My £5k by Christmas challenge

soolin

This NARU things is interesting, I was talking about it to a work colleague and realised that my main id might well be temporarily suspended due to the way credit cards work.

In the good old days about 5 or 6 weeks before your credit card expired they sent you a new one and you could use it straight away, so it was easy to just update all your credit card info with no gap. However my credit card on my main ebay id expires end of November and the new one starts 1st December. I have had a warning that ebay consider my current card out of date as my next set of fees are due within a day or two of December 1st and they know they can't take the fees automatically. I tried registering my new card but it will not go through as it is not yetvalid. Therefore there is a very good chance that my account would be suspended for a few days while one card ends and the other starts.

Luckily OH was happy to let me use the joint credit card temporarily pending my new card being accepted, otherwise this could have been a nightmare as it wouldn't let me change my payment methods at all.

Hopefully it is something minor like this that happened to your buyer minx and that she can get reinstated before your bidding ends.

Good luck!

Soo

cazmanian_minx

Panic over, there's been a bit of a bidding war this afternoon and it's now a fiver higher than it was before the original high bidder got NARU'd :j

I've finally got off my butt and made some jewellery this morning as well, so that'll go up on my new ID this afternoon, and I've emailed a seller about a huge bulk lot of classical CDs - he's planning to list them in lots of 100 and I want to see if he'll take an offer for the whole lot (as he says he has 3000 altogether).

This may be the point at which I have to get a business account and an overdraft facility...!

Agutka

cazmanian_minx wrote:

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!:mad:

Earlier in this thread, someone suggested doing multipacks. I stuck one up a week ago on Thursday for 10 days (so it ends tomorrow evening) and bidding was trotting along nicely.

... as a result the top bid on that multipack auction has tumbled from about £12 to £1.46.

That was me wasn't it? I'm sorry!!

Just trying to help.....

cazmanian_minx

Agutka wrote:

That was me wasn't it? I'm sorry!!

Just trying to help.....

Oh, the Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! wasn't at you at all, the multipacks are a brilliant idea and look like they're going to work beautifully :beer:

The Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! was at eBay for NARU'ing my highest bidder, probably for some totally trivial reason like their card expiring (as Soolin suggested).

cazmanian_minx

A quick one for Agutka - the multipack went for £21 + P&P in the end, so a brilliant outcome and I'll be doing more - thank you for the suggestion :T

After a stonking Sunday night, I've just gone over £1k of sales for November :beer: and I got some of my jewellery listed yesterday as well, so will see how that does...

kriss_boy

My sales are going great right now too.

I bought 8 pairs of jeans a couple of weeks, only 3 were keepers but I got such good bargains that selling the remaining 5 more than covered the rest!!!

Bought a pair of Levis for £20, didnt fit, theyre at 6 quid with losts of bids and watchers. Being just that extra couple of weeks nearer xmas i bet they sell better.


TOP TIP > nows your time to buy shorts for the summer, who else is gona bid on them in winter?!?

Hintza

kriss_boy wrote:

TOP TIP > nows your time to buy shorts for the summer, who else is gona bid on them in winter?!?

This makes me laugh I bought some winter coats last March...doh!! I am selling a few on EBay and have started giving them to the couriers I have delivering regularly for their Christmas bonus. What I know about fashion could be written on the back of a postage stamp...valuable lesson.

My TOP TIP:- Stick to stuff you know and are interested in.

greeneye

kriss_boy wrote:

Not sold one since January.

I basically started importing them from the US, exploiting the difference in there RRP over there compared to here.

Trouble is everyone started doing it. For example, when a new model came out, I managed to sell 3 of them at around £500 to £700 profit each, selling them for around £1900.. but then inevitably within a few months, weeks even, people copy you and import the same guitar. Next thing you know your competing to scrape a £100 profit on it and selling it at around £1200. After paying a good £1100 and risking all that money for a month.

How does that work with import duties then kriss? Were you just paying customs charges as a percentage of the American retail price?
Or were you getting your exporter to mark items as gifts etc.
I thought in theory you couldn't exploit price differences like that i.e IPODs etc.

Hintza

greeneye wrote:

I thought in theory you couldn't exploit price differences like that i.e IPODs etc.

Quite easy to exploit price differences I have found but it is really quite hard work, long lead times, currency movements and the joys of international postage.

I do not recommend that you try to be clever with Customs and Excise, a year or so back they started stopping all my parcels and demanding documentary proof of where it had come from price paid etc. Fortunately I had all the onformation they wanted and were happy and I haven't a problem since.

If you plan to buy to sell they will note the packages coming in and will eventually catch up with you.

If you buy the odd item of course you have a very good chance of not being caught but all buyers should budget on about 20% vat, clearing fees etc when bidding on anything.

greeneye

Hintza wrote:

Quite easy to exploit price differences I have found but it is really quite hard work, long lead times, currency movements and the joys of international postage.

I do not recommend that you try to be clever with Customs and Excise, a year or so back they started stopping all my parcels and demanding documentary proof of where it had come from price paid etc. Fortunately I had all the onformation they wanted and were happy and I haven't a problem since.

If you plan to buy to sell they will note the packages coming in and will eventually catch up with you.

If you buy the odd item of course you have a very good chance of not being caught but all buyers should budget on about 20% vat, clearing fees etc when bidding on anything.

Hintza break it down for me sure I could find out with a little research but ... ;+)
I've got my ways of making a living on ebay but always meaning to get into importing.
A friend of mine was making a lot of cash importing Timberland boots think he was being naughty with customs, anyway he told me he got a whole container impounded and they went to timberland UK to find out UK retail price at their London flagship store and gave him a huge bill based on the UK retail price. Needless to say he kisssed goodbye to that shipment.
Hence me saying "I thought in theory you couldn't exploit price differences like that i.e IPODs etc." i.e I was under the impression that you had to pay VAT on the equivalent UK retail price you know the way booze and ciggies work. If that's not the case why aren't we all using Japanese or US games consoles (apart from the region codes)?
Basically how did Kriss import these guitars? If they cost £900 stateside but £1800 over here what VAT/Duties was he actually paying? Can you just pay a percentage of the american price and if so why aren't we all doing it and kissing goodbye to rip of Britain?
Also a book/ website reccomendation would be much appreciated (preferably a book actually hate reading onscreen). I've got a big family both here and stateside that I'm sure I should be utilising ;+)