Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
My initial reaction was that I would honor the original sale, even if it would mean giving up the opportunity to get $1M. When it’s an ehtical/moral issue, the amount of money shouldn’t matter. I try to make it a rule to not let money be the primary deciding factor in anything unless it’s the only important factor. And I thought of this situation along the lines of “I gave my word and I must honor it” and the auction gavel example. However, after reading the many interesting and informative responses here, I have changed my mind. The ebay system is clearly NOT like a live auction, for the many reasons given. It’s a bit more loosy-goosy all around with cancellations happening all the time, particularly on the part of the buyer. So now I feel much more comfortable saying “oops! Sorry – I have to cancel”, though realizing that it would be really annoying (and not tolerated by ebay) if this were a frequent occurrence.
Great thread!
I don’t know about sales tax (don’t collect it yet), but yes, it does split up the income from selling price and shipping price into two different categories. On the expense side, it splits up ebay fees, paypal fees, shipping costs automatically.
ssmantua,
I am very curious: how did you offer the partial refund? Did you offer it via ebay messages? Or did you offer it via the “partial refund” option in ebay’s return process? If you offered it via the ebay return process, then the buyer should not be able to open a case against you and I would try to get this appealed. They should have just rejected the offer and then you would be prompted to take the next step of accepting the return. But I’m guessing that you offered it via a regular ebay message – am I right?Re: returns for fit, I recently offered a small partial refund when someone said that the shoes didn’t fit, and they accepted that. I don’t know why, and I doubt it would happen often, but it did happen.
I switched from an individual account to a business account very early on, but I don’t remember why. I think it’s most helpful to those who have an official (registered) business name maybe?
Thanks for the input, northernpinesgallery. Did you do the partial refund directly via paypal, or via the ebay website’s return system (when a customer requests a return, there is an option on ebay to “offer a partial refund”)?
11/17/2017 at 3:08 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 334: The Holidays Are Just Another Day #25776BethGreen,
That’s a great question. See Tsatt’s awesome data above for an idea of what that decrease has been for his growing store over time. I may start to track this for my store as well. But also important to keep in mind that even if your sell-through percentage rate goes down, it’s a lower percentage of a much higher # of items, so overall it’s a win.
11/17/2017 at 12:37 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 334: The Holidays Are Just Another Day #25744dearmila,
I read your post! Sounds great that you are doing things so systematically – I think I could benefit by batching up my ebay tasks more.
Re: planning for a larger store, don’t forget to take into account that sales don’t increase linearly with store size. In other words, doubling the size of your store doesn’t translate to double the revenue, though it certainly does increase it. Or, to put it another way, just because you sell 1% of the items in your store per day today, doesn’t mean that you will also sell 1% per day when you increase the size of the store. I think it was Simon who posted a simple explanation of this some time ago, having to do with the fact that the more items you have in the store, the higher the percentage of your store is made up of long tail items, which sell at a much slower rate.
I hope I’m not coming across as a wet blanket for your goals, just want to help you make realistic ones. I am impressed by your planning – I haven’t been organized or motivated enough to do any planning myself – maybe some day…
11/16/2017 at 9:51 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Hats, mailbox, 48 star flag, big boy pants, turntables, Jean jackets, Marilyn Monroe The Last Photos. #25742I love the Met item and story, Sharyn!
Why would the box need to be 4′ tall? If you put the lamps in side by side (double-boxed, as mentioned by another poster), I don’t see how you would have to go as large as 4 feet.
for me, silence is golden. Netflix is my reward for after work is done.
11/13/2017 at 10:24 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 334: The Holidays Are Just Another Day #25569BethGreen,
I have the exact same problem as you do with bulk feedback not working.I’m not a designer, but I think some variation of the top banner of scavengerlife.com would make a cool t-shirt. I love the old style graphics.
And then maybe on the back put the text “Always be listing”
An opportunity to try out amazon merch, perhaps.
A and C,
My mind went in the humor direction upon reading this topic title as well, but I couldn’t come up with a clever or funny answer. All I got was “make sure she sings last”.Yes! I just happened to notice this yesterday also, as I was looking into shipping something not reselling related. I was surprised to see the new Fedex shipping location at Walgreens that hadn’t been there before. I didn’t end up using it this time, but it’s going to be a good option for me for ebay, enabling me to offer FedEx for the heavy items that are too expensive via USPS – yay!
If you look up the location on fedex.com, it tells you when FedEx does the pickup.
-
AuthorPosts