Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
My photos haven’t changed…still filled with a random color on the sides or top/bottom…
I use to live in a city in the early 2000’s that practically had a scavenger week every single year in the spring. The city was about 80,000 people.
For this particular week, the garbage limits were lifted and you can throw out anything to the curb (bulk items, unlimited piles of junk) – and some people cleaned out their whole house, and many interested items were found just driving or walking around.
My biggest find from these weeks was an antique dining set that has been dated to the 1880’s – it was in rough/painted shape when I found it, but I restored it. I used it for over 10 years until I recently sold it for $3000.
One year a guy had a vintage Coke machine and cooler on his curb – I took it and sold it a couple hours later for $300 for the pair. I had no idea what they were really worth, but a quick flip at that profit is fine with me.
Wish they had something like this in my community now – I would during this week fill my house and yard with electronics, lawnmowers, wood furniture, toys, board games, lamps, tools, sports equipment, and lots of other goodies all for free. It would take me forever to sort through!
The city no longer has this week (sadly) and I haven’t found any other communities that have one locally either. Most areas now just have a phone in service to pick up bulk loads of junk. The old system probably eliminated lots of illegal dumping, and the amount of items going to the landfill as they would be fully scavenged for anything good before the waste management company picked it up.
I get frustrated with people who don’t understand the labor that goes into selling on eBay.
I rarely find an item that is in perfect condition to list immediately – they all require cleaning, repairing, restoring, removing labels, setting up for photos, editing photos, listing the item, storing the item, and then when it sells you need to pack and ship the item.
People don’t get that it isn’t an easy flip selling on eBay! In some cases, the profit is only in the extra work fixing up/repairing/restoring an item.
non-eBay sellers also sometimes have delusions on what items are worth based on asking prices on eBay – not actual sales. A local thrift store always has items behind the counter with print-outs of ridiculous “comparable” eBay listings asking way too much money. Most of those items just sit on the shelf for months.
My big issue with larger items in the past was packing them – you never have a box on hand when they sell. I pre-pack all large items now to save the hassle of trying to find a large box when the cha-ching goes off on my phone…
Finding a box for an item like a guitar isn’t fun on a time constraint!
My account was locked before for “suspicious activity” – all it turned out to be is that my wife and I logged into eBay on numerous devices at the same time (we each have the app on our phone for the same account, I log in on my work computer at lunch, we both have home computers we log in to eBay on, and we also have a seperate computer connected to a printer that logs in to print shipping labels).
eBay just was being cautious and making sure nobody hacked my account.
What got me started on eBay 20 years ago was selling what then was vintage video games and computers.
I use to be able to find game cartridges (Atari 2600-5200-7800, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Vectrex, etc.) for 25 cents or less – sometimes a dollar or two for a whole box! Systems were usually a couple dollars, and controllers were a dollar or less. I use to skip over NES, SNES, Sega MS/Genesis, and other “newer” games as you couldn’t sell them for pennies back then.
I would buy whole computer systems to sell the games, and dispose of the computer/monitors that now are worth good money…
I guess everything is even though – the money I could of had by saving the old systems and buying NES, SNES etc. games in the 1990s and saving them was offset by all the sports cards I sold back then as well for good money – they are now almost all worthless.
I’m in Canada, and really like the GSP as a buyer.
-it gives me the opportunity to buy items that typically aren’t available in Canada
-all taxes/duties are handled through the GSP with no surprises
-it’s simple for a buyer – no extra steps to buy the item. Just pay an extra fee to Pitney Bowes for the service/taxes/duty and the fee is clearly presented up frontI’ve had a lot of problems with people sending items to me direct without the GSP. Some of them include:
-improper values on customs forms. For some reason people over exaggerate the value of items on customs forms (for insurance?) and I end up paying tax/duty on that value, not what I actually spent. Really annoying on an item for a few dollars that someone puts $100 on the form for insurance purposes and I have to pay $15 extra to get…
-shipping companies gouge for collecting duty/taxes. UPS and FedEx are horrible – charging an extra $20 or more just to collect the duty owed – even if it is a few dollars. GSP doesn’t do this. If you don’t use GSP, ship to Canada using USPS – at least the post office doesn’t charge a fee to collect duty/taxes
-improper information or missing customs forms – if the form isn’t correct or missing, then the item will get sent back or sent for processing. If sent to processing, the item gets opened to confirm the contents. Nothing more disappointing then buying a boxed collectors item that is opened and covered in customs tape to reseal. Customs also gets to decide the value of the item themselves, sometimes turning a good deal into a huge tax bill.
I’ve bought at least a dozen items this month using GSP from American sellers, and appreciate it when it is offered!
I rarely do local pick ups – in the last year I have done one (for a pair of skis that would have been difficult to ship). I find the people annoying when you meet up as they start to haggle after looking over the item and trying to find something “wrong” to get a better deal, or they never show up.
In my area, the local police have setup what they call “Safe Trading Areas” where in the parking lot of the police station and other law enforcement building they have a area to meet up that is monitored by cameras – that way both parties feel safer and if problems occur, the police are right there. I used one of these for the skis mentioned above and it made for a good/easy and safe feeling transaction.
This is real fishy…
#1 – a manufacturer is not going to “double” label a product with two different brand names, in this case a big brand name like Samsung with another logo overtop of it. They would produce the battery with just one label. A company the size of Samsung wouldn’t allow this type of cheap overlabel with their products.
#2 – Customs is not filled with stupid people – this item has two issues that would flag customs. First, the note is a huge tip-off for them if they opened the item, the second is that a brand name is covered, therefore most likely hiding counterfeit items. The note just confirms it for them.
#3 – I’ve had lots of problems with what I thought was local items, and then I get something from China. This is occurring more often, and usually if they have a brand name they are counterfeit. I just bought a football jersey from someone that I thought was about 50 miles from me, and it was marked shipped the next day. As I know mail only takes a couple days being this local, I contacted the seller a week later and they told me it would be 3 weeks…soon as I heard that I knew they were fake and lying about their location.
I find that certain categories are full of fakes, and it is obvious – not sure why eBay doesn’t clamp down. For example, the jersey I bought had a unique background to it that other sellers are using – therefore I assume it is the same person just moving business around soon as one account get shutdown.
The problem that causes for us as sellers is that people don’t trust eBay. I have many co-workers who think eBay is just full of counterfeit items based on one bad experience – I wonder how many buyers this scares away.
Just ignore the buyer – they will disappear and bug someone else.
The amount of time people put in to save a dollar or two on eBay is amazing to me sometimes…
To me the name of the company sounds like an illegal download site…bad name for a postage company!
If a buyer is difficult or sounds like a pain in the butt before they buy an item, they are completely not worth dealing with.
I don’t know about others, but I probably ignore 80% of questions I get these days. Tired of people in strange places asking me to ship to them, people telling me my shipping rates are crazy (when they are usually dead on), or just weird comments/questions.
So far today, I’ve had:
-two requests to send items to former Soviet republics (slow day for these)
-someone asking me if an item smells (may not smell to me, but they will probably find an issue with it if I tell them “no smell”)
-someone telling me there Dad had an item I have up for sale (like I care?)
-a $10 offer on a $200 item (not a Best Offer item…)Every time I hear the “magic spell” noise on my phone, without a “cha-ching” I cringe…
I just sold a big box of over 50 educational filmstrips the way Jay describes – take a few pictures of the main subject matter, explain the rest of the lot.
I am in Canada, and I buy used clothing, including leather items, from GSP sellers in the U.S. all the time.
The only thing I can think of is that the leather is from an endangered species that is not allowed for import.
I sell internationally, making it impossible to buy a return shipping label. Here is the feedback I received from eBay CS when I asked how return shipping should be handled when you cannot supply a label (either domestically or internationally):
The money that would be used to cover the return shipping cost should not be taken out from the original account because this would not complete the full refund that the buyer is entitled to when they return the item to you. You should have used the “Send Money” tab in PayPal instead of offering a partial refund.
Moving forward, kindly use the “Send Money” tab in PayPal if you encounter an issue like this in the future. Here’s how to send money through PayPal:
1. Log in to your account at http://www.paypal.com and click the “Send Money” tab.
2. Enter the email address of the person you want to send money to, the amount, and then choose whether the money is for a type of purchase or is a type of personal payment.
3. Click the “Continue” button.
4. Check the details including the payment method. You can change the payment method by clicking the “Change” link. You can also type a message to the recipient with more details about the money you’re sending.
5. Click the “Send Money” button to complete the payment.
The recipient will receive an email letting them know about the payment. They can then log into PayPal or sign up for a new account.
I know this is not the answer you were expecting but I trust I was able to explain the situation as it stands now.
