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[Paulo H Leocadio]

Scamming the scammers

Friends,

I was initiating this post earlier the week to touchbase on the scammers topic, however I had a fantastic issue that I decided to wait a bit to post.
Initially I was going to mention that when I started selling more seriously on eBay (my account is from 2007 but I only started selling last year with R&J motivation), for me everything was part of a big scam. I would usually lose my sleep and get really angry at any case.
I learned and incorporated that in the business. Today I have a very good customer services area in my company 🙂 🙂 😉
First I accept 30 days hassle free return no questions asked. If there is a claim of any nature, I just try to understand and most usually I settle for the buyer.

This week was really scary though. First I had 3 sales on Bonanza … scary by itself. Second. I had one of the Austin sculptures I usually find returned and immediately acquired. Now I see some messages (for example, the buyer did not have previous life on Bonanza before this week’s purchase).

He sent me a message stating that the arms of the statue were broken apparently because of shipping. Easy piece so far.

After that he accused me capital letters as SCAMMER and committing FRAUD. Detailing that the foreleg was broken and glued together in a very amateur way, then all the threats came, including expelling me from all the eCommerce platforms in the Solar System.

He closed with a demand: 24hrs reply directly to his email, he would not accept other type of contact.

Well, I just replying that his satisfaction was my priority and asked him to continue using the official Bonanza channel since Bonanza offers great assistance for cases like this and for his own comfort and protection that channel is better. Also I reinforce that independently of my response, please to contact Bonanza anytime because they are great.
Lastly because of the insurance I asked for photos etc.

He never replied back, it’s been 36hrs after his deadline …

[Paulo H Leocadio]

I joined this wonderful community in January 2016. There are three things that caught my attention from the beginning: mugs, (baseball) hats and slides. Been building my knowledge and educating myself.
Hats, specially vintage sports related have already built a good part of my bread and butter. Even though other no sports related I have missed a lot more than succeeded, I found really great stuff, mostly NFL and Super Bowl related I buy for $1-$3 and sell for ~$30.

Mugs I still need to develop more.

But slides have been a nice ride. This was the first recommendation I took in a reply from Ryanned to a colleague (thank you Ryanne) when she was talking about good light for pictures and how to post slides.

I purchase the slide scanner back then for very cheap, brand new at Amazon. Using for the first time this weekend to list the slides I’ve been acquiring.

I am amazed, it is like magic. I had some slides from my childhood from caves, those explores’ caves speleologists love to explore, when I scanned and look the result it was incredible.

Just to close, selling on eBay for me is a passion, super fun since I can align many things together. Now listing slides first time added up a lot to the fun because being able to see the slides in digital image format is a fantastic way to spend time in itself.

[Paulo H Leocadio]

Thank you Jay.

There are some things I need to do: one of them is to risk a bit on pricing, there is a percentage of things I can go higher and I am missing some good opportunities.
The other thing is differentiate my bread and butter, meaning my store is a bread and butter store at the end.
I think I am too comfortable grabbing cheap that sells for cheap.

For example, I went to Goodwill with my wife today for some personal stuff and took the opportunity to scavenge for sure. Upon leaving the nice and sweet sound of eBay sales. It was a vintage pilsner pair still in original box.

I find those items (not sure how I can call similar since they are always unique but I think you guys can have a sense of vintage semi rare collectible that people like to use when they have special interest like beer and barbeque).

So even though I find these goodies I do not necessarily buy them.

This would give me volume and also bread and butter higher average price.

Cheers

[Paulo H Leocadio]

How much is the average price of your bread and butter?

Jay mentions quite often about his bread and butter, and this week he also mentioned the fact they try not to focus on ~$20 items.

I wonder what is the average price of Jay/Ryanne’s bread and butter?

For me everything is vintage/collectibles with few exceptions. Exceptions are usually things from my former hoard I am selling or something quite extraordinary I find (like some cheap designer shoes).

At the end of the day my bread and butter is composed by figurines, porcelain, Wedgwood Jasperware, however they are around $15-$30.

Wonder if you guys can have things priced higher

Thnx for your help

[Paulo H Leocadio]

Coincidence?

I finished revising all my 600 items. Also, finally had my shipping label issue addressed after 1 year.
Several things are selling, never had this movement since july last year.

Also, my contract client’s office is in the same building as a medical facility, bringing loads of odd shaped boxes, been amazing because I am getting like 3-5 of each of these really odd dimension we always need once in a blue moon. Super difficult to beat my introversion (my big barrier to avoid garage sales and similar)

[Paulo H Leocadio]

It happened with me twice Linda: one of them a couple of weeks back the buyer contacted me a little later mentioning the reason, I just reimbursed her.
The other time the buyer never contacted me back.

[Paulo H Leocadio]

Hello BethGreen, for my small sized store it makes total difference, and the activity has a mid term impact, I feel the activity or lack of in a ~9 weeks interval more or less.
I try to have items to list one per day at least.

[Paulo H Leocadio]

You bet T-Satt. Imagine someone like me with a clinical disorder (PTSD and OCD) that drove a severe case of hoarding.
Mostly because of you guys over the last year I leveraged my OCD to create an “obsession” for eBay and it worked because a lot of it is related to passion.
It is a good obsession to have and a great therapy.
I managed to get rid of it all and make money. Clothing, collectibles, etc. Unused designer shoes, imagine.
Now I am really digging, things I could never imagine I would be able to make it.

And I still have this forum. :0)

[Paulo H Leocadio]

Freelancing

My main activity would be my Consulting/Freelancing business and not my eBay store (in terms of income specifically).
However I experience some of what Jay comments on the podcast this week.

Even though I usually have a lot of independence on the what and how, at the end of the day you get a lot more involved beyond the actual hrs of the contract, making it very difficult for other activities (for example I am writing this from the client’s office, not comfortable at all, but it gets to a point where I need refresh and variation).

It is likely this contract will be extended, very good pay and I have now other benefits (they are paying 50% of my health insurance for the whole family for example).

Catch 22

[Paulo H Leocadio]

Summer, seasonality and intertwined activities

Hello friends, as I mentioned last week, I am facing some issues related to defect caused during my time traveling, I am taking the opportunity to make radical revision.

The first one is related to the listings, I am revising each one of them for weight, shipping options, item availability, pricing strategy.

I have several listings that come with checked option for the listing plus larger images. Even when I bulk change or change individually they come back as checked as well. I will try calling eBay since this might be still impacting my cost.

Also, my main scale was broken by the cable guy … so I took the opportunity to buy a new one (all my asset expenses are written off since my eBay store is under a corporation, so for my acquiring almost anything for the company writes off as much as anything COGS related).

The next step is related to my storage, I need to reorganize it since this is a mini inventory. I need to buy some extra shelves like the ones I decided to use. These types of assets are also written off in another asset line.

Lastly, thnx to the lessons from Jay and Ryanne, I have managed to beat my hoarding (some of you will possibly remember, one of the consequences of my cancer was a PTSD and consequent OCD that exposed my hoarding).
I dumped or sold whatever. Now I am still finding very nice stuff like vintage electronics I am putting up for sale, this will give me room for the business related expenses.

I will make some comments about my rental house in the Shampoo and Booze forum

Cheers

[Paulo H Leocadio]

I am applying several learning’s besides list and forget. I heard you talk a lot about buying cheap, so I am focusing on my weekly auction on $5 items, with very few exceptions (like batches, or lots, or those items I am confident of knowing well). So most of the items that keep dropping to under that threshold I take a risk. They are helping me to build my bread and butter pipeline of collectibles and yielding a very nice profit margin.

Usually porcelain, Jasperware (sell these a lot), lately some crazy very interesting stuff like a 1919 photo portfolio album from a NYC studio sold yesterday to Italy through Global Shipping.

These art things (photos, 18mm projector from same era) are easy bet for Italy.

Also, been selling a lot of pre recorded MiniDiscs for $30 average

[Paulo H Leocadio]

Putting the store on Travel/Vacation mode

Friends, just returned from a 3 week trip to Mexico, Wisconsin and Colombia for a project on my other business. In the meantime I sold my rental house and managed my eBay very badly.
What I usually do is to have wifey and kids to pack/ship for me since my volume is low, did not work this time and I missed 3 times. As a result I lost all my privileges.

Here is the catch: upon reviewing my ratings it does not mention the cases I missed shipping time at all, it mentions only the cancellations (items that sold on Amazon and I forgot to remove from eBay). Anyway my defect rate is now higher than 0.5% and I am not top top anymore.

And yet again here is the weird part: I changed handling time on the second week and then my store started the selling spree, even those items I purchased at the very beginning without any experience and other personal stuff are selling all of a sudden (2 really expensive pair of designer shoes, Microsoft t shirts never wore, equestrian hat I thought would never sell).

Crazy good coincidence. Lesson I never get tired of learning: listing and forgetting is the best of all this. Stuff will indeed sell (on my case for vintage/collectibles)

[Paulo H Leocadio]

This week’s cast is phenomenal because it gets to the exact point about my passion (eBay as a business is a “consequence” of my passion to merge the hobby and possibility to make money).
I love picking, scavenging, goldimining as much as I love the rarities, to talk about them.
I am very introverted (shy actually, not necessarily introverted) and radical nerd. The things I do personally and professionally were not well interpreted in the past (remember the 90’s movies about nerds and also being a trasher).
Today the media coverage, TV shows, etc enabled people like me to come out and have a good time.
eBay is a great enabler for businesses in different levels.
I can travel and do what I like and at the same time do it with a purpose to make money (until recently I was just a major hoarder).

[Paulo H Leocadio]

I received the email for the supplies and the promoted listing as well. just noticed I never used my promote listing credit so far

[Paulo H Leocadio]

THANK YOU STEVE!!!!

Hidden like to block someone, what a pain

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