I forget the name but one time I three orders within a few days from three different people with the same first and last name. Two had the same spellings and the third had a slightly different spelling but pronounced the same. One of them asked me about the status of his order from a completely different email and I had to explain to him there were too many of him and he needed to tell me his userid before I could help.

I think most people on here know that once the ball is rolling, you should start to build your own website and push sales through it any way you can.

I don’t mean to come across as over -critical. It’s a very tough game out there at the moment, particularly with the lack of credit from banks and suppliers alike. Many businesses have had to radically alter their procedures, I know my company has. Some will not survive even if they are very well run.

The point is that this is a scenario we had already thought about, before it happened. It pays to ask those questions before things happen. What if our no.1 supplier goes bust? What if eBay goes bust. What if our hosting goes bust? What if our courier doubles our rates and so on.

I know that we started out on eBay in 2004 or so and one of the very first questions we asked is ‘what if eBay goes bust or prevents us from selling on their site?’. So we built the business as a multi channel affair where eBay and the other third party sites are a small part of the overall. Shouldn’t every seller do this? Putting the majority of your business in the hands of another company who can change policy on a whim is effectively waiting for it to happen.

58. I would love to know how it is being done, although I am not sure even eBay understand best match.

A company going bust does not have to mean the previous owners are corrupt.

At the end of the day it’s not eBay’s fault that Retrowares went down. I can still see many many thousands of DVD’s selling on there. Presumably they all have to add in P+P and not all of them get a file discount, cheaper postal rates through PPI or savings on bulk jiffy purchases. Supplier issues are tough to deal with but can and should be guarded against.

As for compensating buyers who lost out…..You can’t compare money you lose when you risk it on a business venture to money a buyer pays in good faith for a product. When you ‘pump’ money into your company you KNOW you might lose the lot. A customer should KNOW they will either get the product or a refund. Personally, I would put this high on my priority list, even if it wasn’t immediately possible.

I am trading through it well 30% up year on year, but its costing me % to do it.

I do think SteveW profile didn’t help, and in a venue like ebay customer retention and satisfaction are very difficult, if you do it badly its very public.

Annoying pop ups when you sign out.

Annoying before you leave did you miss this Java, tells everyone what someone has been searching for no good for presents then.

Best match, well it is anything but best match I am one of the unlucky few that is being give a new search which is mostly TES with a smattering of BM thrown in, this is only happening on one machine in IE8 and no other browser.

3 Accounts selling identical items, identical prices, performing erraticlly dayily fluctuation in sales that have no explaination, for seven days one account has been performing badly, then suddenly (without any action from me) the roles reverse to an identical value.

I’m not really in to the “eBay are out to get me” mob but I have to say it seems they are weighting the sales in some way, there cannot be any other reason. I also have feeling it has something to do with trying to keep everyone happy and not just the top 25 listing on page one (lets face it to make good sales you HAVE to be on page one) and the default is 25 best match.

Im my cat roughly 1200 listing, in normal best match its always rough;y the same sellers + a few private auctions, cant be good for eBay.

Good luck with your future ventures Steve

Steve @ SODVDS

Steve

sorry to hear of the demise of Retrowarez. However, in a similar situation, I would take personal responsibility and try to ensure refunds to all customers who lost out, even if it mean’t paying out of my own pocket. Yes, big faceless companies go bust all the time, however this was a 3 or 4 person operation with a high profile face in the Ebay community. Ethics…

Did you know there’s another wrestler called Steve Williams. It’s stone cold Steve Austins real name.

My thoughs:

Listings with ‘free P&P’ should have the P&P section of DSR’s blanked, so it cannot be used.
It’s bad enough, having to pay fees on postage, le alone getting bashed for it.

Many of our feedback commens state ‘lighting del’ & ‘really fast’ & ‘immediate dispach’, but we strugglte to keep above 4.65 in dispach time.

We charge good value P&P. A 2LL (100g) post is .47p, we charge .72p. For the difference 25p, we have tp pay for packing (labour & packing material) print label & all admin etc Inc’ Post office stuff.
Additional items are rarely above 1/3rd more. We still struggle to maitain 4.64 in P&P.

INR: Bloody nightmare. 1/2 of these come in AFTER, a feedback reminder is sent, strange that.
We now make people send us an email vis the ebay message system that states ‘they have not received the item & if it does arrive, they will tell us’. Funny how many don’t coninue after being asked this.

Comments above:

3………..Totally agree Chris.

4…………If you write FREE & then include/charge for it, we could be taken to the law. Dangerous thng is the word ‘free’.

6…………In the UK, we have the lovely ‘distant sellers act’. Technically, people can bid & buy what they like, & then say (if they can be bothered’), that they didn’t want it afterall. There is nothing sellers can do about this & the only way to get the ebay fees refunded is in the resolution centre & some buyer cannot be bothered to do this eitherm or say i’s our problem!!!!.

Who looses……….sellers

13……….After the year of changes & NSP many sellers have gone. But you are right, The old saying ‘all of your eggs in one basket’ comes to mind as a warning.

19……….It has to be when the buyer receives the goods. Yes I realise sellers will say it is when they send the goods, but with Paypal’s willingness to repay buyers, we will alway be the loosers.

20………Totally agree.

23/24…..Dose it matter, paypal will do it for them.

On he subject of INR. We all know what a pain these are, whether genuine or not.
I have just put a suggestion to Ebay & Paypal, that they keep a file on INR claims. They would not be breaking any laws as only the street # & postcode & date would be retained.
Over a rather short period of time thousands of details would be held.
Thenm when a claim for INR is made, some ebay sellers could have access to the file to see what other claims have been filed, say in the last year. Access would be limited to say powersellers, but what do you all think.

I know the Post office (UK) keep files on claims, but we all know the work required in claiming, sometimes (very often wih low value iems) it’s sensible to just swallow the loss.
But because claims are not made, their (PO) list is far from complete.

Getting a bit confused, is this the correct Dr Steve ?

For the record I virtually always call myself Steve Antony Williams.

I did not mean to open up old sensitivities, sorry.