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It seems counter-productive for eBay to limit sellers, for no reason other than “Because”. Ebay makes more money when items sell.
If it is a vintage pair, I will measure, because old sizing systems may not equal new sizing systems. I provide outside measurements only, in that case.
If it is a contemporary pair by a well known brand, I do not measure. Brands have size charts on their website. Most adults know what size shoes they wear.
There is only so much hand-holding I am willing to do for a customer.
I hear you, Julie. My husband seems stuck on things he remembers as special and “fancy” from his childhood. Made in Japan teacups have a tendency to follow him home. Luckily he doesn’t venture out too much on his own any more. When he does, I just smile, say “Thank you so much!”, and cross my fingers that we’ll break even.
Total Items in Store: 340
Items Sold: 27
Total Sales: 450.75
Highest Price Sold: $44.99 (vintage wood embroidery hoop)
COGS: About $50
Returns: 1 (holiday decoration that broke, so I refunded. Thanks FedEx Smartpost :/ )My store has been really busy. Lots of book and craft sales. Lower selling price, but easy to ship, and I’m happy to move stuff out the door.
I have listed about 50 items this week. I have another 20 items that I photographed today. Death piles are shrinking. Yay!
Zero thrifting by ME this week, (other than the book shelf I bought for my son’s room), but my husband went thrifting without me, and brought back several items! Oh no!
I also dropped off several boxes at Goodwill this week, after I decided we are not going to have a yard sale. It’s too much work for too little return. I’d rather be the person that stops at garage sales than the person that has garage sales!
My kitchen is an unfortunate landing space for auction finds. Lots of counter tops and a big island in the middle. I don’t like to move anything into my storage room until it’s clean, which means everything languishes in the kitchen until I get it processed.
At the last auction, I did sort out the Goodwill stuff before I even left the property. I think that’s a step in the right direction.
I too am ditching SmartPost. I had 2 SmartPost packages arrive damaged in 1 month, (and 1 of them I bubbled wrapped the heck out of AND double boxed. The item still arrived broken).
I’m going back to using the USPS Regional Rate boxes. They usually aren’t too much more than what I was paying for SmartPost, and they come with free insurance!
Well, one of my fabric death piles just committed suicide. I pulled out a big piece of vintage woven fabric, and the sheer black backing to it disintegrated into a fine, black dust that covered everything in the box. I debated washing all of it again, said “nope”, and dumped the whole box in the trash.
I did get 3 more lots of vintage linens listed before the other box did itself in. So, progress, one way or another!
I can’t believe I forgot about this one.
So, a few months ago, I received a notification that 2 military-themed snapback hats sold on ebay. It was really late at night, so I went to bed, thinking I would box them up in the morning. Before I even turned out the light to go to sleep, the buyer had started a chargeback on the hats. Not a request to cancel, not a return, but a chargeback. I thought “That’s kind of odd”. Looked up the buyer name and address, and it rang a bell. Did a google search to confirm.
It was Bowe Bergdahl’s mom. No idea what all that was about, and I’m sure I don’t really want to know.
The last auction I went to was January 8, and I haven’t bought any new inventory since. Woohoo! Then I checked auctionzip, and 2 new auctions have popped up -one in 2 weeks, the other the week after that. :/ It’s really tempting, because one of the plans for 2017 is to branch out to new areas. These are auctioneers that run auctions infrequently, too. Decisions, decisions.
I added 3 listings from one of my ultimate death piles: fabrics and linens. I buy boxes of this stuff, and then hem and haw about how to sort it and divvy it up for listings, (by color? fiber content? size? Ooooh, look, so pretty…I’ll just stuff it back in the box and not deal with it). In the future, I am only going to buy this stuff if I look at it and immediately mentally group it for a listing.
So I grabbed a box of it, made 4 piles of similar stuff, got 3 listed, and 1 has already sold for $30. Now I feel motivated to tackle another box of fabric.
I’m not entirely sure of how she found my item. She has one of those weird, generated user ids that look like gibberish.
I really liked this podcast. I liked the comment about “not trying to build an empire”. I have a small store by most people’s standards. I make in a month what Jay and Ryanne make in a week. Would I like to make more money? Sure. But I have other responsibilities, and as Jay said up-thread, there is only so much complexity I can handle at a time. I have sometimes felt a little reluctant to share numbers, because they aren’t that great in comparison to others. I don’t want to build an empire. I just want to make enough money to fence in my property and install carpeting. After that, I want to visit my aunt in NY, and then save all my money for retirement.
Anchor store reps and regular store reps: I have felt for a little while that the service I get from the ebay reps has gone down hill. Last year I had the mid-tier level store, and had mostly positive experiences with reps that seemed to want to help me fix problems. This year, I downgraded to the basic level store, and often feel like I get a “whatever” response from the reps. I had one rep recently tell me “Ebay really doesn’t want to get involved in these sorts of problems”, in reference to an INAD case. I was like, ok, well, I guess I’ll go f*** off then, lol, (no, I didn’t say that).
I hate the idea that there may be tiered level customer service, but it doesn’t surprise me. Lots of businesses do it. Maybe they are over-run with problems from basic level stores run by SAHM selling $3 shirts from the weigh and pay, and are only willing to invest more time into people that are willing to invest more in eBay. *shrug*
I think he is legit. His name is familiar, so I think he is a repeat customer. He has lots of feedback, both as a buyer and a seller.
I think I’m just surprised, because this is only the 2nd time in my life an item has vanished from the postal stream. The other time, I was the buyer. Both times, they were books.
I have a friend that does this. I did the math, and on every 99 cent sale, they make a profit of 11 cents. They have a basic level store and do not have Top Rated Seller Status.
He could literally make more money bringing them to a used music store, having a yard sale, or taking the tax write-off by donating them to any charity or the local library.
The only explanation I have gotten for why he does this is a) he doesn’t have time to research all these cds, because he is too busy going to auctions, so he’d rather get a little something now than waste time and get nothing (???), and b) maybe one of these cds is valuable and a bidding war will commence and he’ll make a ton of cash, (he runs all auctions).
It makes no sense to me.
