A Year's Summary of Buying and Selling on E-Bay

Sunday, March 11, 2012

A Year's Summary of Buying and Selling  Toys on E-Bay

     Today's instalment has to do with taking a look back at the year. This is the span, or a bit longer that I've been buying and selling toys on E-Bay, and of course writing my 2 blogs. If you don;'t already know, my other Blog can be found at Prophotolearning.blogspot.com.  That one is not as popular, and I may have to give it a new title in order to increase my readership.

Part I:

The Not So Good News

1. E-Bay is Forcing Sellers to Accept 2 new Policy Changes or 

forfeit the 20% rebate for excellent service and reputation on E-Bay.

   I'm just going to talk about my experiences in no planned order, but just write what comes to mind.

My first thought is about E-Bay's change of policy regarding giving excellent sellers like me a  rebate of 20% on my fees for selling. 

The problem is that they are placing pressure on sellers to do 2 things:

1. Ship within 1 day of being paid

2. Accept returns with a minimum of  2 weeks.

   I can live with the first change. I try and ship when I get paid, because I don't like to procrastinate (leave things for another day). However, offering a 2 week period to return items is neither fair or acceptable to me. I'll explain why. 

  Being an excellent seller, I have access to a 1-800 (cost free) long distance connection to E-Bay.  I decided to finally phone them and asked 3 questions:

1. Can I charge a "restocking fee" for items returned to me?

2. Can I subtract the cost of the original shipping that they paid for?

3. Can I ask the customer to return the item via USPS Priority mail ?

     I was informed by the E-Bay  assistant on the phone that I would hear form then within 24 hours. It's not 55 hours, and I haven;t heard form them yet.

   The reason for items 1 & 2 is for me to discourage people from returning items. I'm very honest with my items' descriptions, and my photographs are excellent.  The customer is knowing 100% what he or she is buying.   The reason for item # 3 is that many American sellers will only sell if I pay for this service. This service includes insurance and tracking, but naturally costs much more

 ($ 25.00 versus $5.00), depending upon the seller and the item size. I figure if the sellers are wanting this service because they feel Canada is like Iran or Iraq, then I should be able to reciprocate when merchandise has to be sent back or returned.

   I've sold about 450 toys, and have only had 3 complaints that I resolved. I have 1 "neutral" comment from a person who bought an item and then cancelled it, claiming I was a thief, and selling a fake item/. I naturally returned the money, but banned him from ever being able to bid on any of my items. He was mean-spirited and very negative, and I would have returned the money anyway. My reputation is more important to me than a sale. Even 1 recent sale had the buyer describe my item as missing a part. The particular item looked 100% in the sense that the part missing didn't look like this particular toy was in fact missing the part. However, I didi check, and I could only find the same items but not mine.

  This buyer was a real gentleman, and said that it was his responsibility to have researched the item better. I offered him a partial refund, but he still insisted on accepting the responsibility.. However, I wouldn't hear of this, and refunded him a small portion of the original sale. As I mentioned before, keeping an excellent rating, and having people trust me is more important that a small amount of money!

   Some sellers actually make money off shipping and not ashamed to say so. I live with that, as I said before that I need them more than they need me. They do so because they don't get that 20% rebate form E-Bay, so they make the extra difference by overcharging on shipping. Yet, I've had plenty of sellers, refund me anywhere form $ 1.00 - $15.00 because their estimated shipping fees were too much! That gesture really makes me feel good about those E-Bayers, although I also do the same. It's not in my nature to overcharge on shipping just to make a few dollars.

   I've even had to take the occasional loss on items, because what I purchased was not what was described.  The reason for this is that many Americans place Canada in the same category as North Korea, Kazakhstan,  Iran, Iraq, and even Italy. Without talking negatively about these countries, Americans will not ship to these countries and  whole lot of others.

  The reasons range from not wanting to bother.The reason is that to ship to canada, some sellers may have to personally go to their local post office and personally fill out forms. To make 1 sale to Canada is not worth their time or effort, even if Canada has a potential 32,000,000 more people to sell to.

Another reason often mentioned is that their merchandise arrives broken or "goes missing".  To me, that's a fallacy (Untrue). Why? Because I 've has only 3 items ever arrive broken, and all 3 were terribly packaged. I "took the losses", as I need American sellers more than they need me, and to complain might possibly have them avoid selling to Canada.  I even had 1 item arrive insured, but the USPS (United States Postal Service) would not pay for my insurance claim!

    Getting back to my train of thought,  myself and many sellers are not going to be forced by E-Bay to accept those 2 stipulations in order to maintain that 20% discount. If I have to accept 1 return, and refund the cost of the original shipping, then if I have 1 fellow Canadian  return an item , which at minimum costs him $ 12.00 in postage, I will have almost lost that 20% bonus. If 2 Canadians return items, I will lose money, because I do not sell that much!

2. A Matter of Words

     There are some sellers on E-Bay who sell "reproductions". However, not all of them call their merchandise "reproductions". As such, I sometimes am selling a true "original". for lets' say a starting price of $ 75.00, and I have to compete with the "fake" that is being offered at a starting price of 

$ 20.00. By now, I've learned to know what is a "reproduction" and what is "real". 

     I've phone E-Bay 4 times on this issue, and have never heard from them in terms of why a "fake" is allowed to be described without the word "Reproduction". So when I'm selling my item starting at $ 75.00, and the other seller is offering their "fake" t $ 25.00, I'm going to lost a a good amount of potential buyers.  There is even 1 person selling "fakes" who uses a question mark (?) in the title. I thing she feels that that absolves her from being challenged if someone or E-Bay might complain.  

   How do I know the item is a "fake"? There cannot be that many of that particular item in one of the smallest states in the US begin found  as an original 90 year old item and looking in that condition, and being sold week after week. It's not possible!  

3. The whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth

      Not all sellers or buyers are 100% honest on E-Bay. There are some large volume sellers who have close to an 8% negative feedback or neutral feedback. However,due to their large volume, which interprets as big fees to E-Bay , E-Bay turns a "blind eye".

    I won't place all sellers in that category though, as there are honest mistakes that do happen. Many sellers do have high volumes, and to scrutinize each and every toy that I do is a lot of work. In a good month I may sell 50 toys, whereas some sellers sell in the hundreds as a quantity. Also, having a DSLR Digital Single Lens Reflex)  or a camera with interchangeable lenses, and a high megapixel count 

(18 megapixels), I am able to photograph detail that most sellers on E-Bay can't or won't do. Also, being a pro photographer, and having taught the same for 35 years, I have that advantage to in fact take excellent photos. Also, my nature is to be honest and forthcoming.

   I have in fact received items with small dents that could not be seen in the photograph, or with slight damage that perhaps was not seen ( I prefer to err on the side of caution, and think of most E-Bayers as honest rather than dishonest).

4. The Buying Cycles on E-Bay

      Buying  and selling on E-Bays cyclical. Towards the end of November, there is the holiday of Thanksgiving whereby many Americans spend more money on that sales period than even before Christmas. I've learned to understand that, and you just have to accept that fact, and wait until perhaps the end of January. Why the end of January? Because the same people now have to pay their depts that they incurred during Thanksgiving and Christmas, and buying old toys is definitely not a priority.

    I've also noticed a lull (slow-down time) during the summer months. Again, even I, would rather be outside on a nice summer day. The alternative would be to sit at my computer looking to find great purchases on E-Bay. Being a Canadian, the choice is a no-brainer! I've just gone through 6 months of shorter and shorter days that get colder and colder, so I want to also be outdoors basking in the sun.

5. Declining Demand for Old Toys as a hobby?

   Toy-collecting is just not the hobby or pass time that it once was.  I'm a baby-boomer (born in 1948). Most of my friends are not interested in old toys, and don't necessarily have hobbies or collect things. I was also a Canadian stamp collector, but that market has crashed!   I should have realized that I should sell my 50 year old collection when Canada Post was offering everyone a chance to put their own portrait on a stamp! 

   Today's children have much more that when I was a child, and the same can be said for my father and mother's generation compared with their parents. If I was a child today, I 'd probably want the X-Box, and an IPod, and an IPad, and a computer, and the trip to Europe and so forth. Would I want my father's collection of old toys, old stamps, or any other collectible? Maybe, but I'd be a rarity. Will the generation-X children as they age want to return to collecting? I don't know? Maybe they do now, and collect their generation of toys that they grew up with. However I remember 20 years ago, young children were buying playing cards (Baseball, hockey) by the box and saving them as investments. The last time I checked on E-Bay, you could buy those cases of cards for "a song". There are of course collectors who collect Beanie Babies, another "flash in the pan" investment that skyrocketed in price only to avalanche to an abysmal low! There are also people who now collect toys of their era, witjh Mattel HotWheels as an example.

 Part I:

The Glass is Half-Full

  The expression "Is the glass half-empty or half-full"  refers to whether you are an optimist or a pessimist, or how you view things. The optimist sees the glass as half-full, while the pessimist sees the glass as half-empty.

1.  The Many Wonderful People on E-Bay and on the Net

   I've had the pleasure to meet  on E-Bay through e-mails, or even on the Net some very interesting and  helpful people. THey've helped me with my blog by having written an instalment, and they've answered my questions, and I have 1000's of questions to ask.

  I've gotten a tremendous education from those who are more knowledgeable and older than myself, and I would like to thank each and every one of you for that privilege afforded to me by all of you. I enjoy learning, whereas when I was young, I always had trouble in school in terms of getting goof grade or being able to learn. Perhaps I had ADD or HDHD, both acronyms for attention disorders of learning.  I began to enjoy learning when I started to take educational technology course to better improve my teaching skills.

     Of course, learning about toys had been a wonderful experience. I never had the toys that I am now buying and selling. In Canada, we mostly had British toys in those times.  I did grow up in the early 50's with the toy cap gun pistol, the Hula-Hoop, and the YoYo, the microscope set, the carpentry set, Minibrix, and of course Mecanno and Lionel trains. Now thinking of all that, I was privileged!

    Most people don't bother to write to me as a seller,but I certainly send out plenty of questions to many people - mostly Americans, and I do get about a 9 in 10 reply. Having experienced the world of toy selling and buying, I would not have though that I would be having so much enjoyment, and perhaps even spending too much time at it!

    I plan to try and venture out into New York and Vermont states to see what toys I can find at source. It's a bit hard doing research though. Type n the words antique toys, and E-Bay seems to have the monopoly on those words for the first 50,000,000 entries. Of course, I'm exaggerating, but it certainly is hard to get past E-Bay. Also many antique stores are run by people of my age or older, and many can't be bothered or are afraid  to take the time to learn how to create a website for their wares or to spend the time to weekly update their sites.

   I'm sending out E-mails to the few  sellers that do have sites, and asking them to forward my request of what old toys if any, they have, to  other antique dealers. So far, its' been slow. If I don't get enough replies, I'll simply take day trips with my wife and maybe our dog Buddy and "see what I can find".

1.  Trying to Change

   I had to come to a mutually-agreeable  settlement with the College that I had taught for almost 35 years. My shortcomings were in being too direct with what I thought, and not "tempering" or  "sugar-coating" the way that I gave feedback to students. I was an excellent teacher, but my personality got the best of me.

   In the end, I learned that not all students were to become professional photographers, and that the departments' main goal  was to pass all the students if we could, in order to keep the number of jobs in the department. I actually thought that the key goal was to create new working professional photographers for the future. I learned that teachers who lacked the actual skills and abilities of being professional photographers, were commended and liked far more by students than myself, because of their personalities, and kind-treatment of students.

  In the end, the settlement was symbiotic to both the College and myself.   I wouldn't say that I'm now 100% better because one doesn't change without wanting to change, and that is hard! However, selling toys via E-Bay affords me more time to try and think before I speak. That  affords me enough time to look at both sides of the discussion, and that's been a help. Now it's a matter of trying to adapt that tack and trait with the real word - my friends and relatives.

That's it for today!

This is probably the first instalment where I just talked and didn't even include 1 photograph. SOmetimes, you just can;lt take a picture of your feelings or thoughts.

So as usual, thanks for dropping by, and have a good morning, afternoon or evening, wherever you my be.

The glass is half-full of course!