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Interesting: So, we have had both a UPS and FedEx account for years. I just went to our account with FedEx, signed in and input the following.
16x16x8 size box, 2 LB. weight and used your zip as the ship from 80020 and used 58793 as the ship to. Clicked on using “my own packaging” and clicked on get rate quote and it came up offering 4 different FedEx levels, all were Express service except the last one, which was 2 day FedEx and SmartPost wasn’t one of them. Our cost with our discount showed $16.36 to ship your pkg. from your zip to your cust. with end of 2nd day delivery. AND it did show that DIM Weight was used to calculate these rate costs.
Don’t know what this tells us, but maybe different sellers get different rates and discounts based on some kind of variables, who knows.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Granted Ebay may not be reporting the FedEx rates correctly, but why are the rates different now anyway. But maybe there is two things taking place concurrently. Ebay not reporting correctly AND the FedEx rates are higher due to increased costs to them from the USPS.
Then here is the question of the year. ask FedEx how much has the USPS raised the rates on what the USPS is charging FedEx and how much they are marking those new, higher charges up and to what degree the new, higher charges the USPS is charging FedEx impact the new rates that FedEx is charging.
Sooner or later there has to be a “head of the river”. Where has the rate increases come from? Seems like going to Ebay is like blaming the messenger. Providing that Ebay is not at fault by way of an error, glitch or being the cause of the increase. Then next up the food chain would be FedEx, but since they are sub-contracting out the “final leg” of their SmartPost program coupled with the fact that USPS has recently done a rate increase, I would be digging into USPS. What have they charged FedEx in the past vs. what are they charging them now? If there is a change, then how much of an increase in their services, and of course FedEx is not only going to pass those increases on to us but common business practices to mark those increases up.
Just seems to me we haven’t gotten to the head of the river yet. A Stanley and Livingston scenario :-)!
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This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
03/13/2018 at 11:22 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 351: Being Frugal Is Not A Secret Club #35038T-Satt you sure about this. Our CPA said that if we go out buying [usually two or three times a week] and take enough time to have to eat lunch or dinner, that yes only 50% of that meal is deductible but only for a “client’s portion, not for us. he said the IRS assumes that you have to eat so your meal whether you bring a sandwich to work, go out or whatever is on us. Only if we take a “client” such as another dealer, a shop owner, etc., etc. would their portion of the meal be deductible, not our half. And on our receipt, we need to list who was at the meeting-meal, nature of the business and then only 50% of the meal could be used as a business deduction.
If what you say is actually correct, then 50% of what we eat each weekend is deductible? We usually eat 4 to 6 meals out per week depending on how many sources we are hitting that week.
mike at MDC in Atl.
03/13/2018 at 11:16 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 351: Being Frugal Is Not A Secret Club #35036yep, heard you mention before. We even gave some serious thought to using file cabinets, but so much of our inventory is odd shaped, over sized home decor that drawers are mainly just to small for a lot of stuff. Others, they are to large for very small pieces and we would have to use hanging file folder inserts to separate a hundred little items, so we just use small show boxes within our numbered bin system.
we thought the filing cabinets idea was so cool but just could not figure out to use them with any great efficiency with our type of inventory.
Onward and upwards.
Suggest you do as mentioned above. tell the buyer to arrange for his own shipping and give him a few suggestions. There are several listed here on the forum that many members sue and include in there listings of extremely large or heavy items. if you handle the shipping then you will own it from cardle to grave. Let them make the calls to the shipper or movers, handle the bill of lading and even they will skid it up or crate it if necessary.
Yes, illegal to lie on the custom forms. as Jay said, it was a done deal as soon as she bought it. Just ship it to Erlanger and forget about it. How to properly buy, how to shop, how to be a good buyer is her responsibility and she needs to educate yourself on what she needs to do.
If she doesn’t like it, she can cancel. but that is between her and her Ebay Buyer Account. it sold, she p[aid, you are on the GSP program, now just ship it and move on.Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
03/13/2018 at 10:51 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 351: Being Frugal Is Not A Secret Club #35030T-Satt as I posted in another place, don’t think Ebay or FedEx has too much they can do about it. I think it is the USPS finally charging FedEx more for the last leg delivery. USPS upping the rates my chaning the DIM wieght system and just increasing what they are charging FedEx do do the last 50% of the work for them. Seems like USPS would just as soon for you to use them and forget about FedEx since the USPS is doing a big part of the work anyway. Also since USPS is the last one to handle the delivery, then they seem to not want to be held responsible for any screw ups on the front end by FedEx. Especially with these new Ebay guarateed delivery or you get your purchase for free programs. Who pays for a failed delivery when two carriers are partned together on the delivery.
Hhhmmmm.
mike in Atl.suggest don’t use a listing template either in the Ebay listing area or in another 3rd party app. I suggest creating a customize “List of Item Specifics” and have that Item Specific area always pop up as a template and just go down the blank fields of the item specific area and input everything about the item. Create blank fields titled, Colors, features, comments, material, sizes-dimensions, pattern, uses, etc., etc. Many times Ebay will present blank fields for these but sometimes not. If you have your own customized item specific area then you will always have those blank fields as a reminder to put in that information. The word “Plastic” would have been entered into the “material” field and you will be done.
Just a sugesstion. We use a 3rd party listing app and our customized item specific area pops up with each new listing and if there happens to be a duplicate because Ebay requests the same information say like, colors, just hit delete as you go down the item specific column.
Our opinion only.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine art in Atlanta
03/13/2018 at 10:23 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 351: Being Frugal Is Not A Secret Club #35025Yep.. That is what we do in WonderLister. Just sort/filter on the “Bin Number”, up pops a list and if there are only 3 items in that bin, we re-assign into another bin that has a very low content. Move those items into the low level bin and bring the empty one back to our office for refilling with new items.
T-Satt.. “to lazy”. I sit in my chair and let my fingers manager my inventory within WL. How much lazy can this be. Sit in my pajamas, cup of coffee in my hand, listening to soft music and re-arrange 100 items using two fingers. I like my definition of “lazy” better than yours. 🙂 LOL
Oh and BTW sometimes I take the laptop into our storage area and place it on our rolling cart and just walk around and reloacte items right then and there and just edit the location field in WonderLister. That is my “exercise program” version.
mike at mdc galleries in Atl.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
03/13/2018 at 10:16 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 351: Being Frugal Is Not A Secret Club #35024Mark: In WL why don’t you just create a “custom field” and put the other data you put into the spread sheet into the custom field you created in WL. We have 6 custom fields we created in WL Buy Date, Where bought, scale weight, photo folder location, Etsy field, Shopify field. Those can be sorted and filtered, reports generated and bulk edited just as any standard default field already present in WL.
we also created about half a dozen extra Item Specific fields and by placing an asterisk “*” in each field, it will stick [stay] in our generic listing template and always be available on each listing ready for data entry or we can bulk edit, sort, filter on thos also.
BTW.. this can also be done in SixBit for those users.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
T-Satt: May have some info. to share on the “SmartPost” issue. I have been talking to my local USPS carrier. She said their office has been getting a lot of calls on this issue and they finally had a in house production meeting and a district rep for USPS came in and talked to all the local PO employees. They said that what happened is the following.
The FedEx SmartPost program had negotiated that the USPS handle the last leg of all FedEx SmartPost packages. Every SmartPost package that is dropped off at or picked up by FedEx is sent to the destination zip’s closest USPS distribution center. So basically the FedEx program is pretty much about a 50% process that is now handled and delivered by the post office.
Then in Mid Januaury the USPS changed the prices it charges FedEx by increasing the weight rates, adding the new DIM weights and changing the the rates it charges FedEx for it’s part in handling the FedEx packages for them.
She went on to explain that the use of FedEx SmartPost is like using FedEx for the first leg of the shipment, then FedEx sub-contracts the last part of the delivery and that part is now costing FedEx a whole lot more than prior to Jan. 2018. In turn fedEx is having to pass those newly added extra costs along to the customers [us sellers and shippers] and that which has ended up in a much increased cost of the FedEx program.
I mentioned that it sounds like the USPS doesn’t want the FedEx business any longer and she seemed to say the SmartPost Program has always been a pain in the rear end anyway. She also went on to say that the district rep also mentioned changes in sellers platforms internal policies like Ebay, Amazon that are now introducing “Guarantted delivery” programs and money back programs that the USPS does not like being on the back end of that process. The USPS mnagaers state that FedEx drags and gets delayed many times for assorted reasons and that the USPS gets fingers pointed at them because they are the last ones to touch the program and they are tired of being the bad guy on “failed to perform” deliveries. She stopped short of actually saying they are over charging FedEx to handle the packages they can’t or won’t deliver but seems to think FedEx is getting stretched on the local stuff and prefers International delivery over local deliveries. The USPS out mans and out trucks FedEx 10 to 1 according to her and they would like for those who use FedEx to just start using the USPS directly since they deliver most of the fedEx packages anyway on the last leg.
So, unsure how much is fact or fantasy, but it sure seems to make sense that if the USPS is charging FedEx more for the work that FedEx is sub-contracting out to them, that in turn those costs are being passed down to us sellers and thus the “SmartPost” program now costs more.
We talk to our carrier 2 or 3 times a week and she seems to be more than willing to keep us informed on what is going on inside of their local office atleast.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Hi Sally and Welcome!
You will find a ton of information here on the SL Forums and back in the old blog [which all are searchable BTW]. But if you don’t know what you don’t know may be hard to find by topic.So if you are just getting ready to approach Ebay either as a Hobby seller or to start doing it more seriously may I suggest the Ebay University located in the Seller area.
Here is the link: http://pages.ebay.com/pe/en-us/university/
This is a good place to start because most of the basic topics are covered and you are getting the information straight from the horses mouth. Then once you have reviewed most of the topics then SL members can help clarify and expand upon this information. One of the things experienced sellers find out is though coming “straight from the horses mouth”, Ebay does speak, at times, two languages, out the side of it’s mouth and maybe with a forked tongue. LOL :-). In other words they can contradict themselves and also be very unclear at times. So a place like SL is a great place to read about or ask about things for that needed clarification. But one must get the basics down and also Ebay does have rules and SOP [standard operating procedures] that you need to become familiar with. You must do the leg work [due diligence] up front on those. The Seller Center and University is what I feel, in my opinion, the best place to start.
Good luck and maybe one day we will see your posted number for thousands of items and a grand number for your monthly sales.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine art in Atlanta
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This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Oh and the middle one sold for $55.
check these links out
https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?query=1932+olympics+seat+cushion&category=
the oldest one sold in 2016 for $114 and the other one for $44.
Good luck.
I noticed a very sluggish system most of yesterday and in the afternoon I did several reboots and also ran a couple of utilities to clean things up in case it was coming from my side [my rig]. Only got the can’t access notice twice but ran very slow all day.
Since 7:00 am this morning everything seems fine. Good response time, good speed and have mutliple tabs open on two browsers and all seems well.
Guess whatever it was, they got patched up overnight.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by
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