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I suppose it would be worthwhile to check if we are paying that PL fee on cancelled orders too.
I haven’t noticed that line, but I have noticed that when I make a counteroffer eBay might make a suggestion that I lower my counteroffer, which I ignore since I know my business better than they do.
I’ve also noticed that when I make an offer Big Brother seems to want to coach me on increasing my offer. All I use that for is a quick glance to verify I didn’t make a typo, then send and done.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
Old Dad.
10/30/2019 at 10:25 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 434: Do You Have A Business Destiny? #69780Here’s an eBay page I happened across this morning, https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/service-and-payments/returns.html#attract-buyers-with-free-returns. According to eBay’s own estimates, the “Sales Lift” from changing from 30-day returns (buyer pays return shipping) to 30-day free returns is 5%. Of course, their disclaimer waffles on that 5%. But, taking this as an accurate estimate, it seems the reverse would also be true and changing from free 30-day returns to buyer paid is going to drop sales by 5%.
I don’t believe the 5% estimate but it is at least something to plug into evaluating changing to or from free returns. The unknown number is what is the actual cost of the free return shipping to eat.
I will still stay with the customer paying for discretionary returns, my gut says free returns would not improve my bottom line.
You will have to use 2 SCAN sheets I believe. The only exception that I’ve seen is when I was testing out shipping services. If I used 2 different services the same day and both used the stamps.com backend, all the packages would come up on the same SCAN sheet.
If you use the “Select listings in bulk” option when creating the PL campaign, you will be able to download a .csv file then make changes to the rate, then upload it. It’s fairly simple in Excel to copy the trending rate to the requested rate in order to keep the rate where you might want it.
The catch is that you can’t just open the file in Excel because the item numbers will be changed to scientific notation, like 3.22254E+11. You will either have to import the file and change the first column to text during the process, or open the file in a text editor then paste the contents to Excel.
If a person knows Excel this will become 2nd nature but will make new users want to just give up.
Or, use an alternate program to open the file, a program that is a little easier to use like OpenOffice Calc.
I bought a huge lot of this type of shelving from a local hardware store that was moving to a new building with newer shelving. I use it for my fireworks retail store but not in stocking my online inventory because it just doesn’t hold as much for the same footprint and the ones I have are not as tall as I can get with other shelving.
For the shelves I do use, I added pegboard to the row ends to hang smaller items.
Possibly even more significant is the extra fees paid as a percentage of overall sales for the period since many items will still sell from the organic listings.
By coincidence, I just ran some numbers earlier today. For 10-1 to 10-29 I sold 58 items ($794) from Promoted Listing at an extra cost of 5.6% ($45) on those sales. I sold over $3200 in total on this eBay account during that period, making the extra cost only 1.4% of total sales. Sales dollars from PL listings were 24.5 % of total sales.
I am currently, since 10-1, using 1% over the trending rate (max 10%), adjusted using file upload several times a week. Prior to 10-1, I was loosely matching the trending rate but not spending any significant time keeping the match updated. Looking at 9-1 to 9-29 my extra cost of PL sales was 3.5% of total sales. Obviously, 1 month is not enough time to draw any accurate conclusions but my hazy hunch is paying over the trending rate might result in more sales.
I’m going to continue the current test for at least another month, maybe 2, then I might test some other settings. I’m hesitant to go with the flat 1% others are using because I don’t want to potentially lose hundreds of dollars in sales.
I don’t use Best Offer much but I have started adding it to listingw with the 16 month no sale flag. Easier to do that now that it can be done with bulk editor.
When I get a lowball offer I will respond with a reasonable counter-offer, if they come back with another ridiculous offer I will just ignore it.
On the buying side, I have had other sellers go off on me and respond with a childish rant when I made what they thought was a ridiculous offer. A sure sign of a rookie in my opinion so I just move on and don’t make another offer for that item.
10/28/2019 at 6:26 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 434: Do You Have A Business Destiny? #69706Everything is Good til canceled in my main store, 2881 listings. I use a paid inventory management service to keep my inventory in sync between venues.
I don’t spend a lot of time on detective work when I find a discrepancy. I used to then decided it was a waste of my time. I don’t know that I have ever had anything delisted by eBay but can’t be positive about that. I think most of the differences come from having a wrong initial quantity, not increasing quantity when returns are put back on the shelf, replacement sent without reducing quantity, human errors in other words and most of those are unique to multi-quantity listings.
At shipping time I print a picklist from the inventory management site and check anything with low quantity as I pick orders. Perhaps once a month I find an issue and correct it. That doesn’t take care of the problem with orphan listings or inventory, only a careful physical audit will do that.
I still get out-of-stock orders 2 or 3 times a year. If I can buy the product somewhere else and drop shop to the buyer then I do that.
I don’t have an inventory location system in place and need to do that. You know how easy it is to procrastinate on that project.
You might want to look into using the USPS SCAN form to be able to have all your packages marked as accepted with only 1 actual scan, thereby eliminated the possibility that 1 out of several packages shipped at the same time missing being scanned. It takes the same time as scanning 1 package if you are in a hurry or the mail carrier missed scanning one out of multiple packages in the pickup.
For this situation, have you talked to your post office and asked them to search? If you can describe the packaging and size that could help, they will likely want the tracking number also.
10/28/2019 at 11:54 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 434: Do You Have A Business Destiny? #69669“There it is. Here’s a direct link for anyone interested: https://www.ebay.com/sh/prf/service-metrics”
I sell primarily NOS auto parts, I don’t have free returns, my return rate usually hovers around .25%, the majority of which used a bogus return reason.d While those are irritating at times they don’t amount to a significant cost to my business and usually just refund the less expensive items when received without any pushback. The return rate for the same inventory on Amason is always higher.
10/28/2019 at 11:08 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 434: Do You Have A Business Destiny? #69664Jay/Ryanne,
Will you be doing a physical audit of your inventory, either while you are setting up the new system or after you complete that project? I think you will likely find you have items still listed that are not in inventory and/or inventory items that are not listed. I always do.
Also, on an ongoing basis if you have multi-quantity listings, verifying the remaining quantity on those at the time orders are picked can be worthwhile if only a few remain in stock.
Yes, the auction went very well even with overcast a drizzle off an on through the day. My girlfriend was very satisfied with the results, she has been fretting about it.
I hope you have equal or better results.
10/27/2019 at 8:33 pm in reply to: How do you reply to customer inquiries on items shipped and not received yet? #69634Depending on the circumstances, I sometimes tell the buyer I’m going to check into this and have the USPS send them updates on the shipment, then enter the buyer’s email and mine in the USPS function for sending tracking updates. It can usually keep the buyer from constantly bugging me for updates. It’s sort of surprising how often requesting these email updates seems to shake loose an in-transit but stalled-out package.
I will sometimes ask my post office to check on a package that is stalled out, they can see details in their system not available on the USPS website tracking. I live in a small town and my post office will do this type of favors for me, I’m a big fish in a small pond.
For packages a buyer says was not received even though scanned as delivered, I have a list of suggestions on things for them to do, those often result in the package being found. or maybe it just makes some give up on trying to get an easy quick refund.
Hmm. I guess when we specialize in one area, things remind us of something in that field. Without seeing the back or other views, the only thing that pops into mind is an automatic transmission filter. Yes, weird reponse, I know.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
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