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06/26/2017 at 2:55 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 316: Craigslist Road Trips- We Live For A Deal #19807
Week June 18-24, 2017
Total Items in Store: 411
Items Sold: 7 ebay, 1 Bonanza, 1 facebook
Cost of Items Sold: about $45
Total Sales: $871.95
Highest Price Sold: $750 Meissen porcelain figurineThe Meissen figurine came out of a box lot I bought for $22.50. There was another Meissen piece in the box that I sold last week for $250, and some Victorian era candlesticks that I still need to list, (I will probably list them for about $100). I’m cautiously excited about the $750 sale. The buyer has received it and has been silent, so hopefully that means they want to keep it. Their feedback left for sellers isn’t the greatest, so I agreed to the sale with the expectation they’d want to return it. Hopefully it’s true love and they are happy with the piece. 🙂
There are at least 2 ways to do this and keep you legit with ebay.
You could create a coupon code for the buyer, equal to $600. The buyer checks out and applies the code. They pay zero, but ebay still gets their cut.
You could have them buy the item but not check out. Then you send them an invoice reflecting a $600 discount.
There may be other ways, too, but those are what come to mind.
Call ebay again, and talk to a different rep.
If you get the same answer, I would simply refund the $13 and let it go. It would be terrible if it was the $400 item, but in this case it wasn’t. It was only a $13 belt, and it’s not worth losing TRS over $13, IMO.
The new style gas cans have changes to the venting and spouts compared to the older cans. The old cans are no longer made, because they are not up to current environmental standards. The new cans have “safety” features on them to (theoretically) limit vapor leaking and spilling. Unfortunately, the new type of gas cans are a pain in the can (ha ha) to use. The safety locks on them are hard to open, the gas doesn’t pour quickly, and the pour spout is difficult to attach without getting gas all over you. No more flexible spouts, either, so you end up spilling a lot of gas when you tip the can to pour it.
I am not certain it’s for pulling teeth. The equine extraction forceps I’ve seen are straighter at the business end than what you’ve got. The oral cavity of a horse isn’t all that spacious to work in once you’ve got the mouth gag/speculum in place, so a curved instrument would be somewhat of a disadvantage. You might ask a local veterinarian to have a look, or if you’ve got a friend that rides horses. They may be more familiar with vintage or antique instruments than me, (my experience is all small animal except for what we did in college).
06/10/2017 at 12:51 am in reply to: FedEx refuses to take packages unless in double-walled box #19228Two different FedEx offices have told me this about the double-walled box as well. I don’t think it’s a total up-sell on their part. I suspect FedEx does more shipping of heavier, freight-like items compared to USPS. Packages are probably getting slammed into by heavier items, so a thin box is not going to protect your stuff.
I still avoid shipping via FedEx, because a) I don’t like the delayed billing. Too many surprise bills where I was charged more than expected, even after generously rounding up on my measurements, and b) the customer service at the local branches is terrible. “We’re doing you a HUGE favor by letting you drop this off with us, so you can wait until I’m done texting” type attitude. I have zero time for that.
I’m probably in the minority, but I’ve always thought it was odd that the public assumed “the poor” would be delighted to buy their old stuff at a thrift store. Especially since there is no guarantee you will find what you need on any given day. People that are poor usually also have transportation issues and inflexible job schedules. They don’t often have the time and means to keep showing up at thrifts to hunt for truly useful items.
If the thrift stores were really trying to get useful items in the hands of the less fortunate, they’d give them needed items for free, like the food pantry does. But the thrifts don’t because they are running a business, just like all of us, and want to see profit to fund the other things that are important to them, (like job and childcare programs, which are probably going to be more helpful to the poor than someone’s old, dirty shoes).
06/02/2017 at 2:37 pm in reply to: Strange occurrences of multiple purchases – would you do anything? #18912I had a reshipper buy a bunch of things from me once, and I freaked out completely, thinking I was being set up somehow. But it was all good.
06/02/2017 at 2:08 am in reply to: Strange occurrences of multiple purchases – would you do anything? #18892This is a re-shipper. They probably have several clients from another country that asked them to purchase items from you, to reship to them. I would send the items separately. It probably makes it much easier for them to keep track of their client orders when they arrive in separate boxes.
05/29/2017 at 2:42 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 312: Is eBay Removing Old listings? #18707Total Items in Store: 431
Items Sold: 26 (24 ebay, 2 facebook)
Cost of Items Sold: $64.00
Total Sales: $519.61
Highest Price: $100 (Beretta shotgun case)
Returns: 0 -I had one person open a case for “Item Not Received”. Tracking showed it was delivered to a parcel locker at his address. He never responded to the case after I uploaded tracking, so I had ebay close the case.Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $15
Number of items listed this week: about 50I’ve been selling a lot of vintage mixer and vacuum cleaner parts lately.
So how’s everyone doing? I fell off the wagon for awhile. Hit a bunch of auctions, took a trip, got sick, blah blah blah. Then we did spring cleaning, and rounded up a bunch of our own stuff to sell. I’m back at listing death piles, and I’m down to the really tedious stuff that I’ve been avoiding.
I read a little of that KonMari book, and took a hard look at my death piles. I re-donated a bunch of things, which took care of one box of stuff. I got rid of all the clothes, except for 3 things. Pulled some pinch-pleat drapes out of one box, and discovered they had a mark on the bottom, so they are getting the axe. Pulled out a nice Gap duffle bag, and broke the zipper. :/ Bummer, but one less thing in the death pile!
There is an auction on Saturday, so I’m trying hard to get as much photographed as possible before then. Once I get the death piles conquered, I am going to look over my stagnant listings.
05/21/2017 at 10:11 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 311: The Summer Slowdownâ„¢ is Here #18298Week ending 5/20
Total Items in Store: 401
Items Sold: 22 (ebay) + 86 children’s books (facebook)
Total sold: $362.81 (ebay) + $204 (facebook) + $14.75 (used book store) = $581.56
COGS: $32.75Nothing really amazing sold on ebay this week. I think my highest dollar item was $30.
I put together several big lots of childrens books, and sold them on a few facebook homeschool groups. These were books my son had read and outgrown. It was a lot of work to get them all sorted and sold, but I’m glad they’re out of here. What was leftover was sold to the used book store.
Old globes and maps.
Accessories for the smart boards -pens, pen trays, cords, projectors, speakers, blue tooth connection, etc.
Microscopes, as long as the lenses aren’t all scratched up and the scope isn’t super old. Veterinary hospitals and homeschoolers love buying used microscopes. Binocular scopes are Preferred over monocular scopes.
Every retail business has dishonest customers. Nordstrom has notorious problems with people abusing their return policy. It sucks, but loss or “shrink” (ha ha, no pun intended), is part of the retail business. Any business, really -we had abusive clients in vet med that would throw (literal) screaming fits to get money off their bill. It used to make me SO mad when the doctor would cave and give them free services!
There’s no guarantee in ebay. No guarantee your item will sell, or that it will sell at a profit, or that it won’t get returned, or that you won’t lose money on any given item.
Most of the time, we all come out ahead, and that’s a pretty great feeling! 🙂
I avoid quantifying the amount of wear for my items. I’ll say something like “Saxon Math 7/6 Student Textbook, 3rd Edition. There is wear to the cover, spine, and book edges. No writing inside the book. See pictures to evaluate condition”.
They can look at the pictures and decide for themselves whether the amount of wear is acceptable or not.
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