eBay Brings Out the Weird in People at the Holidays

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

 

eBay Follies....Longish but Kind of Funny

It's been a pretty good week on eBay for me.
Yah, yah, I know....y'all are getting tired of hearing about this, right?lol

While things aren't flying out the door I've been kept busy with getting rid of(selling)things.  In the past 27 days I have listed 140 items.  Not quite the 150 I wanted to get done but it's close enough for me to feel a sense of accomplishment. 8-)

As of this morning, I've sold 49 items and I have a couple of Best Offers to rule on so I might be up to 50 by this afternoon.

Cyber Monday's sales were steady but not frantic.
And then on Tuesday things dropped off substantially.....except when I get something listed, there is a frenzy of questions to seller(and/or offers if I put that feature on an item)within the first few hours of it being 'live' on the site.  I actually sold something within an hour of listing it yesterday.
But unfortunately most things don't fly off the shelf like that. 8-(
eBay is way down from what it use to be like during the High Selling Season of Oct/Nov/Dec.
Ahhhh, the good old days....lol

I've had some really interesting potential buyers this week.

*A woman who bought an item from me about 7 years ago bought something from me last week.  How do I know this?  Because she sent me a long email telling me this, with many details, which jogged my memory and I actually sort of remembered her.  She was nice to deal with back then and still is, but the main thing I remembered about her was that she was very cheap and never wanted to pay for Priority mail shipping and was always trying to get a better deal out of me.  She is still sending me chatty emails and I just don't want to be her friend so I feel bad ignoring her.
That's the thing about eBay.   Some buyers want to have a relationship with you beyond the buyer/seller interchange.  They cross the line from friendly buyer into needy territory......I want your money but I really don't want to be BFFs if I meet you on eBay.lol

*Someone emailed me about a Star Wars action figure case I am selling that is out of production(from 1999)but new in the package.  She wants to replace a vintage case her son had gotten years ago, now that her grandson was using his SW toys, because that old case was falling apart.  She asked me a bazillion questions that the only way I would know the answers would be if I ripped open the sealed package and inspected the interior of said case.  This is not something I would under any circumstances do(unless the person bought it first and PAID FOR IT and asked me to open it before shipping it off).
After those bazillion questions that I couldn't possibly answer, she wanted to know how long would it take to get it without telling me WHERE she wanted it shipped to OR WHAT MAILING RATE she wanted to pay for. 

Then to top this all off and push it into the "Seriously, get a clue!" category, she offered me half of what I was asking for it...and I had NO Best Offer feature enabled on the item NOR is my price for this item outrageously high.

Since I am a nice person(most of the time...lol), I answered the 2 questions I could, told her why I couldn't give her more information, told her I wasn't taking half of what I needed for this item and directed her to a listing for a lovely used identical case for cheap and said goodbye.
I could have ignored her or told her to kiss my pastey white a$$ but I've still got a little bit of Holiday spirit left......but it's wearing thin I tell ya! ;-)

*How about two different cases where potential buyers emailed me frantically wanting to know where my listing disappeared to when I sold an item that they had put on their "watch list".  One even demanded that I relist the item so they could buy it!  The nerve of someone else buying it...humph!  Well if you really wanted it, you should have bought it instead of just watching it.
I have never understood why someone puts a Fixed Price/Buy It Now item on a watch list.....it's not like it's an auction and they don't want to miss the end of the auction and bid on it then so they win it.  You just have to hit the button and Buy It idiot.....no auction sniping needed!lol

*The impatient buyers from overseas.  I don't quote overseas shipping automatically in my listing details like I do domestic shipping.  Overseas shipping is a tad more complicated with too many variables to just give a cookie cutter response.  Some items can't go cheap rate(1st Class)due to size or weight restrictions.  And then there are countries where I will not ship to using 1st Class rates....countries with massive corruption in their postal systems(many of which are privately held)where packages regularly go missing and end up stolen.  That would be Italy.....Jamaica......and parts of Mexico to name a few.  I am also reticent to ship to places with oppressive communist or dictator-ish governments.....like some "use to be Soviet Union" countries, China, parts of the Middle East.  If you are in those places you need to wait until you ask me if I will/can ship an item to you and what rate I will allow it to go.
Add in that often overseas shipping is a LOT more anyway than these buyers assume.

I will get overseas buyers who ask me for a shipping quote and then since I don't answer them immediately, they go ahead and buy the item. 

I've had one of them last week do this and then pay me without including any extra for the shipping of the item. lol

This week I had a guy buy without finding out the shipping to Italy would be at least $40 since I won't send 1st Class rate to there.  He ended up paying for Express Mail rate for $48!  Heck, I thought Italy was declaring bankruptcy....this guy obviously didn't get the memo yet.;-)
Then I had someone buy without finding out the shipping to China.  I've already had one package returned to me from China that was undeliverable so I am reticent about sending there anymore.  Seems like China actually holds their citizens to the "you can only import certain goods/certain value of items per year" rule.  If someone in China(Hong Kong not withstanding)asks for a shipping quote I remind them to ascertain whether the item is allowed to be received by them.

Another person yesterday in Canada bought an item and immediately paid me.  They chose a random number out of the air and included that much extra in their payment for shipping.  They sent no note or explanation about this payment, including no expectation of which shipping rate they assumed this extra bit of money would buy them.  So now I have to figure out the shipping options quote and email them.  If what they sent is enough to cover the shipping they expect, that's fine, but if it isn't......I have to refund the whole payment and wait for them to send me to correct amount....and I have to email them and hope they see my email and respond in a timely fashion.   That's the thing that gets me.....buyers expect me to instantaneously respond to their inquiries, shipping their package immediately after they pay and post feedback a nanosecond after they pay me.  But when I need information out of them?.....Oh, they are in no hurry whatsoever to respond.  But if their non-response means I can't ship their item and it gets held up for any amount of time, they are hell on wheels bitchy at me. *sigh* lol

But even though eBay selling during the Holidays can be stressful...especially if you are an ethical seller with a conscience who cares about during things the right way....this year I am NOT letting it get to me like I did in past years. 
Because basically, I don't give a shit. ;-)
I don't care about my rating....ok, I do care to do things the right way, but if you have a hair up your ass and just want to go on eBay to screw with someone and ruin their Seller reputation to make yourself feel like a big deal(I've dealt with those in the past), I don't care if you leave me unwarranted bad feedback.  The whole feedback system is a joke and has been for years since they took any serious repercussions against Buyers out of the equation but left all the feedback power in the hands of the Buyers.  Sellers can't do anything to a bad buyer.....can't leave them negative feedback.  But a bad buyer can not only leave sellers uncalled for bad feedback but they can ding them on their 5 star rating for something that is beyond the sellers control--the cost of postage/shipping.  If I don't give FREE Shipping(something that I have to pay for out of my tiny profit and more and more buyers are expecting even though I can't write off the cost of shipping like huge corp. like Amazon can)and charge what it actually costs to ship something, my SHIPPING AND HANDLING Star gets downgraded by them.  This star really needs to be called something else since I don't CHARGE SHIPPING, the Post Office CHARGES it. I merely collect it.  And not only that put I get the great honor of HAVING TO PAY eBAY A FEE ON THAT SHIPPING MONEY THAT I DON'T CHARGE OR GET TO KEEP.  AND i GET TO PAY PAYPAL A FEE ON THAT SHIPPING MONEY I COLLECT FOR THE PO TOO.
And yes, I am shouting here.....

So I don't give a rat's a$$ about what my buyers think about my prices.  You buy it or you don't, your choice.  You pay me what it costs and I ship your thing to you.  You want to leave me nasty comments, fine.  Have at it!  I don't care because when I am done selling off my crap I am leaving eBay and it's Black Hearted Business Model far behind.
Cutting ya loose eBay....with a smile on my face(ok, maybe a smirk!)and a skip in my step because I'll never have to endure this again.

Yah, I'll miss the funny buyers and shaking my head at the "WHAT were they thinking!?!?" buyers but I am retiring as a Master Shipping Box Reconfigurer. 
I'm hanging up my postal scale, tape, yardstick and scissors after this last hurrah.

Sluggy