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Yes, this situation has been very motivating for paying off debt. I was already paying it down aggressively but now I’m trying to pay it down at hyper warp speed!
Thanks for everyone’s comments! Its been a situation where I’ll get all worked up about it until my blood boils and then later when I’m calmed down I wonder why I was so upset only to then get all worked up again later. Some of it is my ego I suppose.
One helpful exercise from all of this is last night I calculated my income versus my expenses (including the aggressive pay down of debt) and divided each to find how much “extra” I have to live on per day. The “extra” of course has to cover non-recurring expenses such as vet bills, groceries, home repairs, savings, etc. I like knowing that “daily” figure versus a monthly figure. I think knowing the smaller increment will make me more frugal. I’ve calculated it with my current income and debt and later today I’ll calculate it under the scenario of not having the regular job to see if the daily figure is something I can live within.
I turned on Free Returns yesterday for all items that can ship for under 1 pound. I’m using the eBay promotion that promises to reimburse me for all postage on free return shipping through August. I believe the return shipping reimbursement is capped at a certain dollar amount. A metric provided by Ebay said that a person with a 30 day return policy can expect to see a 5% increase in sales if they elect free shipping. A 5% increase in sales is not worth it. That metric is so pathetic I don’t know why eBay even provides it. Once the free return shipping promo is over I’ll probably switch Free Returns off. Its been turned on for 28 hours so far and I’ve had 0 sales (I usually have at least 2 sales per day during the week, more on the weekends). I’ll see how sales go over this weekend.
I have been interested in starting to sell on Poshmark lately. It seems to require more seller involvement on the platform than Ebay, which is why I haven’t started it yet. Some youtube Poshmark sellers I watch note that certain clothing brands do a lot better on Posh than on Ebay, which is tempting me.
Kate Spade is one of my favorite iconic designers but I could never justify owning any Kate Spade items myself due to cost. I do however buy it to flip. All 3 items that I shipped out this morning were Kate Spade. And oddly, all had cats on them (1 tshirt, 2 different Kate Spade cat necklaces). All 3 items went to 3 different buyers. I have 24 more Kate Spade items in my listed inventory so I expect some more to sell this week.
Truly tragic situation however. It just goes to show that depression does not discriminate. She seemingly had it all: major success, money, enviable Manhattan lifestyle, looks, fame, and family.
This week’s episode was one of your best IMO. You both hit a lot of points right on the head for me. You also captured the mood really well of what a lot of us are feeling with current & never ending eBay changes; which I suspect is attributing to eBay fatigue. I was recently thinking back to 8 or 9 years ago when I started selling some of my old stuff on Ebay. It was either very simple back then or I was just clueless and lucky that it didn’t result in any defects. I just put the items up for auction. I don’t recall reading any instructions, any shipping deadlines, policies, return issues, calls to eBay or anything. Stuff simply sold, I shipped it, feedback was left, transaction over. I don’t think I would be able to be a new seller on Ebay if I started now – there’s just too much to know.
Another topic that resonated with me was conspicuous consumption. Growing up in Iowa if anyone bought anything lavish, everyone in town would whisper about it. “Who does that person think they are? Putting on airs. Show off.” When I was in my 20s in Cedar Rapids, IA a town of 130,000 people, a transplant from another state bought a Hummer vehicle. In a town that size it was still a huge deal. No Iowan would dare be seen driving such an expensive vehicle back then! Later I moved to DC and then to an Atlanta suburb, both areas where conspicuous consumption is a way of life. I’m very glad I’m not on that bandwagon but grateful that I’ve found a way to profit from it.
6 years ago I moved from the center of Washington, D.C. to a relatively unknown town in NW Georgia, 70 miles away from Atlanta. Moving from a $2,600/month 1 bedroom apartment to 3 bed 2 bath house on 2 acres for just over a 1/4th of what I was paying before made me feel like the richest person in town for quite some time.
The situation addressed in the video was infuriating. I must now google pictures of baby animals to calm myself down.
I’ve never personally cared for the practice of forcing a return to close after 5 days. To me 5 days seems rather short. Perhaps eBay was wrong in ever allowing returns to be forced closed within a set number of days from when a return is initiated, rather than basing it on the day the buyer received it (especially when compared to the return policy set by the seller). What if the buyer initiated the return the first day they got the item, didn’t ship right away and the return was forced closed on day 6, 7….or even day 29? That is before the 30 day return policy that many of us have set. As a buyer having the return closed before 30 days would leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Second, most buyers aren’t as adept at shipping nor do their lives revolve as much around e-commerce as ours so the “return” becomes a slightly burdensome To-Do item in their daily schedules. Many buyers don’t know or can’t leave a package in their outgoing mail so a trip to the post office trip is necessary. If they work 8 to 5, they may never get a chance to make it to the post office while its open. Some have lobbies with package drop off, some do not, and regardless many buyers aren’t aware of the package drop off bins. Therefore, their only chance to get to the Post Office may be on Saturday before noon (if they aren’t working, or have children involved in weekend sports, etc).
Like T-Satt, I just let the return process play itself out. I’m not going to remind my buyer about their return. I’ll let Ebay close the return automatically.
Which of course begs the question, is Ebay preparing an Ebay Plus in the US and can you imagine the other seller forums if/when such news is made? I think the stage is being set but I’m not worried about it.
In the meantime, I do think I’ll change my shipping policy to put Australia back into GSP. I would expect/hope that by doing so, Ebay will charge the 10% tax to those customers and I’ll be left out of it.
I grew up near What Cheer, Iowa. Surprisingly, it’s not pronounced how you think. It’s closer to sounding like “WattCheer”
I’ve sold Christmas items to people located in Christmas, Florida and Holiday, Florida.
Thanks everyone for your input! We are back from our 11 night trip through Florida. I ended up taking about 4 times more food than we needed and a lot of the non-perishable stuff ended up going to waste because even though we used a cooler, we were nervous about eating pepperoni and cheese that had been in a cooler of mostly melted ice after a while. Lessons learned: definitely take all the drinks you think you’ll need (saved us a lot of $$), take only food items that don’t have to be kept in a cooler, make up a few individual bento boxes before hitting the road for easy-to-grab meals rather than waiting to do it on the road, check the fitness rooms at any hotels you’re staying at for free bottled water and fruit (we only took 1 water and fruit item each but that’s enough for a light breakfast or snack), check the happy hour deals online and finally, be realistic about how much you could possible eat each day and don’t pack more than that.
After I posted my airstream comment I remembered air conditioning. No way I could sleep in a trailer in the Florida Keys this time of year without it.
