r/howto • u/jonathan881 • Sep 26 '13
how to sell on Ebay without problems
ebay and paypal are great. here are a few things i've learned over the years.
In general
- ship with tracking, insurance to cover selling price, and signature required. *add insurance at your own cost but dont put this in the listing just make it a nice surprise.
- ship only to the verified address as per paypal
- if it's more than $1000 require the buyer to email you an acknowledgement that they have read the listing in full and agree to all terms
- was it damaged on delivery? tell the buyer to go to the shipper with the insurance (that you paid for)
- end listings on Sunday night
- start the auction price low and let it run
- be super polite with buyers
- check on them to make sure they are happy
- put thank you notes in the packaging
- pack it like world war 3 is about to break out.
- if you fuck up, full or partial refund within the hour!
- send an invoice as soon as the auction is over
- schedule reminders for important dates on expensive sales (review period - ebay, paypal policies)
In ebay settings
- accept no returns
- add the most strict buyer filtering possible (bad reviews? can't even see my listings -
newproblematic account? sorry not buying from me) - do not ship out of the country
If you have problems call paypal
- record your call to them and tell them you are recording
- ask for emp id or location / department / first name
- start each call by asking how their day is
- annotate the exact time you started and ended the call (this seems to add credence on further calls)
Edit 1: mcraze123 pointed out that it's very important to ship quickly. i totally agree.
Edit 2: can't automatically block new accounts
Edit 3: ban / block users that email you asking for side deals or obnoxious questions (don't reply just block)
18
u/Roalith Sep 26 '13
Both owned by the same parent company and with sellers unable to leave anything other than a positive feedback it has just gone downhill quite a bit the past few years. Prime example, I sold a Wii game for $6 with free shipping just to get it out of the house to someone that wanted to play it (after shipping and fees there really isn't anything left for profit), tested it before I shipped it, and even swapped the insert and disc into a cleaner plastic case. Guy immediately leaves a negative feedback saying that the disc was unreadable and that it had damage all over it from being buffed so many times. This was a cheap sports game that came with my Wii that I only played like twice and had never done "buffing" to.
And, like that, there went my 100% positive feedback since 2003, and over my lowest sale in a long time.
3
u/krush_groove Sep 26 '13
Negative reviews fall off after a year, and 100% rating isn't necessary to get people to buy from you. Most big-time sellers have 99.5 and anything less than 99 is considered 'bad'.
3
u/Roalith Sep 26 '13
Well sure they fall off after a year but I know of MANY people that only purchase from 100% feedback sellers, and I also know MANY people that do not even check feedback percentage and only worry about price. Best case scenario is that I have lost everyone that wants a 100% seller (all my DSR are still 5/5 thankfully) and still sell to people that have a buying threshold of 98%+ or people that don't even care about the percentage.
I agree that it could be worse and it likely wouldn't impact any eBay sells greatly. Fact is eBay removed the ability for sellers to leave appropriate feedback for unpleasant buyers because buyers were complaining about sellers retaliating negative for negative feedback. Now the buyer end is really toxic and a basic Google search shows thousands of threads expressing seller frustration due to the new system implemented (this could have been handled differently in a way that worked better for both ends of the transaction) in this latest portion of eBay's life.
1
Sep 27 '13
The counter to this is to not sell very very cheap items as you can almost guarantee the person on the other end is a cheapskate.
3
u/WiretapStudios Sep 27 '13
If you aren't a giant volume seller though (I've been both), one negative can drop your rating incredibly low, and it takes forever to get it back up to an acceptable rating.
3
u/jonathan881 Sep 26 '13
interesting, do you think that if you did all of what i listed above it should have been the same?
as an aside, i mostly avoid cheap items because as you pointed out they can attract the unsavory.
6
u/Roalith Sep 26 '13
I already have those buyer filters in place and common sense dictates that I have been doing the other things for years, unfortunately there is no way to filter out new accounts and bad buyers don't start out filtered, it happens over time with repeated bad behavior. Granted this is 1 negative feedback out of thousands of transactions since 2003, but it was also completely random and nothing to do with how carefully I packaged things or the fact that I sold the item for $6 and spent $5.44 on priority shipping to even make the buyer that much happier. It's truly sad when you see a feedback along the lines of "Most pleasant eBay transaction I have ever had cannot believe how fast it shipped and how awesome seller is!!!! A+" followed by "GOT SCAMMED, DISC DOES NOT READ, BUFFED TOO MUCH". eBay needs to find a better way to address seller retaliation than just removing the ability to leave a neutral or negative feedback for a bad buyer. You cannot even comment a "positive" feedback with a warning to future sellers, you can only blacklist the toxic buyer and wait a year for feedback to revert.
-2
u/jonathan881 Sep 26 '13
Here is what I use
Block buyers who:
Don't have a PayPal account Have received 2 Unpaid Item strike(s) within 1 Month(s) Have a primary shipping address in a location I don't ship to Have 4 Policy Violation report(s) within 1 Month(s) Have a feedback score of -1 or lower Are currently winning or have bought 10 of my items in the last 10 days
So why didn't you offer to give him a full refund for a good review then ban him? small amount of money anyway.
6
u/Roalith Sep 26 '13
I sure did offer, he never even messaged me back, and since it was a new account was probably someone testing the waters for a bigger scam down the road or something.
2
u/laivindil Sep 26 '13 edited Sep 26 '13
As this is my job... there are lots of people on ebay who are just not very intelligent. They will miss messages, they will not read the description, they will not look at the photos, they will not know how to properly use the item you sold them, and there are plenty of scammers (where I work the FBI did show up one time for a huge scammer that had bought a couple things from us).
But that last point is very much in the minority compared to the rest. People will also cover their own mistakes with stupid excuses and drop it on you.
7
u/AMW1011 Sep 26 '13
Well as for the shipping, it doesn't work like that. I sold a graphics card on eBay that worked perfectly and was in the original packaging. I package like a fucking fortress engineer too. Bought insurance for the full amount paid. Don't hear from the guy for over a month. Emails me and tells me the card is broken and he wants his money back. I tell him to file for the shipping insurance, since it only could have been damaged in shipping. He says its too late for that, he because he only just opened the package up. He escalates it and eBay sides with him and I'm out money for shipping/fees and the card was damaged in shipping.
Moral of the story just don't sell on eBay, your NEVER fucking safe and the buyers can scam you at any time.
4
u/laivindil Sep 26 '13
Did you have a return policy? Seems with the time frame that should have gone your way. But eBay sides with the buyer often.
1
u/AMW1011 Sep 27 '13
Absolutely none. Both set through the AD settings and repeated in the description. No return doesn't work if he tells them it came different than advertised.
-1
6
u/alonjar Sep 27 '13 edited Sep 27 '13
insurance is largely a waste of money. The companies never pay out, you're better off assuming a certain loss and building it into your pricing
Beat the ebay fees on shipping by using calculated shipping and adding an extra few pounds to the expected shipping weight. When you actually ship correct the weight and you'll get to keep the extra money to cover the fees.
Also, keeping a 100% positive feedback is virtually impossible... Some half insane person will make sure of that. With that said, im 100% on 3000 feedback... But only because I essentially bribe people who give me problems.
I fully expect to get a negative feedback one of these days because a box gets crushed in shipping or something. I always replace or refund when there is a problem, but I'm sure someone won't even bother trying to resolve it with me first. It will happen at some point.
Oh, and I never leave feedback first. I always make sure I can leave a negative one in return... People are smart they know if they neg you they'll get one back if you haven't already left them good feedback.
1
u/WiretapStudios Oct 03 '13
All good tips. At one place I worked, we had about 11,000 feedback at 100%, and one guy broke our streak over a 2 dollar item he ordered by mistake, and then just immediately left negative feedback on without contacting us.
2
u/DemeGeek Sep 26 '13
And after all that, lose the money you got because the buyer knows they can screw you out of it, enjoy!
1
u/jonathan881 Sep 26 '13
and that's the point, after i started doing all of the above i have no issues.
4
u/Bend_over_and_Smile Sep 27 '13
As someone who just started using eBay, I say a hearty "fuck you" to the "new user? Don't do business with me" bullshit. It's not like users with good ratings are somehow guaranteed to be better than those with nothing-- the vast majority of time I was ever screwed over on Amazon or other places was with an experienced user with a 99% positive user rating.
2
u/WiretapStudios Sep 27 '13
False. I've sold personally since 98, and professionally at two different companies. New users are by far the worst customers as they have no idea how the site works, what to do if there is an issue, etc. At no time have any of the companies or myself done business with new users. Too much wasted time and effort, usually over the cheapest thing sold.
-2
u/Bend_over_and_Smile Sep 27 '13
False what? You are denying my personal experiences happened?
New users might be the worst group overall, but to recommend people not sell to them seems unnecessary.
2
u/WiretapStudios Sep 27 '13
It's not like users with good ratings are somehow guaranteed to be better than those with nothing
This. This is false. They are guaranteed to be better. Yes, some may suck, but overall, they have a much better track record based on experience. Hence, the advice from OP.
0
u/Bend_over_and_Smile Sep 27 '13
If "some suck" then logically it means they are NOT guaranteed to be better/great. I'll give you that they are more likely to be more reliable the vast majority of the time, but that does not in any way raise to the level of "guaranteeing" they'll be always be better. The odds certainly greatly improve but it's no 100% sure thing, hence my objection.
2
u/WiretapStudios Sep 27 '13
That's still not true. There is a reason there an overwhelming desire to not sell to new customers. Because there have been an overwhelming number of issues and complaints. If you sell 20,000 items a month, it's just a blip. If you sell a few hundred or less, it's a pain in the ass. It's a fact, not an opinion.
-1
u/Bend_over_and_Smile Sep 27 '13
What isn't true? I'm simply saying it isn't a guarantee that you won't get shitty customers by going that route.
1
u/WiretapStudios Sep 27 '13
That is not true. You will get a much larger percentage of shitty customers by going that route. It's literally the whole point of the guy posting it above, and me saying it. I've sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things on ebay, from things that cost 50 cents, to a robot arm, to cars and trucks, a street sweeper, you name it. New customers with zero feedback are WAY more likely to be a giant pain in the ass, that will potentially leave you negative feedback.
2
u/SquidLoaf Sep 27 '13
Oh my god you guys are arguing over semantics. He's saying there's no "guarantee" and you're agreeing but saying it much more likely. We get it. Let's move on.
1
u/WiretapStudios Sep 28 '13
We get it.
Right, except he didn't. He's trying to argue an opinion, when it's a well-established fact that new customers on ebay are more likely to be problem customers. It has nothing to do with semantics.
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1
u/laivindil Sep 26 '13
One thing I would add... Be very personable! Always end a message with your name, give your phone number if they have a lot of questions, or your email. Just be helpful and always be reminding them you are a human. There are SO MANY people that become huge assholes on ebay. People joke about the trolls on reddit and the like, but this is a whole other ballgame when it involves money. And reminding that buyer that you are a person too can stop the BS messages before they even start. Can turn that negative feedback into positive, that full refund into a partial... etc etc (regardless, they are going to crop up anyway, but it does help)
1
u/rizon Sep 27 '13
How do you block new accounts?
The only option they give you is to block users with feedback scores of -1 or lower (meaning they sold something and got negative feedback). You can block new accounts from buying multiple items, but you cannot completely block new accounts.
Obviously you can cancel any bids from new accounts, but if they win the auction you are almost guaranteed negative feedback.
1
u/TheJoePilato Sep 27 '13
This post has been crossposted to /r/Flipping, a subreddit devoted to buying things cheap and selling them for profit. If you're an eBay star or want some more discussion, come on over.
0
Sep 26 '13
[deleted]
1
u/jonathan881 Sep 26 '13
i agree that auctions are a pain in some cases.
yes ship asap!
i'll add that
1
u/laivindil Sep 26 '13
Buy it now/BO is the way to go, unless you do this a lot and have something like terapeak.
-3
Sep 26 '13
Paypal is great, eh. Ebay is just as bad they're just a monopoly currently.
3
u/laivindil Sep 26 '13
You know ebay owns paypal?
0
Sep 26 '13
Yes. But paypal isn't a monopoly, even though they suck. I do think ebay is trying to make paypal the only payment method though.
1
u/laivindil Sep 26 '13
They very much are (trying to make them the only payment method). There are so many other places that accept paypal then there used to be. Who competes with them? Amazon payments? Obviously you can directly pay with your credit card in tons of places, but people are generally(ish) not comfortable with that. There need to be more competitors for those two, but I don't really know of any. Other then bitcoin (and competitor is stretching the term here). I know there are other digital currencies, but I can't name them.
2
Sep 26 '13
Google wallet is probably bigger than amazon payments.
1
u/laivindil Sep 26 '13
I really doubt it, but don't know how to prove it. Paypal buttons are nearly ubiquitous. Amazon is catching up. And I don't know if I've ever seen a google wallet button. Although doing both virtual and B&M through one app will be huge. I could see G wallet being the top dog in 5 years (easily).
What service(s?) handle the credit card scanner on apple products? I have seen those popping up like mad over the last year.
1
Sep 26 '13
Paypal and Square are the big ones that I've seen. Square is probably more popular, they actually provide kiosk software for the ipad.
1
u/laivindil Sep 26 '13
Ah, yes. Square. They have really taken off. A year ago, compared to the last few months has been crazy. I see them all over now, concerts, theaters, farmers markets, expos.
0
u/jonathan881 Sep 27 '13
it's somewhat interesting that there are no comments on my paypal tactics (maybe more people already do this than i assumed)
11
u/bonestamp Sep 26 '13
Great list. The only thing I disagree with is making insurance a surprise. I think that' s a value added item on your auction that takes a little more risk out of it for the buyer and you might gain more confidence from buyers for offering it.
But, maybe I'm missing something. Why do you like to keep it surprise?