Official 'COOL ITEM ON EBAY!' thread...

vcoleiro1 · Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 6:16 am Post subject:

Perhaps I should have explained that the Colorvision Guy ships from Canada. Now Canada seems to be the most expensive place in the world to have things posted to Australia. In my experience the postage has always been very high, much much higher than from the US. Don't ask me why.

That said , this guy is asking for a little bit over the top. Here's his reply to me about postage to Australia. Remember that this for a Colorvision which probably weighs about 1 pound and isn't that big. For eg , from Europe to Australia the shipping on my first Colorvision cost me 16 euro , ~$20 about the same as I've experienced from the US via First Class International:

Hi Victor,

First, all items are shipped from Canada, not from the US. So shipping Xpresspost? - International 7 business days
to Australia is $167.33. If you want it Priority? Worldwide, the price is $288.68. Both Xpresspost & Priority have
insurance (up to $100 included and have a tracking number). The lowest shipping price is $91.89 by International
Parcel - Surface (which takes about 8 weeks to ship) and has only insurance up to $100, no tracking number.

If you have other question(s), don't hesitate to ask them. Thanks!

Rik · Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 11:02 am Post subject:

blanka · Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 11:57 am Post subject:

It's just weird to see a difference between Ebay and Etsy.
On Etsy, the (mostly chick) sellers show their face, their name, they offer cheep shipping, and if your item gets lost, they refund you. They don't bother about filing claims at the postal service, dealing with paypal claims and s**t like that. Not happy = refund. If you calculate this into your price, and know that 2-3% goes into trouble, you can stay great and friendly to your customers.

On Ebay the seller is named jrk93, he has often a too-pretty feedback score of 100% on 9047 items, no receipts are given, no address or phone number of the seller, no VAT number. Nothing. You deal with annonymous ghosts. And that's the way they treat you. Ebay is the sewer of internet selling, but there is a lot of nice stuff in that sewer for us game lovers.

IMO there are lot of differences between countries. UK and USA are worst on Ebay. Canadians do much better, and in mainland Europe, I hardly have trouble with Ebayers.

GameWatchGuy · Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 12:41 pm Post subject:

blanka · Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 1:06 pm Post subject:

Why not go a webshop with 3500 sales?
On Ebay you can try the best you can, but your shop looks UGLY anyway. Ebay looks worse than the average Geocities site. Not to mention the way they format Emails to customers. Pure garbage.
You are always in the stress of the price you get, relisting forever.
Google gives better world-wide search to your items in your own webshop than Ebay does (seeking other countries is a hellish experience).
No matter how professional you try to be as Ebay-seller, you still look the same as the kid next door selling his brothers PS3 for free candy.
I really don't get it how this site remains so popular.
Nice comparisson:
Ebay sexysi247 (we all know Simon I guess) vs Jason from Retrogames.co.uk. Don't get me wrong: I did business with both, and they are both nice responsive guys, but I try to make a point on the look and feel Ebay pushes you into.
They do the same thing, selling our hobby, but the second delivers a way nicer shopping experience and probably has a much easier life to run the place. With the first I always have to laugh about "Item location: SAFE WITH ME, United Kingdom".
Here, take a listing:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BURG.....0373064047
That formatting is just pure 1993 HTML 1.0 unreadable awesomeness or not?
Makes me really curious about the WYSIWYG listing tool in Ebay Mr. Green

GameWatchGuy · Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:13 pm Post subject:

Hi.
Ebay is only about 5% of my income, probably less. The 3,500 sales from that particular eBay account were given very strong effort as do any of my sales from either my websites or other locations. Ebay does help to drive some traffic to my other sites. I have some auctions that are not made to be sold or gain any profit. The feedback helps give customers assurance that I'm honest and dependable when they arrive there from eBay.
I was just pointing out that some people who have 100% feedback really put in the effort 100% and there's really no way to get 100% and a large number of sales without having to take some s$%& from customers while keeping a smile. Hold no grudges, have no pride to win over, no points to prove. If you have a bad customer ban them and move on, you can write off the loss, and try not to lose any sleep.
With many varieties of people stereotyping will always peg some the wrong way. I like to keep an optimistic overlook so I've had an overall pleasant time on eBay. I've met some very nice people along the way. Try not to let the bad apples ruin it for you, as there will always be that one out of a hundred (or more) that is just a dick.

Oh. And yes. Some of eBay's policies really piss me off too.

~John

vcoleiro1 · Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 4:12 pm Post subject:

That's interesting , because for me the worst country in the world to order anything of from ebay is definately Canada. Actually it's got the point were unless it's something I really , really want, I wont bother asking for a shipping quote if the guy is in Canada . As you can see in my previous post , the postage quotes tend to be absolutely ridiculous.

Now, Ive just had a quote on another item on ebay located in Canada for an item that it bigger and heavier than the Colorvision, the shipping quote reply I got was as per below. Compare it with the one above I posted and you get what I mean. It's always the same, either the guy will try and rape you on postage(And I mean big time) or if your lucky it will come back normal

Hi!

Shipping: $39.50 air mail (1-2 wk delivery), $22.50 surface post (2-3 mo delivery)

Compare the above figure to those the numb nut quoted me for the Colorvision ie $167 and $92. And the worse thing is , if I went back and politely questioned him on the shipping costs he'd probably tell me I knew nothing about shipping costs. Very Very Frustrating.

There's a lot of anomalies on postage to, I understand most people want tracking and therefor stick to USPS Priority if it's coming from the US. But Priority usually makes buying anything prohibitive. If you are buying a game for $40 and the shipping is $40 (Normal USPS Priority cost for me) then it's a no go. You'll never get your money back if you want to sell it in future. I guess this is one of the biggest problems in buying of the net in general. The other funny thing I've noticed is that Priority is slower than First class even though its meant to be the other way around.
I had a theory that Australia Post don't know the difference between priority and first class and just assume first class is meant to be quicker and so deliver it quicker on this end.

The other trick to try is to indemnify the seller of any claim backs if they send it First class. As they have an ebay message record it should work as they can always raise it with ebay/paypal.

blanka · Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 11:35 pm Post subject:

Guess I ran into those bankrupt-household-we-sell-everything-from-them types on Ebay a little too often. They totally don't care about the stuff here and its attraction to us collectors.
That's why I try to deal with the low-star sellers mostly nowadays. 20-100 stars is perfect.

Rik · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 12:28 am Post subject:

Well, I've never really heard of Etsy, but it appears to be a site selling crafts and home-made items...? How many sellers are on that site? You really can't compare a craft site of 1000s of sellers to a free-for-all market place of millions and expect the same results... Etsy sellers seem to be people that enjoy their craft and make some money on it... eBay is full of people that just want to make money, but probably hate having to deal with buyers, packing things up, shipping things, etc...

I'm also completely opposed to 'eBay stores'. I hated when they started this. eBay is supposed to be an AUCTION site... At least, that's how they started. Now they just want to compete with Amazon, so there's tons of people just selling new stuff all the time at flat-prices with 'Buy-it-now' listings. If it's a 'collectible', they list at a really high price based on nothing but their own greed and, like you said, it sits there forever...

Yes, I will agree that eBay has been plagued by a lot of shady sellers, annoying sellers, and the same thing on the buying side. You have to at least slightly assume everyone is trying to rip you off until they prove otherwise. But, I've been using eBay for nearly 15 years, and have sold/purchased over 6000 items in that time (so not a massive seller like some of the eBay 'lifers', but a lot more than most). I think I can count on my hands the amount of times I've been ripped off by paying for something and not receiving (and everyone was an international sale, in the pre-PayPal days). Even less are the times I've sold something and they tried to rip me off through PayPal charge backs (something that wasn't even an option pre-PayPal. There was nothing a buyer could do unless the seller wanted to cooperate). Very polite complaining with PayPal got my money back on all 3 occasions, but the seller also got refunded (PayPal just ate the loss), so they think they succeeded in ripping me off... All 3 of those were domestic sellers.

Still, 13 or less 'problem' transactions out of 6000+ over a 15 year period is really not that bad...

As for shipping, yes it has gone up a lot (I think the post office is just taking advantage of the increase in shipping thanks to eBay... If it wasn't for the internet sales sites, they'd probably have no income anymore. Smile

When's the last time you mailed a letter?) There are also other people that will charge a LOT of money for international shipping just because they don't want to deal with shipping overseas for whatever reason, so discourage it by jacking the price up (instead of just blocking the bidders). Kind of like, I don't want to mess with customs forms, but if they want to pay $90 shipping, I'll do it...

As for feedback, if they have a 100% and lots of sales, they are doing _something_ right. Buyers will drop a negative feedback on you for the littlest thing, frequently without even trying to work it out with you first (or, after you 'work it out', they still neg you...)

What you want to watch out for is people that 4, 5, 6 digit feedback ratings, and ANYTHING under 100%. If they have a 99% and 60,000 feedback (in the last 12 months), that means they've pissed off 600 people. I don't look at as 59,400 happy costumers, I look at it as 600 annoyed costumers. You can satisfy every person on the planet and it won't make me feel better if I'm the one that gets screwed. If you can't kiss a little ass to avoid pissing off that many people, I'm not dealing with you... You can also look at their complete negative feedback history (eBay only goes back 12 months on the percentages now) using a site like www.toolhaus.org . Although, they seem to have problems getting to the feedback sometimes, not sure if that's permanent or not... There's probably other tools for doing that as well.

eBay is an interesting place, and it definitely takes a little work to a satisfied costumer there on a regular basis... Most people aren't that bad, but the ones that are seem to have a way of standing out... Smile

blanka · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 2:52 am Post subject:

GameWatchGuy · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 5:23 am Post subject:

HI.
Sure would be great if it could compete with eBay. It would make eBay even better as they would compete harder.
EBay is just so strong, probably nearing Walmart status.
It seems a tough battle though as eBay could easily be a nit picker and throw a few lawsuits their way, even if the lawsuits are unfounded. Ebay could afford it while the new guy couldn't. I do wish them all the luck though.

Oh, I think Bonanza (Bananzle) tried this too. But the excitement for the promising new company died quickly and seems eBay won again.

~John

Rik · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 10:31 am Post subject:

vcoleiro1 · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 5:22 pm Post subject:

Etsy is just an Arts and craft website, my wife has been using it for years to buy and sell stuff like baby's bibs she makes etc etc. It does have sections for other things as they are trying to branch out..

For example there are 50 electronic games on the entire site at the moment (I counted them). Everyone is way over priced , here's an example http://www.etsy.com/listing/96.....gallery_29

People have been saying Etsy will become the next ebay for ages, can't see it happening. It's absolutely massive for arts and crafts. Most women will know it, but for everything else, it's terrible.

There won't be another ebay competitor until some heavy weights get together , develop a kick ass site and then publicly advertise around the world that the site will be free of fees for a year so as to atract everyone on ebay over. IT will take something like that.

As for shipping, it's gotten to the point where I seriously have put the brakes on buying OS unless it's something I really want. Shipping costs are just to prohibitive and becoming worse (you would have thought in time they would have eased up)

Actually I thought about a good business idea lately, something is needed where people can buy freely on ebay and have there goods sent to a place which will ship it in a crate along with everyone elses goods for a pitance of what the post office charge for sea freight.

Ebay is like the modern day gold rush, if you want to seriously make money, you need to start selling shovels. OR in this case provide a good cheap shipping service.

blue6demon · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 10:24 am Post subject:

For those who wonder if people in Canada are trying to rip you off, just check on this site:

http://www.postescanada.ca/cpo.....ution=e1s1

All you need is the postal code of the sender or the city, you can find postal codes for cities on the same site, that will give you a pretty good idea !

Pat
_________________
Keep on playing... no matter what !

blanka · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 10:47 am Post subject: