on โ10-04-2018 08:41 PM
3 Day Guarenteed delivery is completely unfair to sellers. No one can guarentee a delivery time when Australia Post (a company that received over 1 million complaints last year) has a monopoly on the Australian Postal service. It's even worse if you live in rural Australia like I do. eBay wants to compete with Amazon, fair enough. But it's best-match algorithm is obviously punishing sellers that have chose not to opt in because they'd rather be honest with their customers! My impressions have dropped significantly since the introduction of this, yet sales through my website sales are at an all time high..
I see people offering a 3 day guarenteed delivery on items less than $5, which means they would have to be sending the items as a large letter without tracking and any guarenteed delivery date... If this is happening there must be a greater benefit to being dishonest with your customers than there is risk of negative feedback or returns?
Should I be lying about my delivery times in order to help my best match ranking?
on โ11-04-2018 09:27 PM
It makes a bit of a change from a cup of cold tea without milk or sugar in a filthy cracked cup, and a handful of hot gravel...
on โ11-04-2018 09:59 PM
Hot Gravel? Looxury.
When I were a lad, we had to chip the ice off afore we ate gravel.
on โ11-04-2018 10:14 PM
You were lucky to have ICE! There were a hundred of us chipping off frozen sulphuric acid to have with our hot gravel...
(My Yorkshire accent is, unfortunately, rubbish.)
on โ11-04-2018 10:38 PM
We had to make our own sledgehammers.
So we could break up the rock to make the gravel.
on โ12-04-2018 06:59 AM
Our gravel came outa tins with Pal written onnit!!
on โ12-04-2018 08:37 AM
Gravel? Oh, I would have loved to have gravel. When I was young, we had to make do by licking large rocks, took years to work them down to pebble-size, it did.
on โ12-04-2018 12:21 PM
When I was a wee lassy, I was forced to pedal the bike, that operated the lathe, that made the handles for the sledgehammer, that was used to break the rocks into gravel. On a weekend, we got treated to "duck under the table", served with boiled pebbles. Them's were the days.
on โ12-04-2018 12:41 PM
@*tippy*toes*wrote:On a weekend, we got treated to "duck under the table", served with boiled pebbles.
Aw, my pebbles....
on โ13-04-2018 06:41 PM
Listing travails of the Four Yorkshiremen...
(Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. โFarewell to Theeโ being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.)
Michael Palin: Ahh. Very passable, this, very passable.
Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Cassini wine, aye, Gessiah?
Terry Jones: Youโre right there, Obediah.
Eric Idle: Whoโd a thought eighteen years ago weโd all be sittinโ here drinking Chateau de Cassini best match wine?
PALIN: Aye. In them days, weโd aโ been shocked to have seen guaranteed delivery.
CHAPMAN: A three-day guaranteed delivery.
IDLE: Without AP guaranteeing a delivery date or offering a fragile service.
JONES: Or fast โn free!
PALIN: In a filthy, cracked parcel.
IDLE: We never used to have a parcel. We used to have to send items in rolled-up newspaper.
CHAPMAN: The best we could manage was to suck on a postage stamp and wrap things up in a piece of damp cloth.
JONES: But you know, we were happy listing in those times, though it was early days for eBay.
PALIN: Aye. because it was early days. My old Dad used to say to me, โStarting at 99 cents will get you a bidding war.โ
IDLE: โE was right. I was happier then and I listed hardly anythinโ. We used to list in this tiiiny little eBay store, with great big profit margins when the bidding hit the roof.
CHAPMAN: Store? You were lucky to have a STORE! We used to list with one computer, all hundred and twenty-six of us, on dial-up. Half the page wouldnโt load; we were all huddled together using one listing template for fear of disconnecting!
JONES: You were lucky to have dial-up! Nowadays we have to cope with getting on eBay with the NBN!
PALIN: Ohhhh, we used to dream of having a working NBN! Would be heavenโs doorway to us. We have to respond to buyersโ messages by knocking out Morse Code on an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We get woken up every morning by buyers claiming SNAD and sending back a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! Store? Hmph.
IDLE: Well, when I say โstoreโ it was only a small selling account at 96% filled with listings on eBay covered by eBayโs Money Back Guarantee, but it was a store to us.
CHAPMAN: We were permanently suspended from our small selling account at 96%; we had to get another account by moving house and bank accounts and wearing dark glasses while we listed, and offering free postage!
JONES: You were lucky to have postage! There were a hundred and sixty items that we listed for local pickup from a small pallet in the middle of the road.
PALIN: Cardboard pallet?
JONES: Aye.
PALIN: You were lucky. We listed for three months with local pickup from a brown paper bag in a septic tank, and our buyers all claimed PayPal disputes against us. We have to list at 99 cents, be told by eBay that our listings are stale, go to work at Seller Hub removing active content sans Turbolister for fourteen hours a day week in week out. When we log in, eBay thrashes us to sleep with defects!
CHAPMAN: Looxury. We always have to post purchased items at three oโclock in the morning, clean the red street posting box, swallow a handful of hotly worded negatives, go to work at tโ Seller Hub every day for tuppence a month profit, log in again, and eBay would beat us around the head and neck with site glitches, if we were lucky!
JONES: Well, we had it tough. We always have to get up out of the pallet at twelve oโclock at night, and LICK the red street posting box clean with our tongues. We had half a page of freezing cold sarcastic negatives, worked twenty-four hours a day at tโ Seller Hub for fourpence profit every six years, and when we logged in, eBay would slice us in two with a butter knife confiscated by Pitney Bowes.
IDLE: Right. I have to get up in the morning at ten oโclock at night, half an hour before I went to bed... drink a cup of sulphuric acid defects, refund postage cost to buyers even when I list with free postage, get charged on postage when I donโt list with free postage, my non-paying bidders get their strikes lifted, my buyers ask me โWhere is my item?โ three hours after buying on Saturday evening during a long weekend, eBay add โMake Offerโ to all my listings, I fight change of mind returns because I say โNo returnsโ in my listings but am forced to accept returns by buyer seen dancing the night away in the dress I sold her and she told me a week later was all wrong, work twenty-nine hours a day down Seller Hub, and pay buyers for graciously โbuyingโ my items, and whenever we log in, eBay and PayPal would kill us, and dance about on our eternally suspended accounts singing โSucker for Painโ.
PALIN: But you try and tell the people who donโt sell on eBay or havenโt read the boards that... and they wonโt believe yaโ.
ALL: Nope, nope...
on โ13-04-2018 09:02 PM
Bravo!
I particularly enjoyed the confiscated butter knife. *
*The quip.
The quip about confiscated butter knives.