The EBay thread.

[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.

[Happy Monkey]

Ebay takes 10%, I believe. So $4.98.

Last time I tried to use EBay, they were charging little nickel and dime charges for all sorts of crap to set up each listing. I don't know if they're still doing that, or if the stuff they charged for was actually useful.

[Undertoad]

There's a 0.30 "insertion listing fee" when you've listened over 50 items, which is retracted if the item sells. This prevents people from just wildly listing every goddamn thing in the universe.

[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.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

There's a 0.30 "insertion listing fee" when you've listened over 50 items, which is retracted if the item sells. This prevents people from just wildly listing every goddamn thing in the universe.

It's been years since I've eBayed. Sounds like they've settled down. When I tried, there was a whole menu of fees. I don't remember what they were, but some of them seemed like pretty essential items for a listing, like pictures. I eventually gave up, and sold what I was selling on Amazon, where you could input the ISBN or UPC and get a lovely listing page automatically generated if it was something they sold already.

[Flint]

Anybody had luck taking pictures of stuff and posting on FB Marketplace?

I've got space to store a bunch of stuff.
No listings, no bureaucratic hassle, just show up and bring the cash.

[glatt]

Not aware of FB marketplace. Is it public or just friends? Local ones at that.

[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.

[sexobon]

That's good if the item is sold and shipped by Amazon; or, at least shipped by Amazon. Otherwise, you can have the same situation with items sold and shipped by some individual via Amazon.

Buying something that's sold and shipped by Amazon is like buying from an eBay seller with 99.8% or better positive feedback. Less than these for either one and it's key is to do in-depth research on the seller. That way it's a calculated risk and you don't have to depend on lucking out as glatt did this time (glad he did).

I've ordered items via eBay shipped from Canada, Australia, and India without incident; but, I did my homework.

[Clodfobble]

Isn't FB Marketplace just Craigslist with a different audience? For what it's worth, I still sell stuff on Craigslist all the time--not always because it's too big to ship, often it's little things that I just don't want to bother shipping.

[glatt]

Does Craigslist work? Are there enough local interested in your stuff?

[Clodfobble]

So far I think I've sold everything I ever tried to sell. Sometimes it took a couple weeks to get a bite, and sometimes I had to re-list it at a lower price than I initially was hoping for, but I'd say I have something actively listed maybe 30% of the time. It's not a place to build a thriving business or anything, but it's great for things that don't donate easily like clothes and toys do.

Just two days ago I sold a giant metal wall clock that was 2.5 feet in diameter. We bought it online and discovered only after hanging it how insanely loud the ticking was. The metal made it resonate. Anyway, I decided after a couple months that I just couldn't take it, but it wasn't worth the effort to repack it, and I think I was probably past any return window anyway. So I posted it on Craigslist for 75% what we paid for it, and 9 days later someone texted me with an offer for half. I said sure. Met him in the parking lot of a grocery store I had to go to that day anyway, and now the thing's out of my house and I took less of a financial hit than I would have by just giving it away.

Having pushed that off my plate, I've now posted my daughter's shoulder rest for her violin that she recently outgrew, with pictures swiped from the manufacturer's website. It's only listed at $15, and I'll probably end up taking $5-$10 for it in the end, but the thirty seconds it took to post it are worth it just to see it go to someone who can use it, instead of in the trash.


Edit to add: I've also found my last two duck egg suppliers through Craigslist.

[glatt]

Is craigslist free for sellers?

[Clodfobble]

On an even more extremely-local level, I gave away our backyard trampoline on the neighborhood site nextdoor.com. I didn't want to disassemble it, so I was hoping to get someone who could literally walk it down the street to their own backyard, and I had easily half a dozen requests for it within a couple hours of posting. If it's cheap enough, people will take anything off your hands.