However, I think he left out the important issue of "How do you pay." Some auction rooms want either cash or a certified check, only. Some, fewer, will accept credit cards. Personal checks usually bring frowns except when previously okayed. But, there often is a 10% down, the balance in 24 hours or so for those who didn't bring enough. And, some will make you wait two hours before you can collect your merchandise even if fully paid. Which is another point, how do you transport the stuff away? But, auctions do offer good opportunities. Often, they are the best way to find the real conservative money value of an object.
Best and Merry Christmas,
Tom
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Ina,
I sell on ebay and just went through a "chargeback" because the women "claimed" the product was not authentic but I know it was. I am totally new to all this and a novice. PayPal gave her all her money back and charged me an extra $10 to boot. Then, they told me to contact the customer and "work it out" so I could get my purse back. Well, of course the customer tells me she sent it to paypal and she tells paypal she sent it to me!! Paypal asked for a receipt showing she sent it but never heard from her. IS there anyway to get my purse back or did she scam me as well as the credit card company? I have a feeling she's doing this over and over with many people. And it was a relatively expensive purse. Any comment/help would be appreciated!
kathy
The French are smart they know by hitting ebay in the pocket book the will get results eBay in my estimation is getting greedy and others will come along and out do them if there not careful. They can come down just as
fast as they went up. I feel ebay is tending to treat the small sellers with less and less support and paying attention to big sellers that are the ones that could care less about the customer and many over charge for
postage and handling.
Al
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Hello Ina,
You may wish to use the next email to also remind your subscribers of all the great forums on the AuctionBytes boards. Might generate some new users. Best wishes and happy holidays to you and David! Hope you are all feeling better.
Sincerely, John
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Hello Ina, Merriest of holiday wishes. Just wondered what your view is of the online auction taking away business from retail malls dealing in collectibles? Seems up here in Canada we are loosing more & more stores all
the time. Things I once found hard to find and could have sold immediately now sit and collect dust. I think the early online auctions made huge money and now everyone has dug the high bid stuff out and flooded the market. What
do you think ? Best of the season, Heather in Canada
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Ina,
Ebay Powersellers, of which I am one, have sold items for people for years. Many have grown their eBay business with the new bulk listing and management tools. Many are growing out of the house and into retail or commercial spaces. Examples are quikdrop.com, dropitoff.com, auctionwagon.com and auctiondrop.com. Quikdrop sells franchises. Auctiondrop.com states on it's web site that:
"AuctionDrop invented the eBay drop-off store concept
and has filed a patent on it."
Does that mean that all the others including the other mention drop off companies the current 30,000 Trading Partners can never leave the house. Can we only have "Drop-Off Houses". What are the ramifications of this patent? Will they hold a monopoly. Put Quikdrop out of business. Can I claim I invented "The eBay Drop-Off Driveway Concept". That is where I have my customers drop it off...with me at the end of the driveway.
Patents on business methods are controversial, yet powerful. eBay lost a $30,000,000 lawsuit because they were shown to be in violation of a patent business method...the Buy it Now feature.
I will be anxious to here from all those thousands of sellers that have currently moved into commercial spaces (though have not put out press releases) that potentially may be in violation of the "eBay Drop Off Store" Patent. Whew! Is that gonna be something to see.
On another related note, AuctionDrop did not invent the concept. In a NY Times article two days ago, it was stated by Auctionbytes that MyEZSale did this and failed years ago. I always thought that you could not patent something that was made public years ago. Patents must be filed within a certain period of time to be granted.
Let me know what you hear.
Karen
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Hello
When you talk, people listen. Could you please try and make ebay listen to this. It has been going on since I started my store about 2 years ago. I have told them more times than I can remember. They act like there is nothing wrong. I get 100's of emails sometimes when my auctions end wondering why I am trying to get them to pay for the auction again.
Here is what happens. I list my buy-it-now store auctions. People use buy-it-now to purchase my store auctions. They pay and I send out the goods. Later in the month when the auction expires they send out end-of-auction notices again for everyone that has used buy-it-now with my 90 store auction. 100's of them. When auctions expire after the 30 days is up no one should be sent an end of auction notice because no one buys anything when an auction expires. They just don't get it or don't care. If you could bring this to light with other ebay store merchants maybe we can all keep writing ebay and get them to fix it. Thank you. Jeff
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Dear Editor,
In my opinion, there are two big stories of the year in the online auction
world:
Some Internet Service Providers (ISP's), or individual users' email programs, are deleting our business emails as spam. AOL is notorious for this, Hotmail also, plus a few others. It's very frustrating being unable to get an invoice to one of these customers. One turned me in to Square Trade for not contacting her after an auction's close. I had sent her three emails to her aol.com email address! I've reported this to AOL twice and it's still
a problem.
eBay appears to be unable to fix their data base. I'll just cite the following two instances.
(A.) Since April 2003 I have been unable to contact some aol.com customers and have had to send my invoices through eBay's "Email this item to a friend" option. When you try the "Send Invoice" option, you receive an "Input Error." Why can't eBay fix the problem? I've reported it to eBay
twice.
(B.) eBay's feedback numbers for customers on some auction pages are not current. Just today (12-21-03) I had a customer's unique feedback number show "99" when in fact it was "102" on their feedback page. His last feedback was received on Nov 24, 2003. That's nearly a month ago and eBay can't update the customer's displayed feedback number.
Thank you for such an informative newsletter.
Gratefully,
Robert
About the author:
Ina Steiner is Editor of AuctionBytes.com and author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). She has a background in marketing and research in the high-tech and publishing fields. If you have story ideas, comments or questions, send them to ina@auctionbytes.com.
