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03/19/2018 at 1:23 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 352: Scavenging is The Alternative Early Retirement #35569
Yes.. agree. You can call just so your feedback is 100% clean BUT do as Beverly says, go to the Feedback reply page and write a reply. Only a few characters are allowed but something like Unsure about this feedback. Interior shown in 4 photos. Never contacted me about any issues or some along thos elines. but, don’t say anything negative, but your reply will be posted right under her comment and shows you did not do what she claims and you are a concerned seller.
Just my opinion…
Mike at MDC GalleriesSonia.. yeah you’re right and that is what most of us do. And you are right again with regards to the “oldsters” incl. Jay and Ryanne, even though young by our age, have given this advice for many years.
BUT.. this may be the time to explore an “Older” Ebay policy, that I think I saw somewhere, that replying to inquires, incoming questions, or anything pertaining to a potential buyer by way of asking is a metric that Ebay tracks on sellers and to keep from getting internal dings, that as a Top Rated Seller, we need to reply / answer all inquires.
Now we do occasionally do the “silent” routine, most of the time with annoying, stupid a** questions or ugly remarks and in turn report the buyer and block, but mostly we just give a shortest possible couple of words answer, to make sure we satisfy this Ebay “THING”, if it is still really such a “THING”. Like in your example we would have said something like .. “We’re willing to wait” or “Thanks for your inquiry, will pass along to the owners”, or “We hear you”, One of our favorite’s is “In receipt of your Inquiry..Thanks for Supporting American Business!”.
In any case any of the “Oldies” remember anything about Ebay stating we need to reply to potential buyers inquires or correspondence as a TRS requirement?
Mike at MDC Galleries
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This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Guess it also goes without saying that as much browsing and research as we all do that I suggest that a heavy researcher should highlight their browser history every day and click on clear todays history and delete it. You will be surprised how much better your rig will run
Check this link out. I use it occassionaly when having issues and the standard, clear my cashe, and reboot of my rig doesn’t take care of it.
http://downdetector.com/status/ebay/map/
You can enlarge the map and see the areas that are having issues. I have seen it at times where almost the whole USA is highlighted in red. As the fix the issues, the red areas begin to go back to orange, then yellow, then back to all white when everything is fixed.
Maybe you could book mark this site like I did and use it for reference.
Mike at MDC Galleries
I have the exact same issue going on for about 6 months. I have done exactly what you have done, talked to the same people and gone through the same corrective process with the same results. The rep said everything can be seen on the channels in all of those countries. we still have a whole lot showing excluded countries.
I asked the rep, that even though potential buyers in foreign countries can see our store, items and price, what do they see when they click on the shipping tab. All I see state side when I click on the ship from what country tab is USA, Canada and Mexico.. all others are in the excluded list. I mention so what if they can see the products, if when they click on their country or try to see what the total costs are going to be, are they getting any numbers quoted to them.
I just gave up, been too busy because it was year end, year end tax close out, and a lot of back log to enter. Only had one Foreign sale since Oct. or Nov.
My rep said she would put in a work order to check this out and fix it and just be patient and it will all work itself out. Yeah, sure. Six months later and no foreign sales so guess she was wrong.
I just dread going back through all of this again. Uggh.. just putting it off and continue to work on store and shipping USA sales.
If you get an answer let me know.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Only used some auctions back when we first started in 2002. Did about 50 Baseball Cards at $.99 and allowed them to be sniped. That way we built up about 30 or so feedbacks very quickly. After that, only a couple for 15 year span.
I didn’t Jay to call me a “Sucker”..:-) [his famous line..Auctions are for Suckers]. seriously we could do about the same thing by taking Offers. Now that Ebay allows up to 5 counter offers, that is a mini-private auction within itself. We have had buyers use all 5 tries, back and forth.
Millnials or most people just don’t want to wait for auctions to play out. Either pay now and ship it to me today or tomorrow or make an offer and end it in a day or so. I think even sniping software is more for dealer buyers. nobody I ever speak to even knows about sniping, heck they don’t even read a short description.They see a vintage red vase for $35, and BAM! it is bought.
right behind you on this one guys. I have been paying for WorthPoint for years. It has just so much historical data, but it also does have HallMark and Stamped Chop mark identifications and a library as added value tools. But 3 years or so of historical data from Ebay would be nice.
I know Jay has told me before he just doesn’t see a need for info. going that far back, especially if he has to pay for it, but many times due to the unique-odd ball nature of some items that span of time does at least give a few sold items to use as a bench mark.
Guess though that they make money off of selling this information to others who offer historical archive services or maybe it is just too much information to store for Ebay and eats up way too much storage capacity.
One way to cut down is to only keep 2 or 3 photos and dump the rest. That is what WorthPoint does.
I belive, and others will chime in if I am wrong, but the use of the Vacation mode, will over ride your other setings [even extended handling times] and still apply your regular business policies as a default. And using Vacation mode with out hiding your store items will result in Sales that show the default shipping times instead of the extended times.
Use of the Vacation mode also means your items will be re-indxed and you will loose any watchers, your ranking and your visit-hits count will re-set. But I am unsure of this because it has been so long since we have used the Vacation Mode. After joining the SL group years ago and reading all about the benefits of extended handling times vs. Vacation Mode I believe most SL members use ONLY the extended times for the most part.I would suggest you hit the Ebay forums and refresh what the down side is of using the Vacation mode. I think that with it turned on and you dont honor the original ship times you may still be subject to some penalties / defect ratings.
But as I said, am now not certain, but worth checking it out and you may not be able to undo it anyway. Just talking out loud.
03/15/2018 at 3:27 pm in reply to: Fragile Stickers cost an additional $10.45 shipping costs through USPS #35277Yep.. what Jay says and to add. We use Larger red Fragile stickers on about 90% of our packages. we put one on each side, so 6 per Box..BUT they are our own roll labels we buy from a label mfg. If you use the official Fragile sticker available from your post office or ordered online, those official USPS Fragile Labels are part of the chargeable service Jay mentions and it will charge the fee.
Also our local carrier lady says no one pays much attention to those stickers even there own. She says every thing is so automated, conveyerized and moves at such speed no one hardly sees them except for the final delivery person. Most packages are piled in the canvas laundry style carts, dozens high and many times those bins are tipped up and dumped like wheel barrows into large sorting hoppers. But we still use our nice, big red ones, even if only to make our buyer feel like we are doing something special to try to protect thier purchase.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Just as Jay says. If you use business policies, just go there and edit each of your shipping profiles. We only use 4 or so. Open each of those and scroll down and you will see “Handling Time”. Just click on the number of days you will be gone and save the edit.
That’s all there is to it. If you sell a lot give yourself a day or two buffer to get everything done when you get back. When we go away for our 10 day trips to Florida, we use 15 day handling time. When we reach the 6-7 day time left on our trip, we re-edit the business policies and change it to 10 days and leave it at that. As you state, just have a cut and paste blurb ready and when something sells just shoot an email or text to the buyer reminding them, in case they didnt see it, about your extended handling time.
Only had 2 or 3 buyers request a cancellation due to not being able to wait for our return.
Same technique most SL members use and it has been documented numerous times here on the old Blog and new Forum.
Good luck…
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Just went to check out our business policies as you suggested and we can’t access any of the business policies at all. get an Ooops can’t acess right now message.
So tried your method Adv.E of going to them by way of Preferences under Account Settings and see the old view that I don’t use much any longer because Bznz. Policies is where we make most changes. Well discovered under “returns” that the first 5 or 6 reasons were now checked and the ones we had before are unchecked.May I ask which settings are you checking as reasons to accept the return and which ones not? I do remember long time ago this was discussed but things seem to be new ground rules now and think it is time to decide on a refreshed look at under what conditions a return is acceptable to us. BTW.. these may have changed due to the new returns policy we were playing around with but maybe we should have a change of heart.
Very good T-Satt.
Entrepreneur
Business Owner
President, CEO, CFO, Stock Holder [if any type of official structure titles]
Capitalist
Supporter of the American Way
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This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
You are correct. Staples is cheaper than Uline and Home Depot. Only thing about HD is that if you need a special size box ASAP, then a quick trip up and back, buy only the one you need and you can keep going.
We have had a Gold Staples Rewards card for many years and we get points for every purchase which makes the purchases even lower still.
Currently, the Ebay store has 4 box sizes. Interesting though is if you lo0ok at the Categories Side Bar they show that they have 10 items listed in the “Box” category. Wonder if they just have a glitch about showing everything they have actually listed.
Also on another note, I have complained before that by the time I use Ebay tape and boxes our packages look like a Jack in the Box going out. Just so unprofessional looking. Colors going every which way. Use Ebay tape on a USPS Priority box and it looks like someone threw up a box of water colors on it. Lastly, we are selling more items now on other platforms and we prefer the clean, look of the plain boxes and the use of clear tape. The box looks more professional. If I want an Ebay logo on it, then I guess we could use an Ebay stick on round decal, sparingly.
Just our opinion.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Think about this for a minute. FedEx may not be using DIM Weight but they are only half of the equation. They give the packages to USPS for the final dleivery [last leg] and I am pretty sure that the USPS uses DIM weight and just recently went up on those rates.
Makes me wonder if FedEx office employees even knows that USPS is involved. I wonder if any FedEx employyee acn even distribe the program and how it works from the drop off until final delivery. FedEx may not be charging us them selves, but if USPS is for the final leg and also increased those costs in Jan. of 2018 then as I said ealier those are getting passed along. Maybe on the only guys who really know are the CFO’s of WordlWide FedEx. Maybe only an upper level finacial officer knows what they have to pay USPS to do the last part of thier job for them and if those charges have increased in last two months.
I think I am smelling the FedEx pulling the plug on the SmartPost program if the USPS is hitting them with such higher charges that FedEx can’t be competitve within it’s own tiers. The quick answer, drop the SmartPost program and just start doing the final leg delivery themselves.
Again, who knows.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by
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