2001: AN EBAY ODYSSEY
Now that I have 2001 eBay feedbacks (it has taken me more than ten years to reach this figure, a mere busy afternoon for some vendors) it is time for one of my regular eBay commentaries. I do these not because I live and breathe eBay, but because I hope they might benefit someone else down the line.
I usually have a disaster to report, but this time the main feature of the last year or so has been a marked success. I opened an eBay shop in December 2010, and have been pleased with the results. The setting-up process was surprisingly easy, and eBay has done its groundwork well. Setting up the shop probably took less time than registering as a seller in the first place.
It is all neatly and logically laid out and easy to do. New shop operators have several decisions to make, but they can see a preview of the result. Any wrong decisions can always be corrected down the line.
I got it all set up surprisingly quickly and put in some lots – not without a few unwelcome surprises. For instance, putting a second photo on the listing costs about triple the fee for an auction item photo, which I suppose eBay feels is justified because a shop listing lasts up to 30 days. In addition, it is much more expensive to list on eBay US. The GB fee was 20p when I started, now thankfully reduced to 10p. A US listing is 50 cents, and this same amount is levied if you want "North American exposure" for your shop item.
As a result I do most of my shop listings, even for American material, on the GB site. Judging by where the GB items go, a lot of eBay shoppers know to do the widest possible search. Even when I put an unsold US item in my shop I generally put it on the GB site because of the considerable cost savings. The one exception is when the lot needs extra pictures, as these are only 15 cents for US listings.
Anyway, I waited for something to happen … and waited … and waited. I wasn’t exactly panicking, as the extra figures eBay provides to shop managers showed lots of people were looking.
Perhaps it was the holiday rush, as suddenly after ten days, a few days before Christmas, the first sale came. To my surprise, I had about one a day for the rest of the month, and the cost of £14.99 was quickly covered. In the nine months of operation the shop has more or less paid for itself each month, with the only exception being in May for some reason. Even in the notoriously slow month of August shop sales amounted to more than three times the shop fee. They also topped the auction sales, for the first and only time.
To be sure, an eBay shop is not cheap. As well as the 10p per listing and £14.99 a month – and this is only for the basic shop – sellers have to pay a 10 percent commission on all sales. And of course the PayPal fee also has to be factored in. This mounts up quickly.
One thing I find particularly annoying is the eBay money-grubbing move to charge 10 percent on postage fees as well. This was disingenuously described as a move to motivate vendors to charge low postage fees, but of course all those charging a break-even amount have to raise their charges as a result. So in effect it penalises the people who do charge a low rate.
At any rate, I find the shop is useful for listing unsold auction lots. I do auction listings twice, the second time at a reduced starting price, and then as time (always in short supply) allows I convert the listing to a shop one. Experience has taught me that some items are likely to sell but will never get bid up much, and these go straight to the shop.
A third category for good shop items is duplicated but highly saleable material. Vendors can list several identical items for the same 10p and the listing remains in effect until all are sold. This saves a lot of money and time. I find it worthwhile to list item as low as 99p if I have enough of them, and often people will order more than one.
Something that does happen, but less than expected, is that people will buy one item and keep shopping. I don’t charge extra postage for additional items so people can save quite a bit this way. In addition, sometimes people buy an auction lot and then go to the shop to see if they can get more money for their postage pound. Only occasionally do I have to retire shop items, ideally if they will fit into my stamp and postcard fair stock.
When I started my shop I was advised by an experienced seller that it would pay to upgrade the shop quickly, even at £50, but with the reduction of the 20p fee to 10p, I would need to have some 400 listings to save money, and do not envisage spending this much time chained to my computer.
The one non-price complaint I have about the shop is that most of the sales figure percentages are wildly wrong. To give a random example, for one recent week the report said I had 36 listings end and eight sales. This is clearly a sales rate of 22.2 percent, but it was listed on my report as 40 percent. All the other five weeks in that particularly report were all wrong – and I don’t suppose anyone will be surprised to hear that the error always inflated the sales percentage. The same is generally true for monthly reports. I’ve complained about this but had no response from eBay.
But of course eBay would not be eBay without disasters, and I have had one annoying experience. A repeat customer in the States was unhappy with the condition of a postcard, which cost the princely sum of $7. The US card was sent to the Scottish island of Orkney some 100 years ago and the layers were starting to come apart because the card had got quite wet at some point, which I failed to notice when scanning the card as the separation was not instantly obviously to anyone not looking for it.
He immediately gave me negative feedback, without contacting me. I of course immediately offered a refund, plus postage, and even paid to have the card sent back, but he would not budge on the negative feedback.. I learned that he was a serial filer of negative feedback, in fact doing this in about 5% of his purchases, but I soon forgot about it. I have since learned that eBay might well have reversed the negative feedback as it was counter to my otherwise excellent record – I am always at 5.0 or 4.9 on the four categories for customer satisfaction – but it was too late by the time I contacted eBay about this.
In another case I had some revenge low ratings. I gave someone a rating of 4 on one or two categories for a postcard I bought, which obviously enraged the seller. He then bought something from me that was a snip at £1.04 and claimed he had not received the item. After 10 days he said it had arrived, then gave me a 1 rating for speed of posting, even though I had a certificate of posting for the item dated the day after he paid for it. I got a totally unjustified low rating in another area as well, which meant my 5 score dropped to 4.9. All this effort and need to exact revenge all strikes me as incredibly pathetic.
But of course, if you always expect smooth sailing on eBay you will be doomed to disappointment.
Finally, I am sure I am not the only person on eBay who is annoyed about the adverts on the pages, especially at the top. They take up room, move around and so distract you (which I am sure they are designed to do) and slow downloading. I make a point of never clicking on the advert for more information, as this only encourages them.
The annoying effect can be minimalised, I discovered, if I set up the My eBay page with the advert moved up out of sight -- on my setup this is exactly four clicks of the mouse on the down arrow -- and then when I refresh the page the advert stays satisfyingly out of view.
I usually have a disaster to report, but this time the main feature of the last year or so has been a marked success. I opened an eBay shop in December 2010, and have been pleased with the results. The setting-up process was surprisingly easy, and eBay has done its groundwork well. Setting up the shop probably took less time than registering as a seller in the first place.
It is all neatly and logically laid out and easy to do. New shop operators have several decisions to make, but they can see a preview of the result. Any wrong decisions can always be corrected down the line.
I got it all set up surprisingly quickly and put in some lots – not without a few unwelcome surprises. For instance, putting a second photo on the listing costs about triple the fee for an auction item photo, which I suppose eBay feels is justified because a shop listing lasts up to 30 days. In addition, it is much more expensive to list on eBay US. The GB fee was 20p when I started, now thankfully reduced to 10p. A US listing is 50 cents, and this same amount is levied if you want "North American exposure" for your shop item.
As a result I do most of my shop listings, even for American material, on the GB site. Judging by where the GB items go, a lot of eBay shoppers know to do the widest possible search. Even when I put an unsold US item in my shop I generally put it on the GB site because of the considerable cost savings. The one exception is when the lot needs extra pictures, as these are only 15 cents for US listings.
Anyway, I waited for something to happen … and waited … and waited. I wasn’t exactly panicking, as the extra figures eBay provides to shop managers showed lots of people were looking.
Perhaps it was the holiday rush, as suddenly after ten days, a few days before Christmas, the first sale came. To my surprise, I had about one a day for the rest of the month, and the cost of £14.99 was quickly covered. In the nine months of operation the shop has more or less paid for itself each month, with the only exception being in May for some reason. Even in the notoriously slow month of August shop sales amounted to more than three times the shop fee. They also topped the auction sales, for the first and only time.
To be sure, an eBay shop is not cheap. As well as the 10p per listing and £14.99 a month – and this is only for the basic shop – sellers have to pay a 10 percent commission on all sales. And of course the PayPal fee also has to be factored in. This mounts up quickly.
One thing I find particularly annoying is the eBay money-grubbing move to charge 10 percent on postage fees as well. This was disingenuously described as a move to motivate vendors to charge low postage fees, but of course all those charging a break-even amount have to raise their charges as a result. So in effect it penalises the people who do charge a low rate.
At any rate, I find the shop is useful for listing unsold auction lots. I do auction listings twice, the second time at a reduced starting price, and then as time (always in short supply) allows I convert the listing to a shop one. Experience has taught me that some items are likely to sell but will never get bid up much, and these go straight to the shop.
A third category for good shop items is duplicated but highly saleable material. Vendors can list several identical items for the same 10p and the listing remains in effect until all are sold. This saves a lot of money and time. I find it worthwhile to list item as low as 99p if I have enough of them, and often people will order more than one.
Something that does happen, but less than expected, is that people will buy one item and keep shopping. I don’t charge extra postage for additional items so people can save quite a bit this way. In addition, sometimes people buy an auction lot and then go to the shop to see if they can get more money for their postage pound. Only occasionally do I have to retire shop items, ideally if they will fit into my stamp and postcard fair stock.
When I started my shop I was advised by an experienced seller that it would pay to upgrade the shop quickly, even at £50, but with the reduction of the 20p fee to 10p, I would need to have some 400 listings to save money, and do not envisage spending this much time chained to my computer.
The one non-price complaint I have about the shop is that most of the sales figure percentages are wildly wrong. To give a random example, for one recent week the report said I had 36 listings end and eight sales. This is clearly a sales rate of 22.2 percent, but it was listed on my report as 40 percent. All the other five weeks in that particularly report were all wrong – and I don’t suppose anyone will be surprised to hear that the error always inflated the sales percentage. The same is generally true for monthly reports. I’ve complained about this but had no response from eBay.
But of course eBay would not be eBay without disasters, and I have had one annoying experience. A repeat customer in the States was unhappy with the condition of a postcard, which cost the princely sum of $7. The US card was sent to the Scottish island of Orkney some 100 years ago and the layers were starting to come apart because the card had got quite wet at some point, which I failed to notice when scanning the card as the separation was not instantly obviously to anyone not looking for it.
He immediately gave me negative feedback, without contacting me. I of course immediately offered a refund, plus postage, and even paid to have the card sent back, but he would not budge on the negative feedback.. I learned that he was a serial filer of negative feedback, in fact doing this in about 5% of his purchases, but I soon forgot about it. I have since learned that eBay might well have reversed the negative feedback as it was counter to my otherwise excellent record – I am always at 5.0 or 4.9 on the four categories for customer satisfaction – but it was too late by the time I contacted eBay about this.
In another case I had some revenge low ratings. I gave someone a rating of 4 on one or two categories for a postcard I bought, which obviously enraged the seller. He then bought something from me that was a snip at £1.04 and claimed he had not received the item. After 10 days he said it had arrived, then gave me a 1 rating for speed of posting, even though I had a certificate of posting for the item dated the day after he paid for it. I got a totally unjustified low rating in another area as well, which meant my 5 score dropped to 4.9. All this effort and need to exact revenge all strikes me as incredibly pathetic.
But of course, if you always expect smooth sailing on eBay you will be doomed to disappointment.
Finally, I am sure I am not the only person on eBay who is annoyed about the adverts on the pages, especially at the top. They take up room, move around and so distract you (which I am sure they are designed to do) and slow downloading. I make a point of never clicking on the advert for more information, as this only encourages them.
The annoying effect can be minimalised, I discovered, if I set up the My eBay page with the advert moved up out of sight -- on my setup this is exactly four clicks of the mouse on the down arrow -- and then when I refresh the page the advert stays satisfyingly out of view.
posted by Chad Neighbor at
14.9.11
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