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Most of these transactions using freight forwarding companies go smoothly, although I have had one of these companies try to scam me once. You might throw the company’s name / address into your google machine and make sure it is not a known scam. Adding a signature confirmation is a decent form of protection.
This is just my opinion, but at 10,000 items, the store is already way, way too big for anyone to browse the whole thing anyway. You might as well keep all your niche items in one store so your customers can enjoy perks such as combined shipping (saving you money as well). If you have 10% repeat customers, that is pretty awesome and shows you have built a reputation amongst your core buyers. I don’t see the advantage for you to start another niche store.
Make sure to check the copyright and other info on the back. HP still makes some of these classic calculators and they look like they are vintage. The newer ones are not all that valuable.
I would just take a return under the stipulation that the buyer pays the return shipping. If the color is a big deal to him, he’ll eat the return shipping costs. When faced with losing some money, often those minor color discrepancies become much more tolerable for the buyer.
Anyway, that’s what I would do rather than going to war over this item and/or risking negative feedback.
This once again shows the importance of actually reading your transcribed message before you send it.
You should respond like this:
“Well that solves the mystery of my missing toupee.”
The guy was in poor health (very overweight) and was probably in his late 50s. He had a PDA with the scanner attachment on top, which made me think he wasn’t just a total newb to Amazon. He looked so thoroughly bored by the process that I’m sure he’s been in the game a while.
Looked like he had pulled maybe 5 or 6 books to purchase.
I’ve noticed on the web eBay version that sometimes under shipping options it’s not showing “Priority Mail Padded Flat Rate Envelope.” It’s very annoying. I suppose I could just set a flat shipping rate for the $6.30, but that’s a pain.
Anyone else have this issue?
After writing this all out last night, I just decided it wasn’t worth the time, stress, and energy to sit on this until Wednesday and fight it out over $20. Plus, there’s always a risk of getting a less than knowledgeable eBay rep who would rule against me and ding my account.
I gave him the $20 refund and blocked him. I will probably also report him to eBay.
Moving on now to more positive, productive work.
Thanks for letting me vent and for the advice.
I bought a Zebra printer (TLP2844) used on eBay for about $100. It has probably been the best purchase I’ve made for my eBay business. You can print USPS labels, although I haven’t found a way to print any of the Fedex labels. If someone knows a way to get Fedex labels from the Zebra without some 3rd party paid service, please let me know. In any case, the Zebra is amazing. Never had a single problem with it and you can get compatible sticky labels fairly cheap on Amazon.
As for boxes, you might see if your area has a packaging warehouse nearby. In Kansas City, we have several. I go to one that manufactures packing peanuts, but also offers many other packing supplies, including new boxes and misprint boxes (for very little money).
Looks like your hat didn’t sell, unfortunately. From my experience, hats are probably not the best candidates for an auction. I have over 200 hats for sale, and when I check the page views, most only seem to get a few dozen views a month. Hats are just too niche for auctions and require major patience to get a good price.
In regards to the video game seller saying the item is tested and works, but has no AC adapter on the listing: He probably has a complete system and just borrows the AC adapter from it to test the other one. For example, it is very difficult to find an NES with the OEM power adapter, so I will sell them without any chords, but test them first using the power cable from my personal system to make sure they work.
Most of the numbers you can get by clicking on the GDBK home page (web browser version) and clicking on the “View Details” link by the Profit and Loss graph. That page gives you a rundown on your income and expenses, with the ability to see it for any date range you want.
To break down between Amazon Sales / Amazon Returns and eBay Sales / Ebay Returns, you need to create new subcategories that feed into the Sales / Returns main categories. You’ll have to manually change the categories of the original entries to the new classification.
To get the Total Transactions, on the “View Details” page, click on “Sales by State” at the top. This gives your breakdown, which you can add up to get total transactions.
Here is my Q2 via my Godaddy bookkeeping numbers.
Amazon Sales: 1,248.17
Ebay Sales: 15,928.17
Shipping Income: 2,495.07
Amazon Returns: -242.49
Ebay Returns: -425.83
Amazon Fees: -475.80
Ebay Fees: -2,015.88
COGS: -1,404.18Profit: 15,107.23
Total Transactions: 640
Overall, not a bad quarter for me, despite having a June that was the worst sales totals I’ve had in 2 years.
