It's Springtime once again! I'm getting the itch to garage sale again. There was already one yearly event (a church flea market) but that was a bust but it was good to get out again. Going some 6 months without doing sales is rather boring.
Honestly though, I don't really need to do sales. I was sick for several months and barely listed anything new that wasn't anime junk which I bought from Japan. I have some 50 big boxes of inventory untouched in the garage, aside from one Monster High box which I brought in for a customer that never responded back about it, so I sold it to someone else a week later. Recently I spent the last month trying to get the randomly placed junk inside of the house on ebay. I'm just about done with that and by the time I get my Spring cleaning down and reorganizing my indoor junk, it'll be garage sale season once again!
So I really think I won't buy much this season as I have no real room for it or I'll simply have to rent a storage unit this year. Either way, I am planning to not kill myself trying to get to sales before everyone else and I will not fight for stuff. I'll go for video games (they sell so fast) and toy collections (high profit margins) and that's about it. Aside from obvious stuff I can flip for a huge profit that is. I'll try hard to avoid the $10 items off of a quarter as I have tons of that. And especially the stuff I buy to make group lots of, as I have tons of that and no more space to sort them.
I'm thinking of doing a garage sale to lower inventory, but I cannot do that this year. I need tables, sort the junk from the stuff I can get more for on ebay and do other stuff. More realistic is next year. I literally donate away tons of stuff that should sell and I'm thinking it's OK to miss one weekend of going out to get stuff in order to do that.
Anyway, this week was really stressful. I finally got around to selling my 2018 stockpile of video games and of course what comes with it is the usual amount of scammers. People saying this game doesn't work to get a free video game or a free rental on a video game, depending on the cast. It pisses me off as I made sure it works!
People, you need to CLEAN your machine religiously and the games will in fact work. Normally I wouldn't get too upset but ebay now has this annoying policy where if you get too many strikes in a certain category, then they will increase your fees by 4%. Man! I got 3 already from video games in two months time from idiot people and that's with selling only 80 some games. Luckily I'm basically over with selling games for the year and I'll just wait until next year to sell more use another account to sell them. There are ways around the stupid rules.
Anyway, I had this one annoying customer over a video game. I had listed a Canada version of a game real cheap, (9.99 free shipping) and a guy from Canada wanted it. Of course I do not ship outside of the USA unless it's with the Global Shipping Program. The Program basically protects the seller should anything goes wrong, but it's very expensive for the buyer. It basically only makes my rarest stuff sell out of the USA. Anyway, this guy was wanting me to ship the game in a crazy as manner for something like $5 dollars (or he believe it would be $5) and I was like no, I only use the Program. His way leaves a seller without any protection and I'm not that stupid to do that. He then went ape shit and said:
...no , not another seller who use this Pitney & Bowes Money Scam program that NOT ONLY no encourage honest USPS workers (work better & faster) but give a LOTS of headaches to sellers and buyers .
Please educate yourself 2min with this short youtube video TITLE : eBay U.S. Global Shipping Program: Buyer And Seller Beware !! VIDEO (copy/paste link in your google) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijmdVlQ36-w&ab_channel=lukemorse1
....and most important of all , just READ the video comments just under it.
I have experienced JUST PROBLEMES with them , opened package , crashed objects , LOW delivery while using USPS its ALWAYS flawless , smooth & faster !
check my feedback history , over 600 ALL 100% positive feedbacks from U.S. resident / sellers that all have been more than happy to do business with me. NEVER ENCOUNTER a single issue using USPS.
its sad because i was interested to buy the game from you if you only was able to simply put the game inside a CHEAP paper letter ship via USPS ground as your nearest USPS post office (take 2min to write my address on the letter , pay UNDER $4.99 for the shipping and bingo i can receive it under 2 weeks.
I want to buy it from you under theses condition if you want to stick using theses thieves , i cannot do anything for you .... cost are 3-4 times the option i give you and take 2-3 time longuer to receive the package ....its ridiculous...! (you shoot yourself in the feet by using them and simply lost a LOTS of buyers that as soon they see Ebay Global program run away fast as they can !!)
:(
I was like Fuck dude, what nerve! All that shit to save yourself something like $4 on game you can get from anyone on Ebay Canada? I can tell I wasn't dealing with someone who was mentally sane.
Of course it took me about 3 hours to think of something to say to him. I wanted to be rude, I wanted to explain myself, etc, the whole nine yards. It's how I am typically, but it's always a waste of time. What happened is that it sold to someone in Georgia while I was fussing about what to say. No hassles, no crap, an easy sale. I saw that I got feedback from it today and that person is as pleased as punch!
That's all that any seller wants. What seller in their right mind is going to fuck about with crazy ass demands and no seller's protection when I can sell it to another without a single worry? So eventually I calmed down and wrote:
"I'm sorry to say that this just sold to someone in Georgia a little while ago. I can understand your frustration but sellers do have very good reasons for using the Program. Sadly nothing we will say to each other will change the others mind so there is no need to challenge each other here with our beliefs. It just makes all parties miserable.
Thanks!"
I never heard back from him. I can only imagine a pissed off chimp throwing a fit.
That reminds me of something else from early last week. Someone bought an anime figure and I didn't look it over too well as it seemed like new in box to me with a quick glance. There is never any need to go over my stuff from Japan as it's almost always in like new shape. So I list most stuff which is still in the package as "a pre-owned item in like new shape". I'm guessing the buyer never read the description (this happens a ton) and he bought it purely based on the images and wasn't too happy when he got it that it appeared used or something? I honestly don't know what was his beef. Read what was said:
"I like how you to pics of the item so it looked like it hadn't been opened and say in the description that it is "like new". This was a gift for my daughter as she was named after this character and was hoping she could put it away as a nice keepsake. Needless to say I am highly disappointed in this purchase and haven't decided what my feedback will be. I hope you do a better job going with your future customers."
I'm like EEEHHH? What the fuck is wrong with the item?! You never said a word about that. I am left assuming that you think I have intimate knowledge about everything thing I sell and you think that I knew it was a piece of shit or something? That's a laugh and a half. And why are you so damned jerky about it?
This stuff is what pisses me off so much about selling. Some customers are rude as hell and they make no sense at all. You need to use your proper communicate skills to explain yourself so the seller has some idea of what's actually wrong. Not come in all guns a blazing, being rude and looking like such an asshole. So I said to him:
"HI, I'm sorry for your dissatisfaction. Please be assured that I never intentionally try to deceive anyone and whatever is actually wrong with it is purely a mistake. Please let me know if there is any type of amicable solution which I can offer to make this a better experience for you.
Thanks!"
Of course I never heard back from him.
I hate these responses as they are so not me. I want to be rude and sarcastic back, but it's just bad business so I don't. Still, I seriously wonder...are they drunk or high? Are they looking for a fight? I honestly don't hang around people IRL so I have a very hard time understanding people who are not halfway rational like myself.
But yeah, it's just a part of selling. You will face jerks. Makes me want to go back to selling in person at flea markets even though I've met my share of nutters (especially the people that run the events) IRL too.
Anyway, I needed to get that out of my system. Sales was amazing for about 10 days in a row. I was getting over 20 orders a day. Monday was something like 45 items I had to pack. It was starting to wear the hell out of me and I got sick with a stomach virus (or perhaps food poisoning from the Chinese food I bought to celebrate a great stretch of sales). These last 3 days I sold only about 7 items a day. SO STRANGE.
I think what it is, is that ebay is messing around with sales and giving people great discounts, but as soon as that sale is over, the sales tank. I'm saying that because I was given a $5 coupon off of anything on my dead account which I don't use. I think a lot of people have learned to open tons of accounts to get coupons like these and abuse the system. That's because I get a lot of sales from accounts with almost no feedback with really strange user names (garbled assortment of letters). Whatever. So even though I sold 45 items this weekend, it only amounted up to about $600 dollars with a ton of cheap sales. Meh, whatever. LOL
Anyway, I'm going to wrap it up. If anyone reads this (it seems no one actually does), please wish me a great 2019 sale buying! Thanks!