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I would talk to the physical rehab facility about meeting with a social worker before going forward with cleaning the house. If the rehab facility doesn’t have a social worker they work with, talk with the hospital about meeting with one. It can be REALLY psychologically hard for a hoarder to part with their things, even when every outside person can clearly see it’s trash and a health hazard. A social worker can help you chart a path to helping your friend in a compassionate way.
As for the actual clean out, I have been to a hoarder house, and it was unreal in a way that will probably never leave me. I will never do it again. If you watch shows like “American Pickers”, they make it seem so fun, like “Ha ha, we’re just crawling all around this dirty, leaky barn and having a great time looking for fun things!” What they don’t tell you about is what a hoarder house/barn smells like. It’s 30 years of rot, dampness, mold, rodent piss. There’s a decent chance you will find something dead on the property. You may also find evidence of a drug or addiction problem. That can go hand in hand with hoarding. I stumbled upon several cases of cheap, cheap vodka hidden in different areas of the property. (And yes, I also found a dead thing amidst the stuff).
Have you been in your friend’s house before, or are you going into this situation blind? If you’ve been inside, have you seen all of the rooms or just ones that your friend was willing to let you see?
Does the plumbing work? Is there electricity? Air Conditioning? Do the windows open? Even if the place is clean but merely jammed full of stuff, it will be incredibly dusty. I’d bring a cooler of bottled water, hand sanitizer, flashlights, bug spray, and breathing masks to handle the dust.The thing that surprised me the most was the psychological impact the hoarder house had on everyone that was there. This was an estate auction I went to, so none of us had any personal connection to the homeowner or property. Every single person at that sale was upset, agitated, overwhelmed, and stressed from being on the property. Even the auctioneers were overwhelmed, and these were very, very experienced people. Being around a huge volume of stuff plus having to make endless judgment calls on all of it, (does it have value? Is it too damaged to salvage?), plus having to keep to a schedule was exhausting, physically and mentally.
I don’t know if that helps at all. I feel like I just rained down negativity, but yikes. Hoarding situations are really hard.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
Liz.
I was able to get photos back for all but 2 of my listings by checking the cache on google. The other two I was able to grab off Bonanza. So maybe Bonanza is good for something after all! 😉
I can’t get worked up about this until eBay says “You need to take a specific action regarding taxes”.
What I expect will happen is that several states will push through legislation to collect internet sales tax. Ebay will give sellers an option of sorting the taxation mess out on their own OR paying X dollars a month/quarter/year to use eBay’s soon-to-be-created tax collection/remittance service for small sellers. Ebay is going to find some 3rd party bolt-on product that works behind the scenes to calculate the taxes. They probably already have a few 3rd party vendors in mind and have had many high-level meetings with techy people to say “So, what do we need to do to make this happen in the US?” This may even make it easier for people like Julie that have to jump through all sorts of hoops with Georgia. They can opt-in to eBay doing the hoop-jumping for them.
The photo looks to be from around the turn of the 20th century, so probably 1900-1910-ish. I wouldn’t put it much past that date, based on the way the lady is dressed and the man’s shirt collar.
As for the boy’s hat, no idea!
Do you have any information about where this photo came from? If it came from an estate auction, do you know the name of the deceased? If you know the last name of the family, you might be able to find an obituary and piece together what nationality the family was.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
Liz.
How did you do it, Sigilini?
NVM, I figured it out! Not easy to find! Of course, I found it 2 minutes after asking how to do it!
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This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
Liz.
If I see that the same buyer bought items in different transactions, I’ll combine the shipments and refund any overage *even if the buyer doesn’t ask me to do it*. Because it’s the right thing to do, and keeping an extra $3 or whatever is not worth an angry buyer and negative feedback.
The exception to this is if Item A is something fragile and Item B is a heavy book, (for example), and putting them together would break Item A. Or they bought Items shipping via different carriers and combining the shipping would end up costing more. Then I send a message saying “Your items are coming in separate shipments due to <reason>. Thanks for the sale!”.
Don’t assume that buyers know what you know about shipping or combining purchases, even if they have high feedback and theoretically “should know better”. If they are asking you about it, they are proving they don’t know better. Maybe they only intended to buy Item A but after the sale ebay suggested Item B to them, and they said “Yes, I want that too!”.
My “Take this job and shove it” moment came when my employer suggested I find a 24 hour day care for my then infant son, because needing to pick my son up from daycare was not acceptable to her. The boss that told me this also had an infant in daycare; however, it was major priority that she leave on time daily to pick up her child from daycare.
Nope. Not playing that game.
I went home, made up a spreadsheet of all my debt, and how quickly I could pay it off. Found a better job that allowed me to keep my son home with me instead of putting him in daycare, and paid the debt off even faster. My employer was *stunned* and nasty when I quit. I didn’t even finish my 2 weeks notice, because they made it so uncomfortable and impossible to do my job.
I have a hard time picturing myself going back to work for The Man ever again. If I ever do, it will just be for the social interaction once we’re empty nesters!
I wish there were more casual photos of Nancy Wilson online. People can look so different when they are dressed formally, made up, etc.
Is there a Nancy Wilson fan club on facebook? Maybe you could post the picture there and see anyone can positively id her.
The lady on the left looks more like Nancy Wilson to me. I don’t think she’s Ronnie Spector; Ronnie and the Ronettes were super-stylish for their time. The lady on the left is super cute, but she’s not dressed the way Ronnie Spector would have dressed back then. The only picture I’ve seen of Ronnie Spector with short hair is from her senior year of high school. After that, her hair was all beehives and piled high on her head!
So, maybe Nancy Wilson? Or else a bunch of studio musicians who were hoping to make it big one day and having a great time. 🙂
It probably reduces some work for ebay, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if customer service gets a lot of calls from buyers asking how to start a return.
Making the return process unnecessarily difficult in order to discourage returns turns buyers off to buying on eBay. Ebay does not have a good reputation among potential buyers because too many of them have had frustrating experiences with difficult sellers. Those buyers don’t come back and are vocal in their opinion about why eBay is a scam and a hassle.
In your dress example, yeah, eBay could make the return button less obvious to hopefully frustrate the buyer into keeping the dress. But the next time that buyer needs to buy a dress for an event, they may avoid buying from eBay entirely because they know that if the dress doesn’t work out, they are stuck with it. They’ll go to Modcloth or Amazon instead.
A “take it or leave it” attitude does not bode well for the health of a retail business. Buyers have a lot of choices.
I don’t see it as “pushing an agenda”, (what agenda is that, by the way?). How does ebay make money by encouraging buyers to return items? Do people really believe that buyers will see the “Start a Return” button and think “You know, I was going to keep this, but I really like clicking buttons! Let’s return it instead!” The only thing the returns button does is make it easier for a buyer to send back an item that they’d already decided they weren’t that happy with.
Many buyers are confused about how to start a return. They need a big button that says “Click Me!!!”, or else they don’t know what to do. I would rather direct a buyer to a big, obvious button to start the process than field another message asking me to walk them step-by-step through the return process.
Returns are a part of retail. You *will* have returns, no matter how much you fight them.
It’s a temporary name change, so I wouldn’t go crazy stocking up on ihop merchandise. Their press release says they changed the name “for the time being” to show how serious they are about burgers. *insert eye roll here*
06/11/2018 at 2:49 am in reply to: Best "Make Best Offer" Strategy on eBay as a vendor/seller #42099I can offer you my perspective on this as a buyer.
I recently submitted an offer on an item. The seller listed it at $90 OBO, plus REALLY high shipping. This item usually sells for around $70, and my offer was for $65, taking into consideration the over-priced shipping. After a day and a half, the seller finally declined my offer. No counter. Just decline. That is really frustrating. What’s the point of Best Offer if you aren’t willing to work with the buyer a little? It takes just a few seconds to counter offer. I’d really like to buy this item, but now I’m annoyed because it feels like the seller is playing some sort of game. It makes me not want to buy from them at all. I’ll probably end up paying more than what I originally planned because I’d rather buy from a seller that doesn’t make me feel like they are playing games.
I get 50% offers all the time. Sometimes I take them, sometimes I counter and say “I can’t do 50%, but I can do 75%/80%/whatever”. Engage with the buyer a little. Buyers generally aren’t trying to put one over on you by offering what you think is a low ball offer. A lot of them probably pick a dollar amount out of the air and make that the offer, with the expectation that the seller will probably counter offer.
When I have had this problem in the past, I made 3 contact attempts over 2 weeks. The final message said something like “I’ve been unsuccessful in contacting you. If I do not hear from you within 48 hours, I will assume you no longer want this item, and will refund you, minus the shipping cost that has already been paid”.
If no contact from the buyer, I refunded minus the shipping cost and relisted the item. I only had one buyer freak out about it and raise hell, but ebay backed me up.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
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