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I am so disappointed in eBay. Is Etsy any better? eBay will not let me do anything like remove my info or close the account because I have about $4 in pending funds. They won't release the money either because the buyer doesn't know how to go in and confirm receipt. Anyone familiar with this? eBay used to be so great.
For eBay type items go with Facebook Marketplace. Flat 5% fee if something sells. You can ship everything and there are very few returns or scammers. And they run promotions at times were there is no fee at all. No listing fees. Anything that sells on eBay will move on Marketplace for about the same price. If you open a business account you get no seller fees through the rest of 2022. But tracking is required unless its local. If you are selling $4 items with free shipping. That won't work on Marketplace. I don't how that is worth anyone's time.
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,329 posts, read 54,363,738 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by andywire
You can have up to 7 stores on one phone number. That's one way to get around that and it can help boost sales by having separate stores. If one gets sucked into the void, oh well, you have 6 more. Or just hold off and create a new one when the old on gets terminated. But I understand the principle of not doing business with entities that have wronged you.
Ebay does terminate accounts frequently, and sometimes for what seems like trivial reasons. It's part of their algorithm for deciding what stores stay and what stores go. There is very little human involvement I would figure, and getting a hold of customer support to fix your problem is rather pointless. They have to get rid of stores that have no activity though. What happens if a seller mysteriously vanishes or dies or something??? Can't let people continue buying from a store with no seller.
For whatever it's worth, I don't think a seller with 160 rating is going to be pulling in many more sales than someone with 20 or 30. The biggest problem is if you get one crappy unreasonable buyer who leaves you a bad review for no good reason at all. When you have few ratings, that 1 bad review can totally wreck your entire store and force you to start another one to make any sales. Sometimes buyers will demand a refund or threaten to ruin your store that way, basically holding the seller's rating hostage.
I didn't have a store, just selling personal items, mostly collectible coins. My personal algorithm tells me I can live quite well without Ebay and I continue to do so.
eBay is supposed to be an auction site but if the item costs anything significant to ship then the seller can't run an auction because eBay started charging fees for shipping costs.
I was selling 16mm films which are heavy and expensive to ship. If I auctioned them off there was no guarantee I would make enough on the auction to pay eBays fees on the shipping charges. If I wanted to pay to get rid of the films I would just throw them into a dumpster. If I started the auction at a price that was going to cover the eBay fees on the shipping, people wouldn't bid on them because they thought the starting price was too high.
The only way around it is to sell "local pickup only" and specify in the listing that if there are any shipping charges the buyer has to pay for it after the auction. But it's probably a violation of their TOS. I did this for a projector that needed repair. The eBay fees would have been about $20 just on the shipping cost and the projector wasn't worth that much. Basically I just wanted to give it away to anybody who was willing to pay shipping and adding $20 on top of that wouldn't have found a home for it.
The way I got rid of the films was by selling enough of the collectible films that I could contact the buyers and ask if they wanted to buy less exciting titles outside of eBay. That is definitely against the TOS but like I said, I wasn't going to pay to get rid of them.
eBay is supposed to be an auction site but if the item costs anything significant to ship then the seller can't run an auction because eBay started charging fees for shipping costs.
I was selling 16mm films which are heavy and expensive to ship. If I auctioned them off there was no guarantee I would make enough on the auction to pay eBays fees on the shipping charges. If I wanted to pay to get rid of the films I would just throw them into a dumpster. If I started the auction at a price that was going to cover the eBay fees on the shipping, people wouldn't bid on them because they thought the starting price was too high.
These are movies? If so, you are supposed to select media mail as your shipping option. Then the shipping will cost like 3 or 4 dollars. Same applies to DVDs, CDs, books, records, and magazines without advertisements. That's why people sell that stuff on Ebay so cheap. Otherwise, very few would bother trying. I sell a lot of CDs on ebay, but you need hundreds of them for sale, and then you might sell 1 or 2 a week.
A lot of people have given up on Ebay, which is kind of a good thing. There are way too many sellers trying to sell used junk that very few people want, and there are not always enough potential buyers around to make auctions worthwhile. That problem got worse when shipping started going up recently. The customers gave up on Ebay and stuck with Amazon, but I hear even Amazon is losing customers now.
I have a Home Depot credit card and it will send me coupons-10% off purchase and no interest payment for 24 months.
I usually throw them away as I dont shop at HD often,but then I noticed they are for sale on Ebay-both buy it now and auction ?
I CAN See the 10% off is popular but the 24 months with no interest sell as well.
Are these buyers contractors or handymen?how many of these 24 months with no interest do retail customers need?
delivery domestic is usually not a problem,not as fast as the Ebay orders.
Intl could be a problem as Etsy uses a company based in Switzerland,and we have no direct contact with the company .
I’ve been using etsy for years to buy presents for my family and friends or just cute things for myself and I’ve never had troubles with it. Last month I ordered a gift for my mother-in-law and didn’t get it in time. I contacted etsy customer service and reported my problem. Waiting for a reply from them. I heard that it’s a common issue for a lot of customers. Did you have such an experience?
Yeah, this is why I only pick trusted and highly rated Etsy shopkeepers. Etsy prides itself on being a less corporate and more shop owner controlled platform. In other words, they have terrible response time to customer complaints and little to no relief regarding issues with orders. They expect you to work it out with the shopkeepers. And many shopkeepers will flake out or "close shop" knowing there is little recourse for shoppers.
If you want to avoid Etsy Flakes and problem sellers keep an eye on the rankings and reviews. A store with only a couple sales and no reviews get a pass. Stores with 4 or less stars I would stick away from and if it isn't 5 star I would carefully review the past customers recommendations.
These are movies? If so, you are supposed to select media mail as your shipping option. Then the shipping will cost like 3 or 4 dollars. Same applies to DVDs, CDs, books, records, and magazines without advertisements. That's why people sell that stuff on Ebay so cheap. Otherwise, very few would bother trying. I sell a lot of CDs on ebay, but you need hundreds of them for sale, and then you might sell 1 or 2 a week.
A lot of people have given up on Ebay, which is kind of a good thing. There are way too many sellers trying to sell used junk that very few people want, and there are not always enough potential buyers around to make auctions worthwhile. That problem got worse when shipping started going up recently. The customers gave up on Ebay and stuck with Amazon, but I hear even Amazon is losing customers now.
Yes, this was media mail, but a couple of 16mm film reels weighs as much as a stack of books. They are heavy / expensive to ship. As far as Amazon goes, they don't let individual sellers set their shipping fees unless they pay for the $500/year "professional" account fee on top of their other fees. In fact, if you don't pay the fee you can't offer free shipping. Amazon tells you what you can charge. It's a way to coerce people into paying the fee because most customers only focus on "free shipping" regardless of what the final price paid is for product plus shipping.
Yes, this was media mail, but a couple of 16mm film reels weighs as much as a stack of books. They are heavy / expensive to ship. As far as Amazon goes, they don't let individual sellers set their shipping fees unless they pay for the $500/year "professional" account fee on top of their other fees. In fact, if you don't pay the fee you can't offer free shipping. Amazon tells you what you can charge. It's a way to coerce people into paying the fee because most customers only focus on "free shipping" regardless of what the final price paid is for product plus shipping.
I sent a very large book media mail a month ago. It was about a foot and a half tall, and had over 2000 pages. It cost like 5 dollars to ship it. I think you should weigh your items and go to the USPS website and punch the values in for their shipping calculator. You can figure out if it will really be worth it.
It likely will not be worth it if they are common film reel movies. I saw those are selling dirt cheap on ebay, just like most other forms of media. But it's not like you can get much money for these anywhere else. That's the issue many people have with trying to sell stuff online. The value of the used items themselves rarely justify even bothering, unless they are highly desirable, collectors items, etc. For example, it would be very difficult to sell VHSs on ebay... But if you have the original Star Wars and not the edited ones, you could make some very nice cash quickly.
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