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So, if I am reading the scenario correctly, you have “Shipped” 20 items – not sold 20 items. If u have only been doing it for a week, I am assuming most of the items haven’t even arrived yet and if the buyers take there sweet time in “Approving-OKing” your shipments I am guessing you haven’t been paid anything yet? Is that correct? You pulled, packed, paid for shipping [I guess if you don’t get paid up front] and are waiting on your buyers “blessings” and hoping you will see some money??
These are just questions, but you can see how I am reading what was mentioned. As Ryanne said, sounds like a big “Nightmare”.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
I thought the same thing as soon as my eyes hit that phrase. I clicked delete this post and moved on. No way am I going to pull, pack, ship, wait for transit and a buyers approval before I get paid.
I think I would like to buy on there. Bet I can find fault with everything I buy. Sounds like a way for buyers to get free merchandise to me. Unless there is more to the story that maybe isn’t being told.
Mike at MDCG
Here is a cut and paste from a Reply I did further up on this link on 4/27/18. I included the Worthpoint link.
Go to this link also and one can see several jackets. The highes being about $1,100 the next $900 on down to about $450. The $1,100 one says it was custom made for Burt Reynolds. Bohlin made saddles for the stars in Hollywood, so I guess some clothing also.
So the high one was $1,100 and the lowest was $450. His saddles go for a lot and one he did for Burt Reynolds also went for $46,000. WOW..
Hey AdE.. The link provided in the first reply takes you to Worthpoint that has 3 of these lsited and sold. Check it out and maybe some of the data gleened from several of the sold listings will provide some of the data on your list, but probably not all of it.
here it is again…. https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?query=bohlin+jacket&category=
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
05/07/2018 at 5:52 pm in reply to: Auctions vs. Fixed: Yes Virginia, you can 100% Blow Yourself Up with Auctions. #39322And when others who don’t know the real value go looking for “SOLDS” so they can compare and use those numbers, they price low. That is why the Ebay 90 Solds list can be misleading also. Imagine if an unknowing saw several of these listed in the 90 day Solds, they might list at a BIN Fixed price of $25 dollars and think they are pricing real high.
This type of thing actually drags the market down I think just the way the competitive race to the bottom does. If more than one source is used other than Ebay 90 day Solds and a few current ones you may find that many had sold for hundreds and even thousands. That is where a subscription to WorthPoint or Kovels.com may come in handy. I look at these research databases as “tools”. And I used to say, “Professional tools, for professional people, being used in a professional manner”, to my employees numerous times. But to some, guessing is OK by them, fast, no time spent on research and no monthly fees for database subscriptions.
Next time you see them, snipe them up and then resell, if you can.
But T-Satt.. since you are using SixBit and guess you have automated the end at 30 days then automatically relist at 30 using SixbIt that to you it is the same as GTC. Auto. end and auto relist, over and over again for 60 months is the same as GTC only you get a new ID number every 30 days and Ebay thinks it is a new listing.
Unless I am missing the boat completely.
We don’t always run Sales. We have gone the past two weeks without one and things have been selling at full price with all of that built in. Don’t forget WonderLister handles all the Sales automatically for us. When we want a Sale pt on we click Run Sale and enter the percentage and tell it when to end and it does it for us.
As for Offers. We either get them or not and that has always been the case. Either you take them or you don’t so nothing new there.
This is not anything complicated or extra. It is using just one very high price at 10 to 12 times what we buy for. Then we may run a sale or not and we may take an offer or not either on or off sale. Same as usual.
We did about $500 last week on fewer items than when we do the Sales. During Sales periods or if we get offers on a lot of items we have to sell more to make the same.
When you price an item at what you want, then no Sales for you as you said, but then no free shipping either because you haven’t covered that expense and you can’t take an offer. You buy for $8 sell for 4 times the money $32, then take it or leave it.
My thinking is give the perception of value added, buyer getting discounts and if they don’t care or want it cheaper then they buy at set price. On these types of items unless the Buyer is going to TerraPeak, WorthPoint, shopping antique booths, then the “worth” of an item, is what they are willing to pay. If there are a bunch online already and we didn’t see that then our mistake. If there are a bunch and we see them, we usually don’t buy. We look for harder to find type of items, most of them time. But we do have some that are competitive and then we don’t do all of the extra built ins and just do 4 times the money and let it go at that.
Just our way of thinking. We saw way too many antique booth guys buy for $10, sell for $20, pay expenses and they were in the red.
Really Doesn’t matter. The customer has a perception of value and that’s what counts. And since it is something Ebay wants and says we get juice from it and we changed everything in minutes, why not. To us it is just the same as list it and forget it. Everything is set to do it this way now and we can not worry about it any more. WonderLister will be ending 950 items automatically at the end of it’s 30 days and then automatically relisting it for us with a brand new ID. It works just the same for us as GTC, only Ebay doesn’t see it as “Stale” or getting old. It sees it as a brand new listing. Yaah!
You said one time, why not – can’t hurt so we did it and are done with it. Now WonderLister handles it all automatically and so does T-Satts SixBit.
Bet you dollars to donuts, they will change something next year and we will just change it again. More important things to focus on, which is trying to get our Shopify Store live and Etsy built up. If and when that works out and we are matching Ebay Sales, the plan is to then leave Ebay and manage our own store. Then we will be setting all of the rules anyway we want without any fees. Also I think Social Media Marketing may have a much greater impact than throwing fish at the internal Ebay algorythym. And one of the nice things is that WonderLister automatically sends a TWEET, A PHOTO and the TITLE of each of our listings without us having to do it. BUT now WonderLister will be sending all 950 items out every single month.
Currently the WonderLister team is writing code now to include “Pinterest” and “InstaGram” in that automatic send out.
The Free Shipping is on things that are under a lb. so, for us at most, about $4, BUT dont you think I have twice that built into the price? You bet I do. I even have a 20% SALE Price built in and also another 20% for Make an Offer.
I can take something I paid $8 for and Worthpoint says they mostly sell for $45. I list at $95 with Free Shipping, can put it on Sale at 20% off, take an Offer 20% below that and then come out at just about where I wanted to be in the first place. $95 less 20% Sale=$76, then accept an Offer 20% below that = $60.80 now shipp it for Free for [a guess at $11] = $49.80, now I am right where I wanted to be any way. But the customer “THINKS” he got 40% Off and FREE Shipping!!! NOT!!! :-). Been working for us.
We only ship to PayPal Confirmed address. This is an old school / old Ebay suggestion. If any requests come in via E-mail messages, we use our cut and paste auto reply to answer, which basically says to go and change your account at PayPal or Ebay. Otherwise contact your Post Office and request for a forwarding to take place or a hold until they can pick-up.
We just don’t play those games. Customer service or not, there is certain responsibilities that we feel the buyer should take care of. We are a Seller-Reseller not a babysitter / enabler. Too many “young” “I deserve it people” we come across. While we try to bend over backwards to help our customers, we don’t bend our internal policies [SOP’s – Standard Operating Procedures].
So we request that they kindly get their buyer credentials in order and we will be glad to ship to any please that is listed. May seem harsh to some, but seems to keep us out of hot water so far. Nobody refused to do it yet.
mike at MDCG in Atl.
Us too. We just build it into the price.
Instead of $26.75 for an item, it is $27.75. Who knows the difference.
That is also how we handle the “No Separate Itemized Shipping Cost to the Buyer” Program .. Since Jay doesn’t like the semantic use of “Free Shipping” LOL 🙂 Or for Jay’s sake the NSISCTHB program. But for us, Call it what you want, it is built in. We add Zone 8 shipping cost for each weight class to every item we list as “NSISCTHB / FREE SHIPPING” aspect of our business.
Ryanne already says she rounds up. We do to. We round up in Lbs. not ounces. USPS Priority only goes by Lbs. also. So, if an item is 2.5 lbs on the scale, goes into an 10x10x10 box which is 1.38 with stuffing that equals 3 lbs on the item plus 2 lbs on the box = 5 lbs. total then that to zone 8 is about $18 we add to the price on the “NSISCTHB” [Jay’s semantic Free Shipping nemisis] :-).
We used to ship tens of thousands of dollars of merchandise in my old job. Shipping is just as much a “Profit Center” as our art dept., ink dept., film dept., press dept., bindery dept. and shipping dept. We made mark ups and money on everything we touched. If I could put a stop watch on it, time it and a person had to do it, I calculated our unit cost on it and then we marked all of that up. If you spit in the parking lot, I clocked it, accounted for it and built the cost in. We got huge discounts from all our shipping companies. Those were mine to keep. I negoatiated the discounts, they were ours.
So in what is called “True Unit Costing” in the manufacturing world, everything is a cost and everything is marked up and built in. Ebayer’s sometimes worry too much about the small details in the weeds, that are under water. We sold a sign to Walmart or Home Depot and it was $6.70 each x 15,000 = $100,500 invoice to them. They didn’t care about how many paper clips we used, but believe me, it was built into their price grid.
So very long way of saying, build it in. Nobody will balk. They will buy it if they want it.
But that is just our opinion. That and $.50 will get you a half of a cup of coffee and Oh, by the way, Sugar and the FREE USE of our Spoon INCLUDED. LOL 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
I think I see what is going on. Create a test again and then change the store level to basic and the fee appears. But then change the store level to Premium and the disappears and it seems it is not working. But in reality it is working. What it is doing is tying in to your account somehow, sees that you are not over your limit yet, so there is no fee because the fee is included in your monthly payment.
It didn’t work for me either when I first tried it, we are a Premium level store and not over the 1,000 item limit. But as soon as I chnaged the store level field down to a basic level a “fee” amount appeared.
Give that a try and see if it works this way for you.
Mike at MDCG in Atl.
Oh.. Sorry. I just blew right past that. Oh well, you now have some good shipping calculators for the future. Don’t have the Fee Calculator saved.
mike at MDCG in Atl.
Just ran a test and still works for me.
But Give this link a try ..
http://payments.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?EmitSellerShippingCalculatorAlso my favorite is
http://www.flippertools.com/ the owner designer has participated here on SL at various times. several great tools here and of course the Shipping calculator tool
Look in the “SHIPPING SECTION” and he has two tools I have used many times. Tells what size box to use, provides various methods to ship and comparative costs, etc.,etc.Good luck …
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
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This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Yes we have had Free Return Shipping turned on now for a couple of months. I think I did it almost as soon as the Spring Update came out and remember you replying.. “so you are all in now.” So, we now have 30 day returns, Free Returns, and free shipping on many smaller-lighter items [and build in that shipping].
As AdE says..now we will wait and see how Ebay backs sellers up.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by
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