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EBay madness


Marcyg

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No, it just confirms the old saying that a fool and his money are easily parted

If it was a load of tatty old rubbish (as is often the case on Ebay, and often featured in this thread at silly prices) then you might have a point, but that's the sort of price that custom paint jobs go for. Honestly I think it's quite a good deal even if perhaps its not something I would be interested in buying myself as it's outside of my area of interest.

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Yet the text states clearly the shipping is free, but only to the lower 48 states.

 

Looks like he won't ship outside the lower 48 states and the high international postage is a way of stopping non-US bidders from bidding? Otherwise you can't actually stop wallies from bidding?

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It's the seller that's the idiot then because there's a tickbox to say where you're willing to send, and if you don't want to send outside the US (or wherever) you just untick the relevant boxes.

 

I don't think ticking those boxes actually stops people in those countries from bidding (and potentially winning). If you as the seller then enter into a polite conversation with the bidder about not sending, you can find yourself getting a red mark from said foreigner which ebay won't remove.

 

Just look at the number of times good sellers immediately refund things and find themselves getting stuck in this way. I don't know if it's my imagination or not but when I look at people's scores which I haven't dealt with before, some countries/cultures seem to be more prone to throwing around a higher proportion of red cards than others.

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Yes I sold a Lima loco back to her home country once. Despite clearly saying she was damaged, I got negative feedback for 'damaged'. IIRC I got about £5 for her!

 

Incidently the 'Bullfrog snot does work, but unfortunately is an insulator, which doesn't matter with locos using the American pickup system, but is disastrous with small tank engines.

If you don't fancy the slightly OTT postage, you can get it here (no connection whatsoever - just the first insertion I found) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BULLFROG-SNOT-IMPROVED-TRACTION-MODEL-RAILWAYS-/200694939893?pt=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&hash=item2eba59c0f5#ht_1671wt_906

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I don't think ticking those boxes actually stops people in those countries from bidding (and potentially winning). If you as the seller then enter into a polite conversation with the bidder about not sending, you can find yourself getting a red mark from said foreigner which ebay won't remove.

 

 

 

Well something stops overseas bidders from bidding as I quite often have to ask sellers if they will allow me to bid an d if so to change the settings so that I can bid.

 

Khris

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With ref to the US seller, I have to say that when I hunt through US online hobby shops on a well known site they seem to be finding themselves between a rock and a hard place.

 

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/seller-non-performance.html

 

They're only allowed a small number of negatives in each 3 month period (and/or a small number of 1 and 2 feedback scores in the various categories). It's quite right that we should expect high standards from online sellers, and I'm sure everyone on rmweb wants to see small hobby shops survive both at home and abroad.

 

However some buyers seem to be holding small shops to ransom with unreasonable demands under threat of getting a red card, and some buyers are just complete ******'s and neither know nor care about the impact their feedback may be having. Hence some sellers get more and more intransigent about rules like having to have recorded delivery (at extra cost - thanks £bay) or trying to ensure they don't get the wrong kind of buyer in the first place.

 

I haven't sold on the site for a couple of years and have 100pct feedback and a score approaching 800. On one level I hope this gives buyers confidence but I find also my heart sinks when the winning bidder has a score of zero (or very low). They're always the ones who TEND to throw around poor feedback.

 

If you're judging a talent show and the first act is superb do you give them a score of 10/10? Or do you leave something in reserve in case a better act follows? ie someone with very low scores tends not to give all 5's across the board on 1st purchase. And don't tell me you can't see who's given what scores. If you have scores of 4.9 or 5 in any category and don't sell high volume, ANY score less than 5 will knock the average down 0.1 or so.

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Why advertise on ebay. co .UK if the item is only available in America for delivery to America?

 

I think everything else he's selling, he will ship to Europe etc. He can't stop this one going airmail in deep frozen aircraft holds so has come up with a pragmatic (if somewhat zany) solution to stop bidders outside the contiguous 48 states.

 

He may have missed a trick in missing a way to keep this one out of the international listings but am guessing that as a relatively small trader he's not a computer geek or familiar with all the obstacles that can trip any of us up when trying to list items either singly or in multiple.

 

I'm certainly prepared to give him the benfit of the doubt - after all he doesn't seem to be twinned with Cartmel?

 

BTW I can't speak for this guy but when I've found items I'm looking for on other US hobby shop sites - the airmail priority price is often very high (driven by the need to have proof/tracking for ebay/paypal) but some traders are prepared to ship surface if you ask politely (and say you're in no hurry) and you have a good track record of not handing out red cards willy-nilly.

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