The EBay thread.

[glatt]

Update:

The seller got back to me over the weekend. We exchanged a few communications, and he requested photos of the item that arrived. I sent them. He agreed to refund my money and sent me a prepaid label to return the item (to Amazon.)

He promises to refund me in full once it arrives. He cautioned that it may take 7 days and to please contact him first before leaving negative feedback.

I dropped the box off in my company's mail room this morning for UPS to pick up later today.

[xoxoxoBruce]

He's taking advantage of Amazon's liberal return policy to chuck and jive.


I receive two books I didn't order from Amazon. I thought it was a screwup but an outside chance they were a gift. Contacted Amazon, but with no packing slip couldn't find out why I got them. No, don't return them, "consider it a gesture of good will from Amazon". I'm sure restocking would cost more than the books.

[monster]

Originally Posted by glatt

Update:

The seller got back to me over the weekend. We exchanged a few communications, and he requested photos of the item that arrived. I sent them. He agreed to refund my money and sent me a prepaid label to return the item (to Amazon.)

He promises to refund me in full once it arrives. He cautioned that it may take 7 days and to please contact him first before leaving negative feedback.

I dropped the box off in my company's mail room this morning for UPS to pick up later today.

[glatt]

I just got a full refund! The money in in my PayPal account.

I was still able to leave feedback, and based on the great communication with him and his willingness to resolve the issue, I gave him positive feedback.

So how is this worth his while to drop ship from Amazon?

I paid $49.78 to this seller.
Ebay takes 10%, I believe. So $4.98.
The seller is down to $44.80
Paypal takes 2.9% plus 30 cents for the transaction ($1.74)
The seller is down to $43.06
He bought from Amazon for $39.90.
Free shipping if he had PRIME.

He clears $3.16 on the transaction.

$3.16 to post the item and then go to Amazon and enter my information to have it sent to me. He's currently got something like 50,000 items for sale. Are they computer generated? Did he write a script? Does he do anything other than deal with issues like mine?

If he just wrote a program that does all the work, then I can see it being worthwhile to deal with a handful of issues each day and just collect micropayments all day long on sales that the computer generates for him.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by glatt

Are they computer generated? Did he write a script?

There are programs for eBayer types that do that.

[glatt]

I want to know if I am missing out on an easy get rich with minimal effort scheme.

He spent maybe 10 minutes dealing with me, and if he has,let's say, 5 transactions a day go sour, that's still less than an hour a day that he's working. If the rest of it is computer generated then that's easy street for him.

UT's 30 cents a listing comment means that he's going to have to identify items that he expects to sell. I bit on this tent because his listing was deceptive. I knew the correct pricing, but maybe a lot of people out there don't know the correct pricing?

Maybe the better way to get rich is to drop ship from China through AliExpress. and Epacket delivery. Their low prices give a greater profit margin, but the delivery time is much slower.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by glatt

I want to know if I am missing out on an easy get rich with minimal effort scheme.

He spent maybe 10 minutes dealing with me, and if he has,let's say, 5 transactions a day go sour, that's still less than an hour a day that he's working. If the rest of it is computer generated then that's easy street for him.

You know that money grubbing attitude got you in this mess in the first place.

There are a lot of people who will take a chance on an item coming from Amazon rather than from an individual they don't know, located someplace but they're not sure where, stemming from the feeling Amazon will somehow intercede if things go south.