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Question about Preference Settings on the Returns.
We utilize the 30 Day Free Returns program. We don’t get many returns. In the past, for the few we do get, we have gotten emails form the buyers and we state to request a refund from their Buyer dashboard. We use the Hassle Free returns program so they get an automatic return label. Ebay even says wait until you receive the item back before you issue the refund.
The other day though we get a notice that Ebay did an automatic refund of $29.61 to a buyer. She had contacted us that day and we sent a reply saying to ask for a return and she would get a label to return a pair of shoes. But seems this time Ebay did an auto refund and no request for a return.
So I checked our shipping preferences, which I think Ebay pretty much ignores now anyway, especially in these Free Returns and Hassle Free Returns programs. But our preferences does say auto REFUND of under $250 but only for the 3 or 4 reasons. This request did not fit any of those reasons.
I have checked Doesn’t work or defective, doesn’t match descrip., wrong item sent, missing parts or arrived dameged.
Just wondering which preferences most of you guys are using and what dollar amount you have selected for an auto return. Guess I should lower that way down so maybe Ebay will ask me before doing it automatically.?
In this case the buyer said she bought the shoes for her old mom and they started to pull away or tear at the top seam where the sides attached to the shoe tongue. These were new in the Box NIB and never worn but could have been a few years old. But could be from poor ability to put them on, or over stretch or whatever. So I aksed for them back and expected an auto return label to be sent, but not an auto refund. I know I will never get them back now, but wondering why auto refund kicked in if her reason was not one of the ones checked unless she calimed defective.
So I am wondering if I should uncheck that as a preference reason for auto refund or maybe just cancel – delte the auto refund all togther but think that kicks us out of the Hassle Free Returns which I think then kills the TRSP status doesn’t it?
Just curious. The amount doesn’t make or break us, just cost of doing business and we get so few anyway.
Mike at MDC Galleries
Just a shot in the dark but maybe some sort of compression tester. So much weight – pressure applied down on some sort of object for a “Given Set” time period.
At first the top half looked like one of our old darkroom timers but the plunger and the open area at the bottom maybe suggest something is inserted in there and possibly under the plunger. Maybe at one time had various weights or ends that could be put in the stem, then pulled up on the top and set the timer and then a test is conducted before something breaks or gets dented down below in that time frame.
But who knows, it could be an antique, electric gee-gaws.
Mike at MDCG in ATL.
I looked at the WL forum the other day and saw 8,000 members. I actually wonder how many people have subscribed to all of the 3rd party apps out there and use them exclusively to manage online selling on any of the platforms and what that number is compared to those who use the Ebay form only? HHhhhmmmmm….
Notice I said a “third of a cup”. But these days it is more like another $4.00 plus that $.50. đ
Cool. GDB used to not do that. Think you even said so way back when, but not positive. In any case, pulling that report once a month is SOP. No complexity there, just palin old business sense to have that P&L. Much better than looking at weekly numbers limited to only the way they show here at SL. But still a fun thing to do.
Cheers to watching your numbers!!!
mike at MDCG
Quicken does the exact same thing BUT it also produces a business Profit and Loss statement, which at the time I research GDB did not. But that may have changed.
You also compare this year P&L to last years, compare by quarter, week, month, etc., etc and compare by categories, how much spent on used or ne winventory this quarter as compared to the same quarter last year and even the year before that AND print all those comparisons out in chart form. It takes no more time than GDB just as Jay calles it a more robust program. And this is Quicken for Business NOT QuickBooks. Very few people need QuickBooks unless you are a gluten for punishment and do billings or invoices for your goods and services to customers or clients.
mike at MDCG
Bingo .. Amen brother.
Took me a long time [maybe a month or two] to aclimate to WL.
To answer Jay and Ryanne, we do everything within WonderLister. It does everything Ebay does only better and faster but you have to learn what it does, where everything is and how to navigate it, just like you have to do with the first time you ever list on Ebay.
WL has a full WYSIWYG listing & photo editor attached to the description section as does SB. All HTML tools if you want to use them or not. It can save thousands of drafts and we create folders for the different types of template drafts to be stored in.
Our new helper started today. She spent 3 hours training on WL with the help of our first assistant on Friday and then started today. She has created 15 drafts ready for my final review this morning using our generic vintage item template and she has never done anything like this before.
as far as simple goes. To those who already pocess the knowledge of how to keep thousands of inventory items organized, understand business policies in depth and operations procedures, then running an online business like a business IS SIMPLE. Pulling a real P&L stament and reading and comprehending it is just as fast for me as looking over your Ebay statement. Just SOP for us. Also automating as much as possible so it just happens is of benefit also. Ryane you down load data into Go Daddy don’t you? Well you could do that manually by using a pencil and paper to reconcile, but you don’t, but that is complicated not simple. It is only simple because you have pre-assigned categories to each line item and it is automatic and as you have said in the past, all you have to do is go over a few things at the first of each month. So there you go, no difference.
What is complicated is how Ebay creates so many rules then creates exceptions to the rules, then implements seasonal changes, and issuing so many updates and we as sellers don’t know exactly what all those changes may impact. Doesn’t it make you wonder, that most of the discussion here on the SL forums is about the Ebay procedures instead of basic business procedures. We could go a whole year and never discuss basic business SOP’s but bet we can’t go one week without discussing an issue about Ebay, from Ebay or what to do about Ebay things = Complexity to me.
Ebay is the one that adds complexity to our making money online, not our business practices and procedures.
But that is just the opinion of an old, senior artist turned business man and that and $.50 will get you a third of a cup of coffee.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
It is not for Ebay so much as WonderLister auto sends our listings to our Shopify Store and Shopify Stores are highly driven by organic traffic and google searches and so is some of the Etsy cross listings. we thought we would just be better off doing it the right way from the beginning. That is why we started using long enclusive custom SKU numbers from the get go, along with a BIN Storage retrieval process and naming all our photos and incl, our part of our custom SKU in those photo renames. Even though Ebay changes the photo names on their own site, the fact our photos are named and are stored in the cloud server, the photos when attached and sent to Shopify show in Google. Many times we are looking for an object on google and use the by Images filter most of our inventory shows up there.
Once WL gets the InstaGram and Pinterest interface finished, all of our inventory will be auto posted there as well and they will all have the first 5 digits of our SKU and the short name we renamed them and all 1,012 listings are searchable by Google and all of this will be outside of Ebay and Etsy.
Tips we got from those who were successful in developing their own stores and eventually pulling their stores out of the Ebay arena.
mike
Understood. But think somebody mentioned above that Google will crawl the line of copy but then when it hits a punct. mark it stops the scan and wont finish the crawl of the line. So wondered about Cassini also.
On decimal measurements do buyers even understand them? 9.625 x 3.750 without use of ” for inches I wonder how many emails we will get asking, “what size is this?”
then when it comes to a number like #250 and number #283 would now be 250 283 so how will a buyer digest it. or typing scott Stamp Catelog numbers like 2634, 3214, 6396, will now read 2634 3214 6396
Some of this just seems so, I don’t even know how to describe it. Does just bothersome come to mind! đ
mike at MDCG
Howdy SL Super Stars. Doing some new Helper training here and a coupple of good questions has popped up. Svereal of ya’ll have commented on eleminating the use of Punctuation in Title areas.
So here are the questions that have cropped up….
In the Title area no use of . , / – #
so Vtg [no period]
two adjectives side by side [no comma use to separate]
typing a measurement do we use 6-3/8″ or 6 3 8ths in or 6.375 in [do we need to go to decimal measurements and what about the period? or should we just not put measurements in the title?
Use of Quote marks
Do we als eliminate the use of all of these in the description area
Do we also eliminate use of punctuation especially the / [slash] in fractions of a measurement 3/8 or quote marks for the inches 3/8″
If we can use the slash [/] and ” for inches in the Title should it be the very last entry into the title field so when Google hits it and starts to skip over it, they will be the last entries.Thought it would be best to run it past all you guys for feedback while both of the helpers are still here training.
Thanks for any input…
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Wink, Smile, Thumbs up, Amen!
There is an old saying, “Penny Wise Pound Foolish”.
Yes, writing all this took me back decades ago.
Si glad to hear that you know and understood the drill. Like preaching to the choir.
The thing we can all agree on I believe though when we are all asked by the newer members, “Can I make a lving or a full time income on Ebay”, the short answers is sure, absolutely. But many of us also follow that up with “If you run it and treat it like a Business”. But alsa so many don’t have the business acumen or thorough enough knowledge to run it a fine tuned business level. is it absolutely ncecessary.. no, but boy it sure helps and short cuts what is a large learning curve. How many times i hear people talking and they don’t understand the difference between GROSS and NET. To the average quick new seller, they live in the World of GROSS the MBA / Business people live in the world of NET.
As troy and I talked a time back..Many company’s would give their left arm to NET in the double digits [10% or More].
That span bewteen the two “worlds” is what seprartes the men from the boys. A through understanding of your expenses, Jay talks about this hundreds of times is vital. But not only your personal expenses, but your OE / Operational Expenses. And those need to be fined tuned down to how many running inches of tape you put on a box. $.06 worth or $1.11 worth? I am serious. That is what us OPerational guys do. We “measure everything” Time. Space, Materials, Payroll.One plant I monitored had a payroll of $140,000 a week for productionlabor [no officer-executive salaries incl.] that’s $560,000 per month. After I completed a 90 out on the floor study, even hiding in the balconies and spying, i discovered a big leak, comprised of small drips. [My job to find].
The bottom line was a lost production rate of $1,680,000 [yep a million and half dollars] The total time added up to three months. When i presented the owners with the amount I put it this way, You are paying wages for 12 months of work and only getting 9 months of work from the staff. You are paying them for 3 months to do nothing. In other words you might as well ahev all the employees show up for work but stay in the parking lot, then have them start walking around the building for 8 days then get in there cars and go home. Then have them come back the next day and do again and have them do this over and over for the whole month of June, July and august. Then on sept. the first you can let them go back in and start producing for you. those owners were flabergasted.The first question was what is that kind of non-productivity coming from. i then proceed with some of my final reports and it was comprised of hundreds of pages of small things, extended breaks, extended lunches, walking too far for tools, walking to ask a question of a supervisior, the supervisors office to far away, packing tables not on wheels, nothing modular, nothing mobile, taking 3 or more people to lift a heavy tabel instead of one to unlock the wheels and rool it. Buying small rolls or conatiners of needed things so having to go get more too often. etc., etc. ad nauseum. Yep One and half million dollars or wating time, walking and o course doing their jobs ineffeciently which I had to retrain everyone. They would cluster together so they could talk during the day.
So I bought a lot more tools and secured then at every place they were needed. Moved supervisors out on the floor into cubicles, bought larger containers or longer rolls of eveything, Took the cigareete machine out, created a no smoking policy on company grounds, etc., etc.My bonus that year was some odd number over $300,000. The company got cut down from about 250 employees to about 185 if I remember, we produced more product, faster, and made MORE NET PROFIT which I created a Bonus Sharing Plan for every employee and every person got a bonus after we finished the end of year audit.
Now just do this on a very tiny scale and apply to your store. Also be applying KAIZEN, always be improving, if you can’t list something, then tweak your listings, if you don’t do that then move your shipping supplies closer, reach less for knives, tape, magic markers, paper towels. Get a Costco card, buy bulk, create over head storag in your garage, considering buying a storage shed, buy the house next door and move your offices over there, shop on line… IN OTHER WORDS LIVE UP TO THE TRUE MANIFESTO OF J AND R SCAVENGERLIFE.. AND always be Continually improving.
Ok I have to go and make another contribution the J and R Tip Jar. I have ceratinly used way over my fair share of their bandwidth and have created as Jay calls it “wall of Text”, but hopefully some of this is of use in some of the members thought processes of Can I Make a Living on Ebay or online anywhere … YES but you “have to know your expenses” and Discover your TRU COSTS [not just what u paid for an item] get your NET NUMBERS THEN AND ONLY THEN SEE IF YOU CAN LIVE ON WHAT YOU SEE.
An example.. you may GROSS $20,000 but if you could root all all TRUE COSTS you may find you only NET OUT $10,000 or even LESS. Now listen to Jay.. Can you live on that???
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Bingo and you get my Drift. Kaizen or the methodology of Apllying “Continual Improvement”.. is the process by which anything and everything that can be a vaidated improvement can be applied then discussed in Quality Circles and a process of implementation worked out.
The approach of not needing 3rd party APP is not discussable until all of the ‘range of motion”, employee involvement, is discovered and documented. Then once identified, qualified by motion studies and time studies of everything from coughing-sneezing to running across the room for a roll of tape in a cabinet or trying to find a screw driver in a maintenance shop. Once quantified and documented in those time and motion studies, comes the application of the unit cost factor. everything from wiritng or generating a Purchase Order, phone conversations, ordering,, accepting, unpacking, walking to throw out the empty box and trash, recording the incoming data, assigning sku tags, carrying the object to it’s work cell / group if a JIT part, staging in the assembly line, or longer term storage if required. The pulling, packing, pushing, mobilization, etc., etc., etc. Then once a units “TRUE COST” [all total and complete, does the next step take place and that is the Cprative / alternate results. this area is a little bit more elusive because of usually not having a model or test equipment set up for comparison. It is usually taking the Mfg. specs and working out a comparative analysis to reach a go no go decision to buy, hire, fire, replace, upgrade. The whole executive decision making process is a process methodoligy. Once it is shown to be proven that to any one of those things will lead to an impovemnt in process, lower the cost and improve the quality or least not degrade it.. then the decision is made and action taken to implement.
The use of 3rd party APPs for use it Total Inventory Management process, even within a small two man shop or Ebay business can sqeeze out prfits many times over. A break even chart is created [the two converging lines representing the intial cost up fron [i.e. buying the software, buying a PC, training time is all charted out and then as soon as those two lines intersect then it is just like Troy says, nothing but ROI [Return of that Investment} for the life time of the process as long as it is in place and doesn’t wear out or obsolute out, which does happen. But that’s also another story of of MBA approach and also of Operations Management.
Once these process are understood, a proficiency in Excel spread sheeting acquired, then these types of tests and comparisons can be done in very short order. Then the benefits of being a “small business” is you can implement on a quick time frame as well if things don’t work out, back out quickly.
But like Jay has said before, turning a large ship takes a lot of room and is a slow process. That is what we are seeing within Ebay and other companies. Some with tons of manpower though like Ebay and Amazon, can and do apply these processes fairly quickly considering there over all size.So do any of the members here really need a 3rd party, Enterprise System, I would guess it would be hard for most to figure out a true answer to that question. Which now brings us all back to your statement of you don’t know what you don’t know, and if you know that you don’t know, etc., etc, your total quote.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art.
Sorry if this duplicates..did an edit and it disappeared. My first time ever.
One word I used to say all the time to the Middle supervisor staff. And if they took it to heart and either they or I could validate then raises and bonuses would be based on it.
I am going back now.. Original stemming from QC [Quality Circles] and that was KAIZEN! I even had signs and banners placed around facilities. Going to see if you know it.. [if not Wiki it-wink]. This became the foundation of Six-Sigma! Am I taking you back buddy?
When employees at review time were fishing for a raise and they always 9.75 times out of ten, stated their case with, I work hard, I am here on time, I donât miss any days, I voluntere for over-time.. My reply was thatâs no grounds for a raise, that was expected the day I hired you at $24 per hour. Failure to do thos things are grounds for firing not giving raises. Then I would teach, show, explain Kaizen agagin, because they were not paying attention at the plant meeting when I went over it with the whole plant.
The Best at Kaizen and could show it and provide me a report on those efforts were the ones who got the promotions, raises and middle management status and perks. The rest, sorry to say, were and probably still are the worker bees.Hereâs another name for you.. Back in 1950s a dr. William edward DEMING !! Yep went to Detroit and pictched his theory of what KAIZEN is based on. They laughed at him and ran him out of every major car factory office. so he said to heck with you, packed his briefcase and fly to Japan. You ceratinly know the story of what happened next and we have never recovered, even today. We lost everybit of mfg. to Japan and the auto industry was detsroyed, which i belive, from my classes, was because of those first rejections.
Sure decades later we all came to embrace the principles of Kaizen, Six-Sigma was born and then the qualification for ISO Standards and ISO2000 and up. Took me over two years to get our Memphis plant up to the ISO 2000 first tier.Man would love to get into an old factory today, that is floundering and losing money and apply those principles. You could join me, what a team, what a Country. Turn that plant around and then Sell It.
Unfortunately thatâs what many of the owners did, after I applied âLEAN Mfgâ to everything down to the sheets of toilet paper [Ha-ha but true], got the staff on a KAIZEN mind set, and proved the bottom line documentation, and got them back in the black with less staff, lower payroll, less overtime, less outlay, the ownerâs then usually sold the company and there went my job! :-). My job was to work myself out of a job. But as Jay says.. âthe Good âOle Daysâ.Did you enjoy your trip down memory lane? My Battle cry.. Toyoto has a 2.250% Reject Rate we have got to beat that and do it faster and cheaper.
Alas the Chinese beat us to the punch and said we will just do it crappy and so cheap that you could never make it at this low and maintain quality. Well all the young American bought into it.thus we now are flooded with all the âJunkâ Jay mentions we find flooding the thrift stores and most homes in America, we donât have much mfg. left, but we have developed one skill though..
You will love another of my sayings, Want it built rugged, give it to the Germans, then if you want it shrunk down to the size that it will fit into your pocket give it to the japanese, then want it built as cheaply and shoddy as possible give it to the Chinese, then if you want 3 of them sold to a person who doesnât even need one of them give it to the Americans! đ LOL Love that one too.
We have turned into a seller, pusher, sit down, make nothing, buy cheap and dispose of when finished society.
>> Call this 800 number and get this [unsaid cheap, crappy, hunk of junk plastic âyou fill in the blank product] for only $19.95. And if you call in the Next 15 minutes you will receive a 2nd one for FREE [Jay says ainât no such thing} only pay Shipping and handling [which is about the cost of another product}.. But remember You Are In Good Hands, Beacuse we Know a Thing or two Because we have Seen a Thing or two.. AFLAC !!Guess you can see I had some down time today due to some computer maintenance running.
Almost Miller time.. How about that Makers Mark, have one waiting here for you. đ
