for having to bring it back. Bringing it back is on you and your time. They are there to help you when you do bring it in.
Our SOP addresses a buyers request the same way, We are sorry to hear this [no admitting fault], bring it back [so a return is a common place procedure], the store gets a store to inspect, the store gets a chance to sell the item by the pound as scrap and in your case, repair the back pack and resell, and you get to decide how much of a refund [which Ebay will ask you after the item is sent back], Ebay sees then when the tracking number kicks in, and lastly, you have the option to refund an amount that reimburses you for the return shipping if you think they did the damage and your descriptions were spot on.
Good luck,
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
We use a group of pre-written standard operating procedures [SOP’s] which we keep in a MSWord document. In order to expedite all of the issues of customers we have pre-decided how we will handle most of them and written our replies down.
We also participate in the Ebay Hassle Free Program. This combined with a set of written SOP’s seems to now be taking care of most buyers issues.
In this case we would use our standard we want all customers to happy so, return it. Especially since that whole process is automated.
In a large percentage of the cases we never hear back from the buyer, because following protocol it means they have to do something, in this case send it back, and most buyers just don’t do it, or don’t do it in the time frame Ebay gives them in the HFRP. Either they are too busy, too lazy or really only wanted some free, easy money back. Nope, work for your return.
Here is our SOP for a buyer saying something is wrong with what they got. Also you have no idea if this buyer threw that back pack in the washing machine and then when it came out, Ooops, it started falling apart. If they send it back, you have the evidence of thier actions and many times they don’t want you to see that. This little attempts at partial refunds are the new psychological ways of making a seller think, the buyer has complained, I better throw money on the table so they get placated.
In our case, we ask for a return in all cases and also have Ebay set up so we have to issue a RMA [return authorization number] in all cases.
Here is the SOP we would use…
We have received your Communication informing us of an issue regarding the item you recently purchased.
First, we are sorry to hear of your concern and appreciate you bringing it to our attention.
Secondly, we never want any of our customers to be unhappy about a purchase and that is one reason we participate in the “Ebay Hassle Free Returns Program.”
As members of the “Ebay Hassle Free Returns Program”, the returns process is an easy one.
We request that you follow this simple process and request for a return through your “My Ebay Buyer” account. Non-compliance may result in an unfavorable decision on the refund process.
• Go to your “My Ebay” at the top and click on “Purchase History”.
• Find the item you wish to return and click on “more Actions” and select “Return This Item”
• From the drop-down menu select the reason for the return and then click the “Return” button.
• You will receive a return authorization and a Shipping Label to use on the return package.
• Repackage and protect the item as you received it. Utilize all of the same materials, boxes, size and weights for consistency and so it stays protected on the return trip.
• Attach the return label and cover it with a clear protective tape and ship back to us within Ebay’s allotted time frame.This link will take you to the Ebay “Returning an Item” page for detailed instructions.. https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/member-behavior-policies/condition-returned-items-policy?id=4763#full%20policy
Despite the rather detailed verbal explanation, it is a fairly simple process.
After we receive the item and it has been inspected for the issues stated we will proceed with the refund process according to the “Hassel Free Return Program Standard Protocols”.
We await the return …..
Kindest Regards,
the management team at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
SmartParts Small equipment Equipment divs.-
This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Hey Temudgin.. How ‘ya been? That is just too funny. Yes, Alf was from the planet Melmac. Haven’t thought of that show or character in ages. Hilarious!! 🙂 LOL
Didn’t Alf always try to eat the cat?? Funny. I think I read somewhere that they are thinking about a revival of Alf, I believe.
Mike at MDCGFA
I agree they do look like lamp shade finials but going to take a stab in another direction because of the extra screw that is in the bottom.
These may be candy / mint dish handles. There may have been a scalloped, round tray that was attached by the screw. The tray would have a hole in the center, the screw goes up from the bottom, up through the hole and screws up into the finial handles until tight. As tightened it would draw the round tray up tight agaginst the bottom of the handle. Also the flare on the bottom of the handle would hold the tray more stable and keep from rocking.
The server would pick up the tray with mints or candy or nuts in it by the handle and offer a piece to a visitor, then set the whole thing back down on the table.
But that is the $.50 and 1/3rd cup of coffee wild guess.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Ms. ChristineR ….
Here is some info. Tritan not “ton” it is TriTAN and is actually Eastman’s name for “polycarbonate” which is the actual chemical name. GE makes the same product and their trade name is Lexan. So these are just trade names for the same product like Rohmn Haas brand name of Acrylic Sheeting is called Plexiglass and others are called other trade names but all are aryclic polymers, heated and rolled out into sheets of varying thicknesses and then have a protective thin pre-masking applied to each surface for protection.
Polycarbonite is a more modern product. We printed on sheets of lexan for years. Polycarb [as we called it] is mostly clear and has, of course it’s special properties] which you can look up if you want to know the actual chemical composition and performance difference between polycarb and melamine.
Turvis Tumblers and many clear cups and glasses are made out of polycarb. Cutting boards mostly acrylic, those thin roll up cutting sheets at Kitchen and bath stores are .015 and .020 polycarb.
Melamine was first synthesized by the German chemist Justus von Liebig in 1834. In early production, first calcium cyanamide was converted into dicyandiamide, which was heated above its melting temperature to produce melamine.
Melamine, a commonly used material in dinnerware in the late 40’s, 50’s. A company named American Cyanamid [notice the company’s name has the chemical name in it.. clue!], called their version of melamine powder used in the production of dinnerware “Melmac”. Melatline dishes that were manufactured using this brand of melamine powder are called Melmac dinnerware.
So you have the same scenario as I outlined on the polycarb’s and acrylics. All of this stuff IS PLASTIC. JUST VARIATIONS of the chemical formulas and then sold under different brand names.
Your buyer is trying to split hairs on you and or bust your chops. But now you have the data. Your answer is they are all plastic and generically you can use plastics as a key word, also Thermo-plastics because heat is used in the mfg. process. Then Tritan [he misspelled it] is a polycarb formula and if your product is clear you are safe in adding clear polycarbonite in your Item specifics.
Now as to Identifying if it is GE [General Electric believe it or not] or Eastman’s brand who know because they brand mark the raw pellets in boxes, sell and ship to converters that heat, melt and then thermo form the melted, oozing, liquified resin and it is injected [squeezed] into molds to make various products.
Melamine has it’s characteristics, Melamine resin or melamine formaldehyde (also shortened to melamine) is a hard, thermosetting plastic material made from melamine and formaldehyde by polymerization. In its butylated form, it is dissolved in n-butanol and xylene.
Now if you read carefully, I bet you can see why there are no one now making Melamine products. #1 it chemical make up contains Formaldehyde and #2 it is dissolved in Xylene [used in some dry cleaning products]… Oooppss!!!! no one wants to eat off of or out of products out gassing those two products.So you have enough information now to answer him with a detailed knowledge that way over shadows his knowledge. They are all Thermo plastics. His reference is his thinking they are different but actually just different brand names. melamine does not have a clear base formula so most are colored.
Then ask him if he can tell you how to tell the dofference between Melmac and melamine if two black trays are sitting side by side AND DO NOT HAVE THE COMPANY STAMP ON THE BOTTOM. Bet you dollars to donuts you will never hear from him again.
Now that I bored you to death with as Jay calls my replies, “a wall of text”, I will drink my morning coffee and get back to working on a WonderLister project.
Ta-Ta for now
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
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This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
09/22/2018 at 8:31 pm in reply to: To umlaut or not to umlaut in titles – accents on foreign language letters #49028Yes there are two ways to search but they are a little dicey. One the side bar here on the forum if you scroll down you will come across two white boxes. One says Search the Blog [older threads] and another box that says Search the Forums [Newer threads]. Just type in your keywords.
Another way and clunky also is if you are using a pc you can hold down the control key and type the letter F [this stands for Find]. A search bar appears across the bottom of your screen and you can type in a topic or key word there, then I select “Highlight All” and the key words you typed will be found and highlighted.
The reason it is rudimentary is that you will have to scroll down the page / topic from top to bottom and watch for the highlighted keyword and just stop and read it as you find them. It presents everything that has that keyword in it.
Also this was a blog at one time and those threads are separate from the forum threads.You have to experiment a little bit to see what works best for you.
Hopes this helps a little.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
I noticed that the 2 links included in that update sent to me are not working. But basically it takes you to a conversation held at Congress about the exemption of small business and setting standard policies and procedures. And that it seems that legislators are seeking at bottom cap that if you make less than 10 million [I belive] it said then the small businesses would be exempt.
So this is the most recent update, that congressmen are contemplating that cap and what it would be.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by
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