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I’m in GA but I have no answer for you. Just chiming in because misery loves company?? I was quite perplexed when filing state sales tax. I used to charge 4% base sales tax and later after misinterpreting the law, I started charging 7% (the rate where I live in Floyd county). Now that I read you were told it’s illegal to charge more than what is owed, I’ll have to take a fresh look. I’ll probably switch back to 4% (or whatever the lowest possible rate is in Ga) and pay the rest out of my own pocket (it’s not illegal to pay sales tax out of your own pocket). If you ever have trouble getting an answer when calling GA tax office, I have found that it works to post on their facebook page and to also send a DM through FB messenger. Someone higher up in the office called me within 12 hours when I tried that tactic. Here’s hoping it did not get me on their “People to Audit” list.
I have not been but Jason T Smith has done quite a few youtube videos about and at EBay Open. Here is one that he did titled “Ask Me Anything About EBay Open” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64HavT7vSbk&t=2815s
You can also type into the Youtube search bar “Jason T Smith Ebay Open” and you’ll find a lot of his videos on the topic.
When I tried calling on Monday I did not get the option to leave my number to have someone call me back, which is a first. Perhaps they disabled that feature since they were so swamped with calls.
Like Jay with his experience working for the Census, I have a job that takes me to Atlanta where I hit up thrift stores in the evening. The goal was to find enough items while there to pay for my hotel, which has never been a problem. I find the best clothes in Atlanta! The downside is since I’m working at a non-Ebay job for about a year now, I have little time to list and the unlisted items have accumulated exponentially. This fact was made quite evident while cleaning and organizing my ebay room 2 weeks ago. We wanted our guest room back so I moved a lot of stuff to our basement. I now have the most organized ebay room imaginable. During the cleaning process I found so many great things that I can’t wait to list but I also found that I have almost an equal number of unlisted items as I do listed. My naive husband asked, “so how many things do you still have to list, like a hundred?” HAHAHAHAHA! Dude! It’s more like 1,000 maybe 2,000. At least it’s mostly clothes that are stored neatly in bins. But I need to get busy listing before all of it goes out of style. I’m toying with the idea of hiring someone to photograph and take measurements but I’m not excited about having someone at my house nor am I excited about handing over inventory to someone to handle off site. Decisions, decisions.
No. I waited for 3 hours! I wish I was exaggerating. I had the phone on speaker and just worked while I waited. I finally had to hang up in order to head to the post office. I think the repetitive ebay hold music got to my psyche; last night I woke myself, husband and cat with a sudden scream in my sleep.
Based on everyone’s comments about receiving similar emails yesterday I imagine the switch boards are swamped so I’m going to wait a few days before trying to call again.
My return rate is 3.94%, which is 37 out of 938 transactions. 31 of those 37 were for clothing and most of the 31 were for swimsuits. Darn those swimsuits! They’ve made me a TON of money but the returns!
Still on hold….at 2 hours and 8 minutes now. Working while waiting….
T
Yep, I bet hundreds of sellers who got an email are calling ebay right now. So far I’ve been waiting for an hour and five minutes. This is why I never bothered to call ebay in the past over an unfair INAD. Waiting on hold for this long to save $6 return shipping wasn’t worth it.
Groooaaaannnnn….They need to change their hold music. It’s the same 2 lines of the same song over and over and over.
MyCottage – I have a strong feeling that ebay is going to suggest exactly that when I finally get a rep on the phone. I may stop selling certain types of items for awhile.
It’s one thing to get an email that my returns are high – it’s another thing for Ebay to say that my items visibility will suffer when ebay stated previously that returns are not defects. Now I have to waste my time and ebay’s time to fight unfair INADs.
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/seller-performance-policy?id=4347#section2
Click the link and scroll half way down the page to “Transaction defect rate requirements.” There are only 2 things that result in a defect: seller canceling order and a case having to be closed without seller resolution. So while INADs aren’t included on that page as a “defect” I feel that they are still being treated as such if ebay is going to limit my items visibility.
And you’re correct, I did not state that the New item had the retailers price tag on it nor did I photograph the item with a price tag on it. Items does have the original box which has the retailer provided item details label on it. While not a “price tag” it has retailer’s SKU and item name.
This is particularly upsetting because I’ve always been very careful with my listings and I felt that it was above and beyond good customer service to allow a buyer to return an item for any reason and to not fight them on the return shipping.
Still on hold with ebay – 44 minutes now….
T-Satt’s calculations have me strongly considering adding free shipping to my clothing and lighter weight items. My return rate is already high, 3.73% according to my dashboard. This is due almost entirely to the large cache of 100s of NWT swimsuits I’ve been selling since last summer. Women’s swimsuits will always = higher rate of return.
I wonder what effect, if any free returns will have on the price of used clothing on Ebay. A segment of sellers who source from bins follow a churn and burn model making less than $1/item. My clothing items will never follow that model but hopefully by offering free returns, my clothing listings can compete against the churn & burners who probably won’t be offering it at their prices.
If Paypal Working Capital Loans was a profitable venture for the company then rest assured Paypal, Ebay, Adyen or one their affiliate payment companies will find a way to continue to offer working capital loans. I don’t think it will be a difficult transition for it be set up and they have a few years to get it rolled out.
My sales over the last week were all lower dollar items, nothing exciting at all. Moved out some older inventory with a 30% off sale that I’m running for a month.
Of the 22 items sold, exactly half were acquired via retail arbitrage, which I have done a lot more of over the last year, not because its better (it’s not, my ROI is better for thrifted items) but because it’s been more convenient.
Been selling some literal garbage too. My boss threw out a bin of promotional Pepsi lapel pins that a distributor had given the company a few years ago. I fished them out of the trash. I’ve been selling them one at a time, only $2.27 profit after shipping and expenses but $2.27 x 30 or 40 identical pins that only required me to create 1 listing = free money.
Yep. It could be a daily sweep to a bank account we set up, could be weekly or even 30 days – we don’t know at this point. It may necessitate a little more planning or budgeting on our parts but we’ll still be bringing in money just for flipping junk. I’m sure there is mass hysteria over on the eBay forums about it.
My background is in Anti-money laundering regulations so I have done a lot of consulting at all types of payments-industry related businesses over the years.
Buyers won’t know that Adyen is the payment processor in the background, they will only see that they can pay for their ebay purchases using any number of methods of payment that Adyen will support for that buyer’s country. Right now buyers are limited to credit card (if a seller has its own merchant account and thus accept credit cards) or paypal. With Adyen a payer in the US will be able to pay using paypal, credit card, probably Google Pay, Venmo. In China the customer will probably have to option to use AliPay (very popular payment method there)). Australians will be able to use POLi (popular in Australia), Konbini in Japan, etc. Obviously all methods won’t be presented to every buyer in every jurisdiction. It will be so much more convenient to buyers everywhere. And as sellers we won’t have to worry about having accounts with Paypal, POLi, HyperWallet, etc. Our payments will get aggregated and paid out to us in a yet to be identified means. So likely not instantaneously like Paypal.
