The eBay experience
(An education in progress)
(An education in progress)
A couple weeks back, as mercenarily mentioned in every post for the thirteen days they were in force, I ran a series of Heroclix auctions. 141 auctions run, 118 sold and 23 went unsold. Everything started at no more than 99 cents with no reserve price. Some sold at the minimum bid, some… considerably better than that. In the end – such end as I can see at this point - I must judge them to be a success.
The latest armload of packages headed out into the world this morning. A few down here in the lower 48, a couple more to our well-mannered would-be world conquerors in sheep’s clothing to the North, and other boxes headed to Mexico, the UK, and France, among other locales. That leaves me with three or four loose ends by way of people I haven’t heard back from.
Providing everything reaches its destination and is received well (ie no one disappointed by some unforeseen problem) I’ll be happy with the way it came off.
Still, there was a surprise problem.
I hadn’t sold anything on eBay in over four years, but back in the day I managed well enough. Some sellers are xenophobic, dealing only within the bounds of the continental US. While I understand the reservations – dealing with the USPS within the confines of the US affords various options that are either nonexistent or more expensive when dealing internationally – such sellers are severely limiting their horizons. Not taking personal checks, that I understand and agree with, but international commerce is so common now that it’s foolish to ignore it. I learned soon after venturing on eBay in the late 90’s that there’s not terribly much to overcome in dealing with people abroad, and that it can make a world of difference, pun or no, to throw these auctions open to the world. Some of the highest bids I’ve ever gotten on items have come from outside the US, and this latest round was no exception.
I’d kept the payment options simple, PayPal or money orders/cashiers checks. I’d forgotten about BidPay, which is still apparently sometimes an easier option for people in some parts of the world. No problem there, as in some respects it’s just another route for Money Orders, and I’m both reasonable and adaptable – and, besides, BidPay hits up the person sending the money for a fee, not the one receiving it. The majority of transactions on eBay these days, though, appear to take place via PayPal. It was easy to open a PayPal account in the late ‘90s, and especially since eBay formalized ties with them in the intervening years that became even easier… which also led to my problem.
Back in the day there was only one type of PayPal account. One set up a little pool of money with them and for fuller service one set up an access to and from one’s checking account. Money was transferred back and forth, and PayPal primarily made its money the way most banks did, by making interest on investments made from a collective pool of funds.
Shift to the present.
As the auctions began to fall on September 11th, some of the winning bidders let me know that what they won was all they were interested in, and so asked for invoices or, if here in the US, just went ahead and sent payment in accordance with the shipping options I’d included in each auction’s text. The first one – a present for the buyer’s girlfriend – went through in a blink. The next three, however, presented me with a problem.
PayPal had expanded its horizons since last I dealt with them. Foe, thy name is Instant Pay.
See, PayPal had opened itself up to more transactions by letting buyers register easier than ever, setting up quick payments via the use of one’s credit or debit card, at no charge to the payer.
I bet you can see where this is going.
Starting with the second payer I received notice of a payment via PayPal… except there was a wrinkle when I went to my PayPal account to look at the transaction history. These needed to be “accepted.” The catch? In order to accept them I’d have to “upgraded” to a premium account.
Oh joy. And what a fun time to find one’s self suddenly in a corner. And, make no mistake, no matter what they might claim, I was placed in a corner on this.
Neither knowing what the full details of a premium account were – the only immediate sign was that they would be taking a bit of the incoming money - nor how prevalent this problem would be, I did what any intelligent being finding himself pressured by a salesman would do: I said no.
I denied acceptance of the payment, and quickly sent off a note to the bidder to let him know what had happened, and to see if he could try to establish a real PayPal account, which could shoot funds to me at no cost to either of us. I didn’t know at the time that there would be an extra layer of complication as his ISP was apparently tuned to not accept anything from a hotmail account, presumably as an anti-spam measure. (We finally got around that, btw.)
Anyway, then another such Instant Payment came through, then another. Denied. Denied.
::sigh::
If I was having this much trouble with domestic payments, what horrors would I face once the international ones began to come through? Eck. My mood was turning black.
I looked into the details of the “upgrade”, found they were in many ways similar to eBay’s fees – 30 cents up front, then a small, but definitely irritating percentage thereafter – and at least not what I was fearing most: a monthly fee for the service. So, I bit the bullet and did the upgrade. From that point out I bled a little with each payment received. In the end I expect PayPal’s take to be roughly what eBay’s was on the auctions. A disappointment, but a manageable one.
That aside, though, it’s gone reasonably well beyond trying to deal with the confusion caused by the three sets of payments that were denied.
The only other item to note is that if, on those international orders, they opt for a Registered Mail overlay on the air mail rate, be sure you have brown paper tape to seal the packages. If you use plastic tape the Post Office will tell you to go retape it with something they can stamp clearly and more or less indelibly on. I picked up a nice, thick roll of it at Staples for around $5 , I believe.
In the end, as I said near the beginning, all in all I’m judging the sale to be a success.
As I have more of some of the extras that did sell and never got around to tapping into my extras from Xplosion or Hypertime, I expect to be running another set of auctions two weeks from now. The plan is to keep it as tight as I can – hopefully restricted to a single night. Much will depend upon how well the ‘net and eBay are behaving that night.
By way of an extra encouragement, an impulse buy of a Critical Mass booster this afternoon – killing 10 minutes in a gaming store while waiting for some take-out Chinese food to be prepared – and inside was another Silver Surfer. A good sign, especially seeing how well the last one did.
The latest armload of packages headed out into the world this morning. A few down here in the lower 48, a couple more to our well-mannered would-be world conquerors in sheep’s clothing to the North, and other boxes headed to Mexico, the UK, and France, among other locales. That leaves me with three or four loose ends by way of people I haven’t heard back from.
Providing everything reaches its destination and is received well (ie no one disappointed by some unforeseen problem) I’ll be happy with the way it came off.
Still, there was a surprise problem.
I hadn’t sold anything on eBay in over four years, but back in the day I managed well enough. Some sellers are xenophobic, dealing only within the bounds of the continental US. While I understand the reservations – dealing with the USPS within the confines of the US affords various options that are either nonexistent or more expensive when dealing internationally – such sellers are severely limiting their horizons. Not taking personal checks, that I understand and agree with, but international commerce is so common now that it’s foolish to ignore it. I learned soon after venturing on eBay in the late 90’s that there’s not terribly much to overcome in dealing with people abroad, and that it can make a world of difference, pun or no, to throw these auctions open to the world. Some of the highest bids I’ve ever gotten on items have come from outside the US, and this latest round was no exception.
I’d kept the payment options simple, PayPal or money orders/cashiers checks. I’d forgotten about BidPay, which is still apparently sometimes an easier option for people in some parts of the world. No problem there, as in some respects it’s just another route for Money Orders, and I’m both reasonable and adaptable – and, besides, BidPay hits up the person sending the money for a fee, not the one receiving it. The majority of transactions on eBay these days, though, appear to take place via PayPal. It was easy to open a PayPal account in the late ‘90s, and especially since eBay formalized ties with them in the intervening years that became even easier… which also led to my problem.
Back in the day there was only one type of PayPal account. One set up a little pool of money with them and for fuller service one set up an access to and from one’s checking account. Money was transferred back and forth, and PayPal primarily made its money the way most banks did, by making interest on investments made from a collective pool of funds.
Shift to the present.
As the auctions began to fall on September 11th, some of the winning bidders let me know that what they won was all they were interested in, and so asked for invoices or, if here in the US, just went ahead and sent payment in accordance with the shipping options I’d included in each auction’s text. The first one – a present for the buyer’s girlfriend – went through in a blink. The next three, however, presented me with a problem.
PayPal had expanded its horizons since last I dealt with them. Foe, thy name is Instant Pay.
See, PayPal had opened itself up to more transactions by letting buyers register easier than ever, setting up quick payments via the use of one’s credit or debit card, at no charge to the payer.
I bet you can see where this is going.
Starting with the second payer I received notice of a payment via PayPal… except there was a wrinkle when I went to my PayPal account to look at the transaction history. These needed to be “accepted.” The catch? In order to accept them I’d have to “upgraded” to a premium account.
Oh joy. And what a fun time to find one’s self suddenly in a corner. And, make no mistake, no matter what they might claim, I was placed in a corner on this.
Neither knowing what the full details of a premium account were – the only immediate sign was that they would be taking a bit of the incoming money - nor how prevalent this problem would be, I did what any intelligent being finding himself pressured by a salesman would do: I said no.
I denied acceptance of the payment, and quickly sent off a note to the bidder to let him know what had happened, and to see if he could try to establish a real PayPal account, which could shoot funds to me at no cost to either of us. I didn’t know at the time that there would be an extra layer of complication as his ISP was apparently tuned to not accept anything from a hotmail account, presumably as an anti-spam measure. (We finally got around that, btw.)
Anyway, then another such Instant Payment came through, then another. Denied. Denied.
::sigh::
If I was having this much trouble with domestic payments, what horrors would I face once the international ones began to come through? Eck. My mood was turning black.
I looked into the details of the “upgrade”, found they were in many ways similar to eBay’s fees – 30 cents up front, then a small, but definitely irritating percentage thereafter – and at least not what I was fearing most: a monthly fee for the service. So, I bit the bullet and did the upgrade. From that point out I bled a little with each payment received. In the end I expect PayPal’s take to be roughly what eBay’s was on the auctions. A disappointment, but a manageable one.
That aside, though, it’s gone reasonably well beyond trying to deal with the confusion caused by the three sets of payments that were denied.
The only other item to note is that if, on those international orders, they opt for a Registered Mail overlay on the air mail rate, be sure you have brown paper tape to seal the packages. If you use plastic tape the Post Office will tell you to go retape it with something they can stamp clearly and more or less indelibly on. I picked up a nice, thick roll of it at Staples for around $5 , I believe.
In the end, as I said near the beginning, all in all I’m judging the sale to be a success.
As I have more of some of the extras that did sell and never got around to tapping into my extras from Xplosion or Hypertime, I expect to be running another set of auctions two weeks from now. The plan is to keep it as tight as I can – hopefully restricted to a single night. Much will depend upon how well the ‘net and eBay are behaving that night.
By way of an extra encouragement, an impulse buy of a Critical Mass booster this afternoon – killing 10 minutes in a gaming store while waiting for some take-out Chinese food to be prepared – and inside was another Silver Surfer. A good sign, especially seeing how well the last one did.
This time I'm going to be much more organized about it. My expectations for this time around are lower, as I've already sold off the prime extras, but I continue to look at this as getting something back on all the money I've pumped into this crazy plastic crack habit. With my case of November's Mutant Mayhem already long-since ordered, and a new DC set, Legacy, coming next February, it's time to reclaim a little more money and space.
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