In message , at 12:17:23 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, Tim Ward remarked:
When you do get online (I didn't have a problem a couple of hours ago) you'll find that there isn't Recorded Delivery any more, it's been repositioned as "Recorded Signed For", and does come with online tracking.
In message , at
03:36:24 >Someone has to pay for the credit card commission and the various Paypal dispute processes. As well as making a profit.
I won't buy/sell on eBay by cheque, except for very large items like cars. It just isn't worth all the extra delay and faffing about for things costing a few quid.
You can't charge a fee for taking Paypal, but apart from the items that started this thread, I'm not aware there's any compulsion to take Paypal at all.
For the fairly small number of listed items it's pretty clear it's an anti-fraud measure.
Start a competitor then.
Some of the people on paypalsucks.com might be able to help ... not sure how verifiable or reasonable they will be, though.
Also possibly of interest to readers of this thread:
Chris Owens.
In message , at 12:37:47 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, Andy Hall remarked:
What were the most time consuming parts? I find that the five minute walk to the Post Office (when a seller) is the worst part. None of the other steps takes more than a minute or two.
In message , at 13:59:56 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, Tim Ward remarked:
Not necessarily. It can be a real PITA to drive to the one shop in the area that sells the item, only to find out it's early closing, or they sold the last one earlier in the day, and so on.
Or do those both count as "going wrong"?
I'm pretty sure you don't have tracking with Recorded Signed For. You
*MAY*(1) be able get online notification of delivery, an electronic copy of the signature, card left or being returned but that is all. The item does not appear online until *after* a delivery has been attempted *and* the data entered into the system by the postie. There is no *tracking* between posting and delivery like there is with Special Delivery. They appear very quickly as the label is scanned into the system at time of posting.(1) I say may because entry of the item into the system is rather flakey. SWMBO'd sends everything Recorded Signed For, maybe twenty items/week. Some never appear on the system at all but have been delivered safely or arrive back here. Some get a delivery notification but no electronic sig is available. Some just sit at "card left" but the recpient has collected or it has been returned.
In message , at 15:25:29 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, Andy Hall remarked:
And in a free market you can do just that. There are plenty of other people who want to save the money though.
I sold a few (electronic) things before I left the UK. It all took way too much time:
Properly testing the items. Gathering packing materials. Taking a range of good photos. Researching what I was selling. Writing up auction text. Calculating postage costs. Making sure items were *properly* packed.
The five minute walk to the post office was definitely the easy bit.
But I would maintain even considering the very small % of transactions which do go wrong, you're still very much quids-in overall whether you counting in terms of your time or cash.
Eg - my most recent ebay purchase...the other day I needed some inkjet cartridges for my now-obsolete printer; I usually pay about 7 quid a pop for these from a shop a few miles away: this time I typed the model number into ebay and it threw up several hits - result was that I paid £2.00 all-in for 6 cartridges which landed on my doormat two days later. (it cost the poor guy £2.10 to post them!). If I'd bought them from dabs.com or somewhere I can't see how I could have spent less time and hassle.
In terms of selling stuff, I've been able to get rid of plenty of junk from the house and garage which would otherwise have cost me time and petrol to take down to the dump, but people have happily come and paid me money to remove from my property.... my most successful ebay sale? I had an old much-loved Lewis Leathers biker jacket in the back of my wardrobe, waiting to see if the male menopause would strike soon enough to get me back on a motorcycle before my ever-expanding waistline rendered the jacket totally obsolete for me. Unfortunately the latter condition prevailed, and SWMBO decreed that it was time it went to the dump. Decided to have a punt on ebay, as it was a quite nice jacket really (cost me 80 or 90 quid new IIRC, circa 1982). It ended up going for a jaw-dropping 650 quid, plus about 50 to Fedex, to some bloke in Tokyo, who later professed himself to be delighted with the deal!
David
Runs to check Virgin and Capital One statements to see what they do
The message from Roland Perry contains these words:
"Recorded Signed For" is something of a fraud. I've used it three times since 30 November.The third item arrived and was signed for. The second item did actaully arrive, but no signature was requested. The first item -- well, who knows what happened to it? And I gather that's about par for the course. Compensation? I'll be lucky if I get a refund of the charge they made for the service they ddint' provide :-)
That's probably true. The problem is that one has no real way of knowing which transaction will go wrong until it happens. It might then be a case of having to act quickly to resolve the situation.
Even when buying through a regular internet site with the protection of the Distance Selling Regulations, there are time limits. For that reason, I never order an item that will need to be checked or tested by me before going on a business trip.
As far as costing of time is concerned, I have to consider the opportunity cost as well as direct cost. Therefore there has to be quite a large saving to make it interesting for me to take a risk on something that is going to be time consuming to fix if there is an issue.
I'm not risk averse - far from it - *BUT* the return on the risk has to be large enough to make it worth bothering.
I understand. I might have done this by accident on a search but wouldn't spend time looking through Ebay for it. If I could be reasonably convinced that the seller was selling branded cartridges for a genuine reason - e.g. his printer has broken and he has spare cartridges then fair enough. I might buy compatible cartridges from a known supplier, but not from an Ebay one. If they c*ck up the printer then the cost of acquiring a new one far exceeds any saving.
That's in the realm of collector's items I guess. I have never heard of Lewis Leathers, but imagine that it it is perhaps a cult item? Presumably you knew that it was better than a dump item.
I think that the closest thing I have to something like that is two full sets of Natwest Piggies complete with bungs in pristine condition from when the kids were small. I imagine that they have some value as sets but I am not about to sell them anyway.
ISTR you have exceptionally large feet
Yes and yes.
Happened to me 7 times last summer during one transaction.
Nominally they are size 47-48 (UK size 12-13); but these things were nowhere near - like 3cm too short.
I'm sure, Presumably they don't consider the cost of their time....
Definitely. Loss of income on money not in the bank is quite substantial
Ebay has in nay case bent their rules to favour the anonymous vendor of crap, rather then the publicly notifiable and contactable vendor of second hand goods.
Paypal makes it easy to be invisible. If anything goe wrong, teh smart and guilty have their funds out of paypal before you can say 'scam' and its the innocent trusting ones who lose.
There is no button on ebay that says 'show me all goods NOT insisting on Paypal'.
Ebay and paypal don;t care about the scams, as long as they make money.
Why are they located in Switzerland? so they are outside UK law. I wonder why.
In message , at 20:27:17 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, magwitch remarked:
Something happened, but it wasn't unauthorised withdrawals, and I doubt your credit card ended up with seven times the original charge, which was subsequently never refunded. Please don't over-dramatise as it ruins your credibility.
In message , at 20:15:49 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, The Natural Philosopher remarked:
I've been looking at this issue all day and would like to understand what circumstances would cause money movements that you hadn't triggered yourself. Which direction, and why.
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