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I’ve been selling full time for a little over a year now, and prior to that I was selling for about a year while also working a full time job. Before that, I was selling fairly regularly on ebay going back to the early 2000s – mostly for musical gear but I did engage in a lot of buying to resell in order to fund my gear purchases. So I do have a general knowledge of ebay workings…
I sell all kinds of stuff, not just clothes, I’m just confused as to why clothing in particular has dropped so much for me lately. Its very noticeable, and I’m just trying to figure out if there could be any reasons.
I wouldn’t think that free returns would help much, but that’s why I’m asking.
Joe, I’m not sure I follow? I accept returns, just not free returns. You’re saying I don’t have protection because I don’t offer free returns?
The other thing I’d add is, I wonder if you’d see any noticeable drop in sales if you disabled Free Returns. You haven’t seen an increase, but would you see any decrease without it?
Because like I said previously, I’ve seen a big drop in my personal sales of clothing, even on good stuff like nice leather bomber jackets and stuff that used to sell for good prices fairly quick.
Yeah I am still running on thin margins while trying to build my inventory higher and also sell enough items to pay my bills monthly, so I’m often not able to let things that are worth more sit and wait for the right buyer. So free returns isn’t looking like a good option for me right now
But buyers do have a checkbox to tick for “Free Returns” under “Show Only” while searching, and I could imagine that a lot of buyers are potentially checking this box
But the problem is that I’m still being charged for the return shipping label to have the item sent back..
So far, ebay reps have said that if I call back it will be waived (not in those exact words, very hard to get them to say anything clearly) …. but still, very annoying on top of having to spend extra time calling ebay back again.
The new auto-approval of returns is causing problems for me with this.
I had a buyer this month who messaged me saying that a shirt didn’t fit, and that they needed a large size. The shirt was a medium, listed as medium, and I also put all exact measurements in the listing.
Buyer started a return “Not as described” so they wouldn’t have to pay return shipping.
Armed with the original buyer message, I called ebay customer service expecting a quick resolution as they can see the buyer is lying about NAD.
First of all, every time I talk to ebay customer service now, the rep tells me not to approve the return. I then try to explain to them its not possible because ebay auto-approves all returns now (even with the rule disabled in preferences and RMA # added, all returns are still auto-approved).
The rep never really seems to understand this.
Next the rep tells me that they will have to issue a return label to the buyer (charged to me) and that I have to wait for the item to be shipped back, and then I have to call ebay again to tell them the item is ok, and then they will waive the shipping costs charged to me.
I ask why I have to do that when its obvious the buyer is flat out lying, as they already messaged prior to the return, and ebay rep just gives the usual canned answer which doesn’t really mean anything.
Multiple calls to ebay CS, same answers.
And this isn’t the only time I’ve had this problem with ebay since they’ve started this new auto-return thing.
It seems pretty clear that ebay is heading towards all sellers paying return shipping, regardless of reason…
I think the reason they making me have the item sent back is because they are wanting buyers to be able to return for free, even when they are lying about NAD because they plan on going this direction for all buyers/returns…
Curious if Steve still has good luck on CL with finding the kinds of stuff he sells, since the original posts were back in 2016?
I used to heavily monitor most sections of the local CL, but gave it up when it never really yielded much. I’ve bought a couple good items, but generally CL seems to be full of resellers rather than individuals. Similar to what others have posted, the free stuff is largely actual junk.
That’s a good idea about the free mags though, Sigilini. That seems like something that may pop up somewhat regularly, and something not a lot of people would want.
