I tell you folks, this year has been the WORST Holiday selling season on eBay since I have sold on there back in 1998.
Since I listed items in October(so getting on to 2 months of selling)I have "sold" 16 items.
Granted I've only listed 61 items in that time, but still, Christmas has always been the peak selling season for what I sell-new in the box toys and collectibles mostly.....gift worthy items.
I put "sold" in quotes because though I've sold 16 items, 2 persons backed out of their purchases and did NOT pay for them....both were overseas sales to people who didn't ASK how much shipping was before they contracted to buy the items. Another sold item I am still waiting for the payment to process on Paypal....they must have paid with a check that hasn't cleared.
So really, at the moment I have 13 sales in 2 months.
Bleh.
On most listings, since the sales are so dismal this season, I have put the "Best Offer" feature and/or marked down my selling price after it's been up a few weeks.
This "Best Offer" feature has proved to be a constant source of amusement, if not surprise to me over the last 2 months.
It never ceases to amaze me how low the offers people make are.
I research my items for current selling prices online before I decide on a price, so I know what any particular thing is fetching in general.
I price my items competitively this way.....and if I just want it gone, I lower it from there.
I use to get "Best Offers" in the 75% of the items current selling price.
Not any more.
Now I am "lucky" is someone offers me at least HALF of what I am asking for it.
And those half-of-value offers are rare these days.
One not-too-bright fellow recently offered me $30 for a $29.99 listed item with a note enclosed that the $30 was for the item's cost AND shipping.
Well, the item was going to CA so the shipping was $12.25, so basically I was offered $17.75 for a $29.99 item.
Just over half of what I was asking.
The problem was that when you make a "Best Offer", it clearly states on the page that the offer price is just for the item and shipping is additional.
So if I had accepted this offer, eBay would have sent them a congratulations email that they now owe me $30 and $12.25 in shipping or a total of $42.25.
That would have been fine by me but I know they wouldn't have paid me. 8-)
So I had to spend my time counter-offering him and enclosing a note to explain that he can't do what he wanted to offer me and how I countered a $12.00 reduction in the price of the item for him which mostly covered his shipping costs and he would owe me a total of $30.24 with shipping.
And of course I didn't hear another word from this doofus.
But that's ok because someone else made me a $22 + shipping offer which I accepted on the same item. 8-))
Here are some of the other jack wagons that make me offers I COULD resist....
* $25 for a $150 item, which they upped to $35 when I refused it.(I sold it for $125 to someone else.)
* $51.10 for a $125 item.
* $15.00 for a $37.99 item.($15 is what used ones are selling for, mine is new sealed in the package.)
* $9.00 for a $29.90 item. They said the shipping was too high. Well I can't control that or the fact that you live in CA. I don't DO free shipping. I already feel like a sharecropper on eBay so I am not paying the shipping costs buyers incur. If you don't like shipping prices complain to the post office or better yet move closer to where your seller lives. lol
* $17.00 for a $34.99 item. I sent a counter offer of $20.00 and they replied with another counter offer of $15.00! LOLZ Yes, I turned down $17 and they THINK I will accept $2 LESS than their last offer? When I receive my lobotomy maybe.
So I countered again with a price of $34.99......I would have sent an offer HIGHER than my selling price if the system had let me.....2 can play THAT game asswipe!
*$2.00 for a $24.99 item. Seriously? Whatever you are smoking I want some!!
And then there is the guy who emailed a Question to Seller and it was totally in Spanish.
I don't speak Spanish but the gist of it was "How much to ship to Mexico?"
I just told him I don't ship to Mexico and moved on.
I don't like dealing with people who can't conduct business in English(if something goes awry because of the language barrier, eBay will side with the Buyer usually)and there are security issues with the mail in certain countries, Mexico being one of those. Add the one with the other and I don't need the headaches this transaction could end up costing me.
Then I got a buyer with over 200,000 feedbacks.
WTF?
Who buys that much crap on eBay??lolz
So I did some research and the feedbacks are ALL from buying, not from any selling......most people with that high of feedback are sellers but not this one.
This User Id had bought 29 other items on the same day they bought from me and 50 items the day before.....every day they were buying tens of items for months. This made by fraud radar go off so I dug a little deeper.
Turns out this User Id(plus a few more IDs they own)is a company in CA that has built an eBay portal in Japanese, through which folks in Japan who don't speak/understand English can buy items through this portal on eBay, pay this company and they act as a middleman by paying/buying your items, you mail it to them in CA and they freight all the purchases to Japan to the customers.
Pretty cool really and it saves the customers shipping money, even with paying fees to the middleman.
As for me and eBay.....there are only a few days left before I put my listings on vacation mode until after Christmas. I don't want to be at the mercy of last minute Christmas shopping procrastinators 2 days before the 25th buying items from me and getting angry & leaving me negatives when the Post Office can't magically get packages to their destinations in time for Christmas morning, because the buyer waited too long to purchase something. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
I take a break after Dec. 16th until the New Year on eBay.
Anybody else get any wacky eBay buyers?
Sluggy
Since I listed items in October(so getting on to 2 months of selling)I have "sold" 16 items.
Granted I've only listed 61 items in that time, but still, Christmas has always been the peak selling season for what I sell-new in the box toys and collectibles mostly.....gift worthy items.
I put "sold" in quotes because though I've sold 16 items, 2 persons backed out of their purchases and did NOT pay for them....both were overseas sales to people who didn't ASK how much shipping was before they contracted to buy the items. Another sold item I am still waiting for the payment to process on Paypal....they must have paid with a check that hasn't cleared.
So really, at the moment I have 13 sales in 2 months.
Bleh.
On most listings, since the sales are so dismal this season, I have put the "Best Offer" feature and/or marked down my selling price after it's been up a few weeks.
This "Best Offer" feature has proved to be a constant source of amusement, if not surprise to me over the last 2 months.
It never ceases to amaze me how low the offers people make are.
I research my items for current selling prices online before I decide on a price, so I know what any particular thing is fetching in general.
I price my items competitively this way.....and if I just want it gone, I lower it from there.
I use to get "Best Offers" in the 75% of the items current selling price.
Not any more.
Now I am "lucky" is someone offers me at least HALF of what I am asking for it.
And those half-of-value offers are rare these days.
One not-too-bright fellow recently offered me $30 for a $29.99 listed item with a note enclosed that the $30 was for the item's cost AND shipping.
Well, the item was going to CA so the shipping was $12.25, so basically I was offered $17.75 for a $29.99 item.
Just over half of what I was asking.
The problem was that when you make a "Best Offer", it clearly states on the page that the offer price is just for the item and shipping is additional.
So if I had accepted this offer, eBay would have sent them a congratulations email that they now owe me $30 and $12.25 in shipping or a total of $42.25.
That would have been fine by me but I know they wouldn't have paid me. 8-)
So I had to spend my time counter-offering him and enclosing a note to explain that he can't do what he wanted to offer me and how I countered a $12.00 reduction in the price of the item for him which mostly covered his shipping costs and he would owe me a total of $30.24 with shipping.
And of course I didn't hear another word from this doofus.
But that's ok because someone else made me a $22 + shipping offer which I accepted on the same item. 8-))
Here are some of the other jack wagons that make me offers I COULD resist....
* $25 for a $150 item, which they upped to $35 when I refused it.(I sold it for $125 to someone else.)
* $51.10 for a $125 item.
* $15.00 for a $37.99 item.($15 is what used ones are selling for, mine is new sealed in the package.)
* $9.00 for a $29.90 item. They said the shipping was too high. Well I can't control that or the fact that you live in CA. I don't DO free shipping. I already feel like a sharecropper on eBay so I am not paying the shipping costs buyers incur. If you don't like shipping prices complain to the post office or better yet move closer to where your seller lives. lol
* $17.00 for a $34.99 item. I sent a counter offer of $20.00 and they replied with another counter offer of $15.00! LOLZ Yes, I turned down $17 and they THINK I will accept $2 LESS than their last offer? When I receive my lobotomy maybe.
So I countered again with a price of $34.99......I would have sent an offer HIGHER than my selling price if the system had let me.....2 can play THAT game asswipe!
*$2.00 for a $24.99 item. Seriously? Whatever you are smoking I want some!!
And then there is the guy who emailed a Question to Seller and it was totally in Spanish.
I don't speak Spanish but the gist of it was "How much to ship to Mexico?"
I just told him I don't ship to Mexico and moved on.
I don't like dealing with people who can't conduct business in English(if something goes awry because of the language barrier, eBay will side with the Buyer usually)and there are security issues with the mail in certain countries, Mexico being one of those. Add the one with the other and I don't need the headaches this transaction could end up costing me.
Then I got a buyer with over 200,000 feedbacks.
WTF?
Who buys that much crap on eBay??lolz
So I did some research and the feedbacks are ALL from buying, not from any selling......most people with that high of feedback are sellers but not this one.
This User Id had bought 29 other items on the same day they bought from me and 50 items the day before.....every day they were buying tens of items for months. This made by fraud radar go off so I dug a little deeper.
Turns out this User Id(plus a few more IDs they own)is a company in CA that has built an eBay portal in Japanese, through which folks in Japan who don't speak/understand English can buy items through this portal on eBay, pay this company and they act as a middleman by paying/buying your items, you mail it to them in CA and they freight all the purchases to Japan to the customers.
Pretty cool really and it saves the customers shipping money, even with paying fees to the middleman.
As for me and eBay.....there are only a few days left before I put my listings on vacation mode until after Christmas. I don't want to be at the mercy of last minute Christmas shopping procrastinators 2 days before the 25th buying items from me and getting angry & leaving me negatives when the Post Office can't magically get packages to their destinations in time for Christmas morning, because the buyer waited too long to purchase something. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
I take a break after Dec. 16th until the New Year on eBay.
Anybody else get any wacky eBay buyers?
Sluggy
