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I’m mainly worried about having free returns enabled for non-clothing, heavier stuff,
I’m pretty sure that free returns are enabled on a per-item basis, so just b/c you offer free returns on clothing, doesn’t mean you have to offer it on hard goods, for example.
Here are a few sales that brought in some good money (some of which was used to cover the inevitable bad buys – see https://www.scavengerlife.com/forums/topic/bad-buy-of-the-year-2018/#post-52002 )
I learned to buy good quality wool blankets on old episodes of Scavenger Life. I bought this Scandinavian wool blanket for $5 at a yard sale, hoping to get $100-125. Let it go for $88 in 4 months.
New with tags vintage (90s?) mickey mouse dress. Bought at Salvation Army for $8. Sold for $55 in 2 months.
Discovered a new (to me) high end men’s shoe brand: Grenson. Love their customer service! I contacted them about sizing b/c I didn’t know if the size printed was a US or UK size, and they also told me the style name and color name of the shoe. Purchased for $8 at an independent thrift store. Sold in a week for $99.
Purchased a lot of new in package Soft Surroundings silk curtains (3) and pillow shams (3). All 6 for just $20 at a yard sale. I vaguely remembered the brand from someone posting on SL about selling this brand’s clothing for good prices really quickly, and I ended up having similar luck with these. Sold the curtain panels for $89 each and the shams for $35 each. Everything sold within 5 months.
T-Satt,
That’s a good question, so I just checked. I have been doing this partial refund thing for several months now, and my “cases closed w/o seller resolution” remains at 0.00%. So the only ding is the INAD, but that stays no matter what you do or how much you refund.The_SEAM_Store,
Thanks for that additional info from anchor support. That’s great to hear and re-assuring.OK, so I just called ebay and was able to get my FVFs refunded for these transactions. It wasn’t too painful, either, probably b/c I wasn’t trying to argue about the return reason. Just spoke briefly with the first rep, and once they agreed that I should be refunded, I ended up talking to an account specialist who issued the refunds. What also helped from my point of view is that I had them do 5 of these all in one call. I think it would be too much overhead to call ebay for just one item at a time. So I’ll continue to wait to call ebay until I have a few of these piled up.
One funny thing I have to mention is the rep gave me a LOT of praise (lol) for actually going ahead and refunding the buyers for the false INAD returns, and no criticism at all for these being partial refunds that subtract out shipping costs. It sounded like they don’t like it when sellers get upset about the return reason and don’t *voluntarily* refund the buyer. So I feel like this call to ebay further validates my method. At least for now, until the next site update comes out and everything changes 🙂
I did ask them about the unfairness of having the false INAD dings on my account, which show up in the service metrics, and the account specialist said that they have no way of changing return reasons. It will be interesting to see what happens if/when ebay ever decides to go through with the plan of actually raising FVFs for sellers based on service metrics.
And so, like the sand of an hourglass, so goes the continuing saga of false INADS…
The_SEAM_Store,
You are right!! Argh, I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll have to think about whether I want to try calling ebay about these returns after they close. Since I dread having conversations with ebay reps about false INADs, I may just put the lost FVFs down to cost of doing business, with that cost partially offset by the amount I save doing a partial refund instead of full. We’ll see.
Jay,
I go into the PayPal transaction for the purchase in question and do a partial refund. Within a day or so, the ebay website sees that refund and prompts me to refund the rest of the money. At this point I don’t do anything, and within about 2-3 weeks the return auto-closes. I assume that if the buyer called ebay to complain they would get the rest of their money back, but then I would call to appeal. This hasn’t happened to me yet, so I can’t say for sure how it would turn out.I never buy Clarks shoes, but made an exception this time because they were in perfect condition AND I’ve found this style of shoe can sell well. Purchased for $6 at Salvation Army, sold for $45. Took 6 months to sell.
Last spring I found NIP vintage English Leather products for cheap at various rummage sales and lotted them up. COGS for the lot ended up at $5. Sold in 5 months for $69.
Seatbelt bags are no longer popular! Purchased this one for $11 hoping for $50-70, finally got rid of it for $17 eleven months later. So happy to see it go.
Purchased this 90s track/leisure suit based partly on what I learned from The Poetry Of Nice sales videos. Perfect condition. Paid $5, sold for $49 in just 2 months.
J Crew Collection wool coat – paid $15, sold for $175 in less than a month.
I don’t usually buy mugs, but couldn’t pass this one up – based on the style, age, and name. Paid $1, sold when I lowered the price from $30 down to for $20. I originally priced very high ($33) hoping a Bernie Sanders fan would snap it up, but I think it was a couple years too late for that. Also not in great condition as I think it was being used as a pen/pencil holder for a very long time, so personally I wouldn’t want to actually drink out of it. Took 5 months to sell.
I love finding vintage fabric that has the brand name printed on the selvedge so I can look it up! Got into fabric based on Scavenger Life, of course. Paid $1 for this 2-yard piece. Sold in 4 months for $30.
Here is the post I was trying to link to:
One thing I learned a while back is that trying to fight a return reason before I have received the item back is a no-go with ebay customer service – it just leads to maximum frustration. The way I have been avoiding this type of hellish experience recently is by waiting until I have received the item back AND the amount of return shipping has shown up on my ebay activity, then I go into paypal and refund original item price (not including original shipping) minus return shipping. Then I send a message to the buyer explaining why their refund is the amount that it is. So far for 3-4 returns, the buyer has either just not responded, or has responded telling me that they don’t like it. The return then auto-closes 2-3 weeks later. I started doing this on the advice of ebay reps.
I imagine that if a buyer calls ebay to fight these, that they would get the rest of their money back, at which point I could then appeal.
If my number of INAD/damage returns starts inching up towards 10 (thus risking being rated “very high”), I will start calling ebay to try to get the return reasons changed on the bogus INADs.
Thanks for the shoutout on the podcast, Jay! You referred to what I had posted here (and also in other threads):
which is my method of not paying for any shipping costs on false inad returns. To respond to Ryanne’s comments about this on the podcast, this is different than the ebay functionality for TRS+ listings which allows you to not refund original shipping. What I describe is for sellers who do NOT offer free returns, and it involves doing a partial refund via PayPal in an amount that results in not being out ANY shipping costs, and most of the time involves no calls to ebay.
My method does not fix the problem of having an INAD on your record. I wonder if the TRS+ method does? (I’m guessing not).
I would ask the folks at InkFrog if they have a solution for this. Maybe there’s a way you could sign up for InkFrog temporarily, get their system to make a copy of your listings and photos, then end the auctiva listings, cancel auctiva, then relist via InkFrog, and then cancel InkFrog?
I’m not an InkFrog user, so this is just a shot in the dark.
Personally I am enjoying the results of having gotten much pickier. Much less “ugh, I really don’t wanna list/pack that” going on later at home.
It’s an INAD simply b/c the customer chose INAD as the return reason. that’s just how it works – there is nothing stopping the buyer from setting the wrong return reason. And there’s nothing you can do about it until you receive the item back. Then you can call ebay and try to fight the inad. What I actually do is refund the buyer how much they deserve to get back given that it’s not really an INAD, and wait and see if they complain to ebay. Whatever happens, at some point you can call ebay and fight to try to get the return reason changed from INAD to something else. I’ve actually never called to fight the reason since my inad percentage is still low – I just want to make sure I don’t have to pay for shipping.
Is your INAD percentage on the verge of being very high?
