Thursday, September 20, 2007

Jeff & eBay's Excellent Adventure

So my first foray into selling stuff on the eBay is winding down. In total, I listed 63 different books/games/lots over the last three weeks. 59 of them sold without a hitch. 1 lot, a bunch of TMNT books, failed to attract notice the first week I listed. I added the word 'Palladium' to the listing and it sold for $5.50 the next week. As of my trip to the post office over lunch today, the last of those 60 lots is now on the way to the buyers. 1 item sold to someone who has a zero feedback rating. Ten days later they haven't paid and aren't returning my emails. At some point I'll have to investigate the protocol for non-payment.

Two items received no bids and I haven't yet relisted them. Those items would be the first trade paperback of Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon, collecting the original four-issue miniseries from Image, and two random gaming magazines. I expected at least one buyer to home in on the mags, because one of them (Games Unplugged #21) contains what is to my knowledge the only print-published 3rd party adventure for Nobilis.

After packing and shipping all that stuff, I now understand on a firsthand basis why people in the mail-order business charge extra for handling. One day spent 45 minutes at the post office, not because the line was long but because I hadn't had time to box and pack my orders. For a full thirty minutes I was packing up stuff. I actually ended up losing money on a couple orders because I spent some extra on packing materials or padded envelopes.

My furthest shipment was to Australia, with Spain coming in 2nd place. The coolest buyer user names I encountered had to be apewithalaser and meatheus. The most suprising sale I made was for a copy of Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering. That sucker sold for forty-one bucks! Did it go out of print or something? I was also suprised to see bigtime eBay sellers Guido the Gypsy and Wayne's World of Books bid on some of my lots. I've bought stuff from those guys lots of times. Now I wonder if I sold back to them things that I bought from them originally. The possibility makes my head hurt.

5 comments:

  1. If you want, package your non-sales with the deadbeat's item and I'll buy 'em. (I got Monsters! Monsters! from you.)

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  2. Oh, Monsters! Monsters! wasn't mine. I just found it for sale, didn't want it, but knew some blog reader would. Let me make sure I'm not violating any procedure on the unsold game and then we can talk. Email me at jrients at the gmail to the dot com and we'll set something up.

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  3. Anonymous6:17 PM

    Ah yes, ebay.
    People are really annoying there. Most of the time the transactions are smooth, and processing time is a sinch. However then you get the odd ball from hawaii who bids on some item of your EVEN though you clearly stated that you ship to the contential US only. (So that means hawaii is out) Then you decide to ship it to him anyways and he complains that the shipping time took too long, when your shipping medthod you use takes 2-3 weeks to deliver to hawaii (It says so when you check out how long the deliver time will be!!!)

    that's just one fun story.

    As for 0 feedbacks, Never never acept bids from them. I always put in big bold lettering all buyers must have 5 feeback minimum, with 0 negative in the last year. Does that stop them from bidding? Of course not. That's why i dont do it anymore, too much of a hastle to fend off the retards.

    As for the noob not payin gtheres a item payment dispute councle that you can use to have e-bay gently (With a bat) nudge him or her to pay. You need to do it quickly becuase if you don't file the complaint soon enough you cant get your money. (Typically ebay will give you your listing and other fees back if this happens)

    anyways, good luck on there!

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  4. Shipping and handling is a pain. I got caught up with that myself shipping out copies of XXXI. I initially hadn't considered the total costs, and I bag and board each one, plus the envelope, plus the time... yikes!

    That said, though, it is best to have a LOT of stuff to ship out than NONE. Not shipping things out would suck oh so much more...

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  5. Meathues12:56 PM

    Thank you for the compliment.

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