Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
Fixed on my end too. So we sleep well tonight and will see what the next surprise is when we wake up tomorrow.
Who knows, maybe our PayPal funds will have been drained by a Russian Hacker and all our funds transferred to a Siberian account…. π
Have a little something.
here is a Worthpoint.com link to 24 of them sold. You may gleen some info. from the listing descriptions.
https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?query=annie+laurie+purseMost sold from about $15 up to about $80. Looks like at quick glance, she is a decopaugue ?? [spell] artist. Basically cuts and paste down cut out images on boxes and purses and then lacquers a gloss finish over them. Your seems not to have the finish and may be a smaller picnic basket. In any case, check out the link first and read other descriptions.
Good luck…
Mike at MDC GalleriesJust got through reading the article and especially all the comments and answers. Very interesting approach.
Also makes me think that the knowledge of and use of SEO and use of key words will be less relevant. Joe Mezz above is asking for some help on keywords. Well there are some key word app’s out there will provide key words as well as google Analytics, and will also show you the key words being used most often, but difference will that matter if the new Ebay approach will be to analyze a person previous search behavior, and follow their histories and then present them with selections they think they may like or what Ebay interprets as “the buyers intent” as opposed to a direct bounce back of the exact key words in order of Google strength? i don’t know how it is all going to shake out.
06/29/2018 at 4:52 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #44039Same for us. Hard to get a candelabra, Crock pot, coffee pot, kitchen nesting bowls, art glass vases in an envelope. We dont sell clothes except for a few items. 95% of what we ship is breakable thus boxes and our “specially customized cocoon shipping method”. Adds a little extra weight and time but only 3 or so breakages since 2002. Pretty good I think.
I use poly-mailers to slide over other boxes in most cases to hide the fact they are of different type and cost category if you catch my drift. π
We keep 31 different size boxes in stock in our shipping dept. and we also cut and splice a lot of boxes together also to make custom sized boxes. I ordered 100 poly mailers and bubble mailers Jan. of last year and still have about 25 ea. of those. Plus many USPS boxes are “thinned walled” as mentioned before here on SL.
So hope Ebay gets in stock and puts back in those 5 sizes from last quarter.
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
06/29/2018 at 4:26 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #44031Here is something from left field. It is almost the end of the 2nd quarter. We do a quarter end inventory count of our shipping supplies and then take our min.-max. list and decide on what shipping supplies we need to order and how to spend our up coming $50 coupon.
I went to the Ebay shipping supply store and they have cut way back on the products. Maybe it is due to them running out before the end of the 2nd quarter and they plan to re-stock but there is just a couple of days left to do that. If this is all they are going to offer, then they are only showing 5 selections of boxes. Last quarter it was 10 size selections. All 3 of the square boxes are not showing and the 12x10x8 and the 18x14x12 rectangle boxes are not showing.
For a suggestion, wish they would offer large rolls of 50lb. brown kraft paper, pads of cut newsprint paper and CLEAR tape. But that isn’t going to happen. As we gravitate toward other platforms we will be using plain generic shipping materials anyway. I still love the Duck HD tape Ryanne uses. The Ebay tape is extremely cheap and of real low quality [thickness and adhesive properties].
Don’t think Ebay will offer anything much that goes “inside” a package as they don’t get any branding-advertising out of something not seen.
This may be more suited in the Shipping section, but thought I would just throw a different topic into the “can’t Ebay get anything right” discussion today. π We have to be careful we don’t go down the Ebay Forum road of “Everything Ebay does sucks”. We got to stay on the high road path guys. But I do think a nice, tall, cold, Vodka Tonic would go real well right about now. LOL π
Mike at MDC Galleries
I do remember now that you spell this out that you posted something to this effect before. At that time I did go and select a odd ball country, it was like Slovenia or something like that. That hung around for a long time, thinking it would eventually resolve itself. I deleted that one country a few weeks back and resorted back to the old policy. Still nothing.
But this time I think your process seems slightly modified from the first post. I will follow your steps agagin and give it a shot and see what happens. Will need to do it later after I get a few things done here in the office. Will post the results after I see if it works.
Thanks for the tip…
Mike at MDC Galleries
Just looked at my detailed break down and the Seller dashboard shows all of my shipped items as “no tracking number uploaded or supplied” since Jan. 1st, 2018, except for about 1 or 2 in Feb. and April.
Guess we all have to wait it out then.
We have also had a year long glitch still not fixed. We participate in the GSP [global shipping] and our preferences are set so that we do not “EXCLUDE” any countries. If GSP ships there we do too. But yet when you click on any of our listings, and you see the GSP option, below that is the “EXCLUDES and Does Not Ship To” area and it shows every country excluded. Because of this we have not had an International Sale for about a year.
Have called numerous times and they say,… they are aware and trying to fix, or we can still be seen on the foreign platforms so ignore this, or [my favorite] just wait and it will work and sort itself out given time. Well a year has gone by and still every country in the GSP is still showing up as excluded.
So as Ryanne says, “WTF is wrong with Ebay’s back-end infrastructure????”
Seems to just be one thing after another, either internal screw ups or a plethora of drastic changes all hitting the wall at the same time. Change is OK with us, but why make a tidal wave out of it?
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art.
Us too! Says 89 of the last shipments were not uploaded at all.
So what is the consensus, just wait this out because you know they are getting a ton of calls or is everyone going to call them, get inline a que line and just wait for an uninformed CSR to tell us… “HuH!..Uhh! .. We are aware and working on it and we know nothing else!”
So what is the game plan here?
Mike at MDC Galleries
SilverFox not disagreeing at all but it comes down to the bottom line of who is going to pay. There is only 4 people involved, the buyer, the seller, the shipper [USPS], the e-commerce software platform provider [Ebay].
So regardless of how the response is worded, generic bolier plate or hand written greeting card, the bottom line is that the seller is trying to get someone to pay for this so she doesn’t have to eat all that cost.
The buyer has already sent the item back and is out of the picture. Ebay is basically saying you used our software platform to sell your item, we are done, don’t care who or why it “broke” or “was damaged”, that is what insurance is for. So in our opinion, the last resort is to appeal to the the Shipper. Possibly call your local PostMaster and state the situation, but bet you dollars to doughnuts, they will not want to be responsible for a shipping point not packaging an item correctly.
All of the shippers have lots of regulations {SOP’s] about how to properly package an item for transit and will fall back on those when they wish to get out from under paying for something. Many videos about how a package needs to be packed and what tests it must withstand to be safely shipped.
So, that leaves the seller with the burden of proof and she can’t because she did not pack or ship it. Again, just an opinion here, but I would still go with what Jay outlined, show me some pictures of the damaged areas I missed or didn’t describe, and if I see it is true, just pony up and try to negotiate as little of a refund as possible. But even that can’t happen now because the return was accepted and the item was returned and it has been received. Ebay has no way of knowing that the item the seller would show them in photos is even the real one that was shipped. Ebay, is saying, color us out of here, we be gone. So long, farewell, good luck.
There still is the issue possibly coming up for an INAD case which, the seller has already admitted to missing stating and showing the damged area and if a negative is gotten may have to stand.
Again just expressing an opinion, but think it really a matter of “who is the final person in the food chain that will agree to pay for this”. And I think it will be the seller, unless they can convince the buyer to accept the responsibility of poor packing and to to file a claim for the seller and then split the cost with you.
For us all of that would just not be worth our time. If all of this took 3 or 4 hours we could list many new items and already be presenting to the buying public hundreds of dollars worth of possible new sales.
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Right there with Jay. It is very difficult for a buyer to duplicate our “custom cocoon packing process”. They are hap-hazard and will mostly lead to damage on the return. On delicate items or those with heavy shipping costs, especially since these days most sellers have to cover the round trip shipping costs, it is best to try to work it out with the buyer. By them keeping it, it atleast saves the return shipping cost from coming out of your pocket.
Also as Jay is indicating, when an item is insured, it is insured by the shipping party. So the buyer is the one covered by the return shipping not you. So by having a buyer return the item they are the ones who will have to make the claim. And doing this will require them to have to ask you for photos to send to them, they will have to go through the USPS perocess, fill out the forms and attach the photos. The chances of them taking the time to do all of this is gets pretty slim. So this supports what Jay is saying. Work something out with the buyer. Try the partial refund approach.
BUT if your buyer notifies you that something “arrived” damage, they are fishing, then tell them to send you several photos of the damage and you make the claim and you are good to go and you file with USPS and it is only a little work on your part to get what adds to, still a complete sale.
BUT… when you request for the buyer to send to you, this process gets reversed and is usually not worth the efforts or taking a chance. In this case even if you offer a refund in a large amount that only leaves you your original buying cost in your pocket, so be it. Just a cost of doing business and at least you keep enough to cover the original cost. Worst case scenario, you refund the whole thing, sales price plus original shipping. For the few times this happens in your business life spam, again it is just a cost of doing business.
Right now, all you can do is the complete refund, and as Jay says, see if it is still sellable at a reduced cost or do as Steven S. does and maybe part it out. At least these two suggestions may help recoupe some of the total refund cost you had to do.
Running your store as a business, then national standardized percentages, as has been stated here on SL previously, is approx. 1-1/2% to 2% for “shrinkage” which is breakage, loss, scams, etc., etc. In Jay and Ryanne’s case based on $1,000 per week or $52k per year, then $1.040 per year in these “shrinkage” cases is perfectly normal and a part of doing business. Of course you try to minimize those by using the partial refunds, insurance claims from your end, and then just keep listing and going forward.
It is luck some times and you ahve to just take it in stride. You didn’t win the Lotto either, so don’t lose any sleep over it, even though $150+$60=$210 does hurt in the short term
Take care and have a good weekend.. Go find that $1,000 treasure
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta06/27/2018 at 5:13 pm in reply to: Shipping solutions for an item that was local pickup only? #43760I agree with Sharyn. Also spot on with the company reccomendations. I have had both of these companies do pick ups for the customer at our offices. They are sub-contractors for the online company. Just give your customer there contact information and have them handle it from thier end.
The companies call you once your customer selects who he is going to use and you work out a pick up time with them.What we do to protect ourselves is we have a copy of the invoice-packing slip ready when they pick up. We have them sign this invoice, we include the date and also have them print their names as well as sign. I also request the person who picks up to show me their drivers license and I write the number, their name and address as well on the invoice and keep it for our records [just in case]. You could also just use your phone and take a photo of the pick up persons license, print it and keep it.
Sounds more complex that it really is. If they pre-paid only one copy is needed. If they pay at time of pick up just do two copies and use one to create a “paid in Full” receipt for them. Then make sure you go into Ebay and mark as paid and shipped.
But basically the buyer handles it all and you make a paper trail for yourself.
Good luck:
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine ArtThanks for the heads up. With everything that is going on, going wrong, changing, morphing all around us, might as well change how we ship too. Just go with the flow.
Who knows, maybe after all is said and done we may wind make up with multiple booths at antique malls..HaHa. LOL..[not really funny.. Uggh.] We will get through it all.
Good point DVS… Yep it could be that also and as you state it is hazardous. Even if phenolic wouldn’t want to be cutting food on it, if it is either of those materials.
Here is a definition. It is what circuit boards are made out of. Can range from about a 1/32″ thick up to an inch or more. Canvas backed and very hard and durable. I have also seen some wear of base plates in the printing industry made from it and the sweet spot that gets the most wear looks very similiar to your flat piece. But again a “drowning man will grab a pine cone if it floats by!” .. LOL π
Phenolic plastics: https://www.nationwideplastics.net/plastics/phenolic/
mike C.
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Hey .. I am not sure but something to check. Not knowing the weight and you say “stone”, but Phenolic plastic is poured and cured hard with a mesh impregnated core or exterior. Hard as nails but not very heavy.
Next could be cast cement if it feels like stone. Cloth backed and mold poured over it just like reinforced concert with re-bar only a thin pour with cloth or mesh.Just grabbing at thin straws here but worth looking up / Googling to see if any descriptions match.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
-
AuthorPosts