How ebay could improve itself

Road_Hog

lovinituk wrote: »

I send out thousands of orders a month and less than 1% go signed for. Less than half a percent of all my orders are lost the post. The amount of money I save by NOT using signed for is way more than what is lost. A lot people can't comprehend this saving though.

Start selling mobile phones or other electronics and see how long it is before you go broke.

Flyonthewall

Road_Hog wrote: »

Start selling mobile phones or other electronics and see how long it is before you go broke.

I'm sure there are lots of electronic items that are perfectly fine being sent by standard post.

Things like mobile phones are completely different due to value. You wouldn't be covered in the event of loss/damage for most mobiles if you sent them by standard post.

You can't base the amount of items being sent recorded on just mobile phones and certain electronics. There are thousands and thousands of other items being sold by hundreds of different sellers and a fair amount of that has a low value and most of that will be sent by standard post.

Just because selling them and sending standard may leave you broke really doesn't change the fact that for the item(s) lovinituk (and others) is sending can be sent by standard post and they can save money that way.

campdave

Road_Hog wrote: »

Start selling mobile phones or other electronics and see how long it is before you go broke.

There seem to be plenty of successful phone and electronic sellers on ebay. They can't all be losing money.

SlowCooker

Road_Hog wrote: »

Start selling mobile phones or other electronics and see how long it is before you go broke.

I thought you meant Royal Mail Recorded...

If you are selling high-value items like mobiles, of course you will have to send them tracked and require signature, but this has nothing to do with eBay. It's simply the fact that with normal post your item won't be covered. So, even if you have your own website, you will still use signed for with adequate insurance to send phones and expensive electronics.

RFW

SlowCooker wrote: »

If you are selling high-value items like mobiles, of course you will have to send them tracked and require signature, but this has nothing to do with eBay. It's simply the fact that with normal post your item won't be covered. So, even if you have your own website, you will still use signed for with adequate insurance to send phones and expensive electronics.

If you're using this "alternative" tier two system then you wouldn't have to worry about using tracked post, if a buyer says they haven't received their item then it's tough. Or have I missed something?

SlowCooker

RFW wrote: »

If you're using this "alternative" tier two system then you wouldn't have to worry about using tracked post, if a buyer says they haven't received their item then it's tough. Or have I missed something?

:doh: True. Tier-2 sellers have impunity; they can throw a new ipad in a carrier bag and post it as a large letter five months after receiving payment.

lovinituk

Road_Hog wrote: »

Start selling mobile phones or other electronics and see how long it is before you go broke.

I wouldn't be stupid enough to get in to such a cut throat sector with next to no profit in the first place, let alone sell that sort of stuff on eBay

Road_Hog

lovinituk wrote: »

I wouldn't be stupid enough to get in to such a cut throat sector with next to no profit in the first place, let alone sell that sort of stuff on eBay

It was certainly an interesting time, and gave me an experience of certain parts of the general population, that given a choice, I wouldn't like to experience again.


It was actually quite profitable until John Donahoe came along with his magic new ebay. I worked with many of my competitors, to help keep down the scammers and serial cheats.


Once the Donahoe's magic ebay came into play, like guaranteed refunds (I don't have a problem with genuine refunds, just people sending back a different phone) and no negative feedback for buyers, it became a cheat's dream.


I still get people to this day, emailing me about mobiles (I don't sell/unlock/debrand etc. anymore) to this day, because the large retailers don't sell what they want. There are very few independent mobile retailers left on ebay, last time I looked, all my ex-competitors have gone.

yeslek

ebay certainly need to loosen up the rules/limits for private vs high volume sellers.
I sell maybe an item or 2 a week on average, so having such strict limitations on stars and shipping kills me when you get the one bad sale.
by ratio it looks much worse than if I sold say 100's of items a week/month as the one bad sale would be such a smaller percentage overall - I'm currently on 99.1% feedback due to s single negative (buyer purchased in error, and kicked off as I was online to refund the minute they cancelled the transaction, leaving feedback within 2 hrs and refusing to fairly amend it when I finally picked up the cancellation the next morning, about 15hrs later :mad: oh and in contrast, that same week, another item I sold, got damaged in post so the buyer returned for a refund, but they were so nice about it and polite, when they had no need to be as the effort to return was no doubt putting them out, and they STILL left glowing feedback when I was did was refund them what they were owed! Fault wasnt theirs but they were great with me rather than trying to blame me for their own mistakes like the negative buyer.)
its going to take me ages to fix this and that's if I dont get another buyer who cant read, messing me about

plus, to reiterate what others said about private sellers having a job so cant always ship same day.
The RM limit of 15 days for lost items need to be added on listings instead of the 'best case senario' estimated delivery times they currently have. I always allow at least 2 weeks before contacting sellers, 3 this time of year, and that's only to confirm it was shipped. I never push for a refund or replacement until the 15 working days have passed and hate to have to constantly advise and essentially beg buyers to allow for this time window to pass before I refund.


to end, there definitely needs to be a clear distinction between private and business sellers in many areas on ebay.

Flyonthewall

yeslek wrote: »

ebay certainly need to loosen up the rules/limits for private vs high volume sellers.
I sell maybe an item or 2 a week on average, so having such strict limitations on stars and shipping kills me when you get the one bad sale.
by ratio it looks much worse than if I sold say 100's of items a week/month as the one bad sale would be such a smaller percentage overall - I'm currently on 99.1% feedback due to s single negative (buyer purchased in error, and kicked off as I was online to refund the minute they cancelled the transaction, leaving feedback within 2 hrs and refusing to fairly amend it when I finally picked up the cancellation the next morning, about 15hrs later :mad: oh and in contrast, that same week, another item I sold, got damaged in post so the buyer returned for a refund, but they were so nice about it and polite, when they had no need to be as the effort to return was no doubt putting them out, and they STILL left glowing feedback when I was did was refund them what they were owed! Fault wasnt theirs but they were great with me rather than trying to blame me for their own mistakes like the negative buyer.)
its going to take me ages to fix this and that's if I dont get another buyer who cant read, messing me about

plus, to reiterate what others said about private sellers having a job so cant always ship same day.
The RM limit of 15 days for lost items need to be added on listings instead of the 'best case senario' estimated delivery times they currently have. I always allow at least 2 weeks before contacting sellers, 3 this time of year, and that's only to confirm it was shipped. I never push for a refund or replacement until the 15 working days have passed and hate to have to constantly advise and essentially beg buyers to allow for this time window to pass before I refund.


to end, there definitely needs to be a clear distinction between private and business sellers in many areas on ebay.

I don't think they need to loosen the rules/limits as such. I think the problem is the lack of buyers knowledge on these rules/limits and in general just how ebay works, especially as a seller.

The problem with the feedback and stars is more with how the stars work than the limitations. 5* is happy, anything less is bad, but so many buyers think 3* is average and don't realise how much it's hurting the sellers.

I saw a conversation online the other day about it and a couple of people always give 3* unless the seller does something extra and they feel they got an above average service. They've not been giving 3* to be mean, they've been giving them because on all other sites 3*is average.

They also didn't realise about automatic 5* for comunication and P&P if the seller follows what ebay say. So their something extra may be that they expect a message to say the item has been dispatched and they hope they like it or something but a lot of sellers are never going to do that because of the automatic 5* and so they're getting marked down elsewhere by unknowing buyers.

You will always get stupid buyers though. Still, they either need to change the feedback system to what people expect or inform the buyers more about how it works.

Have you contacted ebay about that neg? If the buyer is being unreasonable and kicking off ebay may remove it, especially if he's threatening or whatever in the feedback.

Why does there need to be a clear distinction between private and business sellers? I mean, I think generally it's quite obvious which are business sellers usually before even clicking on a listing. However, I don't care who I buy from so long as they have good feedback and I'm happy with the description and price.

I know technically you should have more rights buying from a business seller but as ebay doesn't care about half of them and they protect the buyer regardless of who the seller is I don't see that it matters.