If You Are To Going To Sell On Ebay !

My brother in law sold baseball cards on ebay a few years ago and to this day he will tell you his opinion of them. Please understand why I can't tell you what he says, this is a family forum. But it would bring a sailor to blush.
But as a buyer, I to date have not had any problems, lucky I guess.

i still browse ebay for deals ..but sellers are made of sterner stuff..ebay is a machine...its not human beings!!

In Australia 95% of my sales are from this country I live in. It costs $3.05 for registered mail and 60c to send the envelope. With a cost of $3.65 I receive proof of delivery for everything I send out here. I have received 3 complaints (hidden ones) for over charging on mailing out of 410 people that have openly given feed back.
With every item I send out I give good bonus stamps to or above the cost of the mailing. So 3 people did not like the bonus stamps out of 400 + buyers.
I am now asking myself, why am I selling and sending stamps outside Australia that takes up less than 5% of sales. Mailing cost to most countries $2.35 with absolutely no proof of delivery.
I am starting to think by selling out side Australia is like letting someone shooting me in the foot and eventually destroy all the hard work we have put into building up a nice little stamp business.
Why am I selling out side Australia? I must have rocks in my head! To sell out side Australia makes absolutely no business sense at all. It is Trouble with a capital "T". I am no businessman really but to survive on ebay maybe I need to block all countries other than Australia. It does seem like a common sense decision!

KGV You have the answer...i was going to say I never had a loss problem mailing in the USA but last week I received an e mail from a buyer in Ohio who claims he did not receive his cover which I mailed January 7 and he should have had within 4 days..it was a very small transaction..i imagine he will return for his refund and I will send it...but by and large a huge margin the mail here in the states does get through..i really do not want to discriminate against collectors in any country..but when we layout the product,do the work and then ebay takes the buyers word without question ..that he did not receive it...its a bitter pill !

We have had more trouble.
We are now only excepting bids from Canada, USA, New Zealand and Australia.
We have had a gut full of trying to be nice and being treated like ..Beep!

KGV,
sorry to hear you have been treated like beep.

Its true though..those countries seem to be the gold standard to deal with..its hard not to play favorites..the sheep rustlers have always been more than fair with me !

eBay would be a lot more successful in the world market place if they would have a good look at all the buyers and sellers comments that are here on our SCF. There is a great sample of comments here.
We would be seen as small fish. But eBay's success is because they have a huge amount of small fish that are trying very hard to have a go at buying and selling.
Because of eBay's totally out of touch rules I would think many people would be limiting what countries they will sell to now. Which would be limiting sales. On top of this there are the people that are selling and buying elsewhere now or stopped all together and found places like SCF to do there buying and selling.

It will be a while before I put my toe back in the water with eBay..i am still smarting...if I were a bigger seller I could probably roll with it..but being a hobby seller..one fair sized transaction gone sour hurts !!

Gentlemen,
Any site that views second hand lawnmowers as important as stamps should be avoided by its very nature. Stick to this Community, at least you know the prospective customer will be a fellow enthusiast.
Just my opinion, but with the exception of here, I have been treated very badly by auction sites

Listening to this is really sad.

There are a lot of honest and fair people out there, as you all are. But there is as all ways on both side of this point the "bad apples" these people hurt it for the rest. They are wolfs who, lets say it steal from you, and say you stole from them. And what hurts is they are protected and you are not and they know it.
But I agree with in the myth and, since I have not been burnt by ebay "YET", why wait. I will now stick to fellow SC members to buy/trade from. Words of wisdom from experience ones is a safer way for me to go. But even here it could happen but the odds are so slight it is weel worth the gamble.
One question though? What would happen here if it did????
I am sue it must be written somewhere on how to play nicely, if not it should as an insurance policy for such a, even if remote, thing was to happen.

Tomd it has happened here...i have shipped items ahead of payment and the persons "just disappeared"..not worth starting a shooting war over...the group here is MUCH BETTER THAN AVERAGE..i just am careful who I ship to before receiving payment !

Nitrolures brings up an issue with eBay and many other "sites" on the internet where people congregate for one reason or another. In his story he talks about an eBay seller with 37,000+ feedback that just because he has too many open "item not rec'd" cases he is suspended for three months. That's where you have to take the machine out and have a human being look into the situation.

"Set Limits/Rules" a lot of times need to be flexible to accommodate the one off situations like this guy Nitrolures mentions. Just because he has, for example, 50 open cases in 14 days, does not necessarily make him a bad seller or threat to eBay. That's where the human element should come in to investigate it further.

I have a seller from over seas (I am in the USA) whom I would follow each day and purchased many lots from over the past 2 years. He had free shipping and very reasonable starting bids for his lots. All of the sudden, about a month ago, he started charging $8 for shipping. The problem now is that many of the lots are not worth $8 full book value. I have not bought from him since due to the high shipping charges. His explanation was that too many lots, to a couple of Countries I will not name, have been reported as not received and he is losing money.I don't blame him one bit. But I would venture to guess that he now does significantly less business and its a wash.

I don't sell on eBay much and this is a major reason why. Pretty soon everything will have to be sent insured to cover both ends of the transaction.

Tex, my wife used to buy a lot from Matthis when he had the reasonable and free shipping...now at 8 dollars shipping he still seems to have a following...but they are people who buy in volume so they do not mind the shipping...He was always good with us !!

I put up a thread called "Positive Experiences On eBay!" on this part of the forum.

At this time it has 50 views and no comments. It just shows what people are thinking about ebay.