Preparing Your eBay Business for a Crisis

[Ina]

What would you do to keep your business running in the event of an emergency? Disasters happen - from weather catastrophe to family illness or death - and you need to have a plan in place to help you protect the business you've worked so hard to build.

Brad and Debra Schepp have written a series for the AuctionBytes-Update newsletter called, Preparing Your eBay Business for a Crisis, with the first article appearing in the January 7 issue:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y207/m01/abu0182/s02

Please share your stories, strategies and tips here.

Note: Due to previous abuse by spammers, we prohibit users from registering for the forums using Yahoo or Hotmail accounts. I apologize to new users for the inconvenience.
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Ina Steiner, AuctionBytes.com

[carolhearn]

I enjoyed this thought-provoking article, but it didn't answer one question. In the event of a weather-related power outage, it is likely that phone lines will also be down. Even though you have a generator and can continue to work on local files on your computer, without being able to connect to the internet, you still have no way to reach customers.

Is there an emergency fix for this problem?

Carol Hearn, Bothell WA
http://WanderingCreekAntiques.com
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Carol Hearn

[Tradguy]

I'm in Florida and we were hit pretty hard back a few years ago - no power for a week and the house was flooded.

But in all of the weather problems we've seen, we've never actually lost our phones. We have 2 options for internet access from home - cable and phone. Cox cable provides a dial-up account in case of travel or emergency, and that came in handy since the cable was out for some time.

I suppose if I lost power and phone and cable I'd have to grab my wife's laptop, which has built-in wifi, and either head downtown (our downtown are offers free wifi internet) or head over to a friends house that has wireless. I've also found that most of the florida turnpike rest areas also have wifi. So if I was really really desperate, I could get in my car and find the internet

But there is another thing you can do. In my case, I know when a hurricane is on it's way, but I also know that most of my customers have no idea I'm in Florida. Before the hurricane hits, I go to my webhost account that handles my email, and I create an "auto-responder". This is simply an email message sent out from my mail host (the site I get my email from) to every incoming email that explains that I might be offline for awhile and why. That's what I did a couple of years ago and instead of irrate customers, I had nothing but patient and concerned customers.

Hope this helps!
Rich

[carolhearn]

Thanks, Tradguy - great info!
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Carol Hearn

[LapisLee]

The single worst thing that can happen to you on eBay is if someone, anyone, a competitor sends money to your PayPal account and includes one of PayPal's 1000+ 'forbidden words' in the Reason line.

You will lose your PayPal account immediately with no possibility of appeal or even of speaking with a real person if you accept this payment. You will receive a series of nearly identical emails all of which point you to the appropriate section of the Users Agreement and Acceptable Use Policy which the unidentified individual, who may have a feedback of 1 and whose account may disappear the day after the $5 was sent to your account.

Therefore, if you receive a payment through PayPal with any of these 1000+ words in the Reason line, do not accept it because YOU are responsible!

What are these 1000+ words and where can they be found? There is only one way to know...by accepting a payment with one of the words in the Reason line. Otherwise PayPal does not provide a list of the forbidden words. Bear in mind that 83% of ALL sales on eBay use PayPal and there is NO alternative that people trust.
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Lee New
lapisconnection@gmail.com
www.lapisconnection.com
Handcrafted sterling silver lapis lazuli jewelry from Santiago, Chile

[AbbeysAttic]

LapisLee,

I'm assuming that this happened to you? So you're saying that if someone sends me a payment with say the "F" word in the title (if that's in their list). Then you can be banned from Paypal? Don't most payments just automatically land in your account unless you have it flagged in your profile to aslk if you want to accept payments from unconfirmed addresses. And you're saying you have to recourse with Paypal? Since when are they the morality police?

I wonder what all of the forbidden words are. I can only think of a couple of handfulls that might be offensive.

[LapisLee]

That is exactly right and if I had a PayPal account I would like to know what the forbidden words were as well. You have 72 hours after receipt of a PayPal payment to reject or return the payment. After that your account is automatically closed with no chance of appeal.
In my case, the forbidden word was 'Viagra' and was sent by a competitor in the jewelry business. Unfortunately this is a very easy way to shut down your competition and, unless they are a Power Seller with a feedback of over 100,000, they will be unable to do anything about it.
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Lee New
lapisconnection@gmail.com
www.lapisconnection.com
Handcrafted sterling silver lapis lazuli jewelry from Santiago, Chile

[AbbeysAttic]

Well, one of the absolute worst things that could happen just happened to me Tuesday night...........my computer crashed. After repeated attempts to revive it I had to take it in to be repaired. Turns out the hard drive failed and they couldn't retrieve my data. However, I did have a backup that was only about a week and a half old so I didn't loose too much. The main important things were there like pictures.

My new campaign is Backup, backup, backup!!!

I went ahead and purchased a new computer and now that the old one is fixed I have a backup.

Sandy

[Ina]

Brad and Debra's articles really have me thinking about how well prepared small business owners need to be. I started an Operations Manual to write down the key "How Tos" in our business. David and I separate our responsibilities, and I want to make sure we each know how to do the others' tasks and know the important URLs and passwords etc.

I've heard experts recommend everyone have a will, a Durable Power of Attorney, a health proxy with a special HIPPA addendum, and life insurance and disability insurance. And to think about retirement planning - you can use IRA contributions to bring down your tax liability. The Power of Attorney lets someone pay your bills and manage your affairs if you can't (doesn't have to be a coma - you could be vacationing outside the country and get stuck there, for instance) - particularly important for one-person operations. While it can be daunting to think about these things, it's not as hard to get organized as you think, and there's a tremendous feeling of satisfaction once you get it done.

I'd add one thing - consider getting protection for your business by filing for an LLC - Limited Liability Corporation. There are lots of books at the library that can help you get up to speed on these things. To me, the hardest part is finding a trusted attorney.
Ina
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Ina Steiner, AuctionBytes.com