eBay

mjautoimportsltd · ‎11-26-2014

Ok so hello, this is my first time on here in my 10+ years selling on ebay. I have been selling used auto parts for the last 5-6 years full time ebay user id seller989898 . I am not the best seller out there , however I always would try and handle issues professionally and in the buyers favour to avoid issues. Over the last year or so I increased my sales and inventory and really began to feel I was on a roll with my small used auto parts business on ebay, I hired a full time mechanic and a part time secretary and everything was running perfect... until ... I recently (summer of 2014) had my account fall below standard from a few low dsr, and couple negative feedbacks, I have been suffering the consequences ever since. I have called and spoke with EBAY several times and they have advise me why this happened and what I can do to help pull myself out of this hole (they figured it would take me 4-8 months realistically to improve my ratings). However in the meantime I am losing hope,, its been almost three months, and I have had my total # of items listed go from 1200+ (and over $150,000 in invenrtory) down to 330 items (around $40,000 in inventory).. I have had to let my two employees go (just before Christmas too) and now due to what ever the reason my sales have decreased from averaging over $1300 / week to less than $ 100/ week !!

I have over 900 items that are sitting on my shelves , (and in my unsold items category) plus no money comming in,, I am scared and out of ideas and running short on time to do anything about it. Please if anyone has any suggestion or ideas, I would love to hear anything from someone other than Ebay themselves. - Mike (seller989898)

reallynicestamps · ‎11-27-2014

This is a dumb one. But you can improve your 97.7 feedback percentage by buying small items on eBay from sellers who leave immediate FB on shipment.

mjautoimportsltd · ‎11-27-2014

really ?? thats all it takes? I thought Ebay would have figured that one out . Wow, i need to spend alot more time on here reading ,, Ive, been doing this all alone last few years, but my lack of ebay education finally caught up to me. Thanks a million reallynice stamps !! I will try this today and see what happens>

on a another note, If anyone can give me some advice on where to educate myself on the new ways of selling on Ebay , that would be appreciated. Or if anyone is in the Hamilton, Ontario Area and would be interested in assisting me get my ebay store back on track and more professional I would be willing to compensate them for there assistance.

Thanks Mike

mr.elmwood · ‎11-27-2014

I sell auto parts. I have two buddies in ON that sell auto parts. The three of us do well, very well.

I can't tell, are you listing on ca or com? I see you are NOT using Parts Compatibility (PC). That is a big set back right there. You are only using three pictures when you can use up to twelve.

You are asking buyers to contact you first for shipping? I have all my shipping figured out, worldwide, before I list.

I am not even trying and I can do $100 a day, some days. Not yesterday, but, on the weekend I did! 🙂

I see what you are doing and why. eBay has changed a lot, just in the last 18 months.

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mjautoimportsltd · ‎11-27-2014

Any sugestions on what I could purchase? I was thinking e books but is there other things I can buy cheaper / , and does it still work if I buy 20 items from the same seller? - Mike

mjautoimportsltd · ‎11-27-2014

Thanks, Mr Elmwood, I checked out your listings and we seem pretty much in the same field.. I have found it difficult to estimate shipping to every country in the world for each part i list . That is the reason for the " contact me for shipping prior to bidding if you live outside canada or USA " comment. How do you accurately determine what shipping will be to every country in the world ahead of time? Also I do plan on starting to use the PC function soon, I guess i just need to better educate myself on what fits what year / model. or is there an easy way of researching this?

Are you anywhere around the hamilton area? I would love to meet up with someone to get some better ideas on how to proceed with my ebay life,, I feel that I have alot of catching up to do .. mike

mr.elmwood · ‎11-27-2014

I sent you a private message. At the top, message, blue box.

I did not address everything you alluded to. It would be an overwhelming email. Get back to me.

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pocomocomputing · ‎11-27-2014

@mjautoimportsltd wrote:
Any sugestions on what I could purchase? I was thinking e books but is there other things I can buy cheaper / , and does it still work if I buy 20 items from the same seller? - Mike

No, you must buy from different sellers if you are buying items. If from the same seller, each sale has to be at least 1 week to count as 1 feedback each or you only get 1 feedback counted for all sales in the week.

Watch out for eBook, they are a know feedback scam to boost feedback on accounts. You can get suspended permanently for feedback manipulation. Maybe you can buy shipping supplies (boxes, tape, labels, peanuts, whatever) or some items you can use in your business.

While the idea of buying to boost feedback is a good one, you have to be careful, especially since it is now posted openly in these forums with your selling id. Unfortunately, someone reading here may watch and report you. This is a public forum and anyone on the Internet can read this topic.

I would suggest that you do legitimate buys of low priced items.

Another alternative is to sell a low priced item that compliments your business and ships low cost Lettermail/Light Packet at low cost. Make it a loss leader or break even item with free shipping. If you can find an item that will be hassle free to you and low possibility of buyer dissatisfaction, it can turn into a good feedback machine for you giving you 5 good feedback per month or more and always there to buffer your feedback and DSR scores for the occasional bad one on your regular items.

Better still, do not get into trouble like you have already. Take note of your negs and neutrals and understand why you got them and do not let it happen again. Most small sellers with 100-300 feedback per year are just 1-2 negs or neutrals or low DSRs (and now all of these turn into defects) away from restrictions.

tobyshitzu · ‎11-27-2014

buying things wont do anything to help your seller standing

mjautoimportsltd · ‎11-27-2014

Ok got it, ya dont need to get myself in any other hot water so im gonna avoid buying anything to get my ratings up. I would consider myself a pretty capable seller however these new rules are very hard to work around. Im going to start listing some cheaper items to try and boost my feedback score but it still might take a while since nobody seems to be buying from me anymore. dr elmwood outlined why this may be and i thank him and the rest of you out there for this.

Any more suggestions please keep them comming : ) starting to feel like there is some hope !!

rose-dee · ‎11-27-2014

@pocomocomputing wrote:
Another alternative is to sell a low priced item that compliments your business and ships low cost Lettermail/Light Packet at low cost. Make it a loss leader or break even item with free shipping. If you can find an item that will be hassle free to you and low possibility of buyer dissatisfaction, it can turn into a good feedback machine for you giving you 5 good feedback per month or more and always there to buffer your feedback and DSR scores for the occasional bad one on your regular items.

Better still, do not get into trouble like you have already. Take note of your negs and neutrals and understand why you got them and do not let it happen again. Most small sellers with 100-300 feedback per year are just 1-2 negs or neutrals or low DSRs (and now all of these turn into defects) away from restrictions.

To the OP -- This is all very good advice!

Many of us have managed to survive by offering more than one line of items, especially items that are unlikely to cause problems -- either through shipping (cost or delivery time), or customer satisfaction. Find something that ties in with your main product line that will be easy to list, easy to sell (i.e. inexpensive), and easy and cheap to ship.

For example, the first things that occurred to me off the top of my head for your type of business were decals or insignia of various types relating to automotive products, but I'm sure you can come up with other ideas.

As far as clearing up your seller status, I'd recommend going to the "Announcements" section under the "Community" link (top right-hand bar on any eBay page), type "Seller Update" into the search box, and read the Seller Updates for the past 3 years (Spring and Fall). Start with 2012 first, and work your way up to the fall of 2014.

That should give you a pretty good idea of what has changed around here. EBay is a much tougher place for small sellers now, and you need to know the policies and rules very well to avoid getting into trouble. (I'm sure Mr. Elmwood's help will be especially useful too). Best of luck to you!

pjcdn2005 · ‎11-27-2014

@toby**bleep**zu wrote:
buying things wont do anything to help your seller standing

Are defects based on number of transactions or number of sales? I should know that but I rarely buy anything on this id so haven't really thought about it.

mr.elmwood · ‎11-27-2014

Seller is probably off in a corner quietly sobbing. Our boy has a lot of work in front of him. Playing catch-up to a moving train? Oye.

Still, the work will pay-off.

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tobyshitzu · ‎11-27-2014

sales

rose-dee · ‎11-27-2014

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

Are defects based on number of transactions or number of sales? I should know that but I rarely buy anything on this id so haven't really thought about it.

'pj' -- I'm fairly certain it's based on transactions, not sales. A seller could accumulate many more sales than transactions if they are selling multiples or multi-variation items, so eBay decided to define defects against transactions. From the 2014 Spring Seller Update:

"The defect rate is the percentage of a seller's transactions with one or more of the specific defects most predictive of buyers leaving eBay or spending less."

They then define a transaction:

"A transaction is a purchase from a listing. If a buyer purchases two or more identical items from the same multi-quantity listing, or purchases the same items in different variations such as color or size from the same multi-variation listing, that is considered one transaction. If a buyer purchases items from four different listings from the same seller and combines them into one order, that would be counted as four transactions. Note that the defect rate will not affect your performance rating until you have a transaction with a defect from 8 different buyers (5 different buyers to affect your Top Rated Seller status)."

This does make sense if you look at it as eBay trying to limit the number of possible defects a seller could get if she/he does a lot of selling of quantities of similar items to one purchaser. This favours high volume sellers of common commercial items who will only be subject to 1 defect per group of multiple or multi-variation sales to the same person if something goes wrong.

mjautoimportsltd · ‎11-27-2014

Actually I feel better after hearing what you all have said, for the last 2-3 months the only advice I have got is from the Ebay customer support and im sure you all know how helpful that is in a situation like this.. One person kept referring to "the system" like it was out of his or her control and that nothing could be done cause "the system" wont allow it. That made me feel like i was in a losing battle, but hearing these comments from other sellers makes me have a sense of hope.

I have one concern, currently I have 800 + items that are in my unsold category ( due to being removed when my account got limited to 400 items) . I dont have any back up file or anything created as I just used ebay to create and store all my listings. Now that all that hard work in sitting in my unsold folder, soon to be deleted, im wondering if there is anything I can to do save all the information and pictures for each listing so that I can easily relist the items in the future. My plan is to hopefully re list some of these parts in the future but I dont want to have to start over from scratch.. (I would have to take all new pictures aswell because I no longer have that computer.with those files) ,. Anybody have any ideas??

rose-dee · ‎11-27-2014

@toby**bleep**zu wrote:
buying things wont do anything to help your seller standing

I agree. Buying may increase your overall FB score, but will do nothing at all to dilute the effects of the defects you've received as a seller.

The best thing to do, as 'poco' mentioned above, is to find some products you can source at low cost that you can make a minimal profit on, but turnover well with cheap shipping (Light Packet to the USA or lettermail to Canada).

It should preferably be something flat, lightweight and under the maximum 37x27x2cm dimensions for those postal services.

And... I would suggest doing this sooner rather than later. We never know what's coming with the Spring Seller Updates, and you might be able to recover some of your status before then.

As far as the saved listings in your "Unsold" folder on eBay goes, I believe there is a way to upload these in Excel format to your computer to save for use later on -- someone else might be able to give you the specific steps involved. I use a 3rd party listing management service to hold my listings and photos, so I've never had to do this myself.

tobyshitzu · ‎11-27-2014

download turbo lister and sync your listings. They will all be stored in a file for turbo lister on your pc ready to be sent back.

pocomocomputing · ‎11-27-2014

Turbo Lister is for Windows PCs only in case you have a Mac.

I list online with the Sell Your Item tool and use eBay Selling Manager (free version) to manage my listings (Active, Sold and UnSold and scheduled) instead of My eBay. Selling Manager will hold listings in UnSold and Sold for 90 days unlike My eBay which has 60 days.

I find Turbo Lister to be a really bad tool. I use it because it is free for long term backup of listings in case I come across an item again. Saves researching the item and relisting. I have all my listing from when I started selling on eBay 5+ years ago.

I used to use Selling Manger Pro which in the eBay online tool and it uses your Sell Your Item listing tool. It cost $15.95 a month and there is much less of a learning curve than Turbo Lister. It has its features and learning curve too. I would suggest you pay the $15.95 and use Selling Manager Pro. I would still use SM Pro but I am selling much less so no need for it or the monthly expense

If you have a Premium store, then Selling Manager Pro is free. What store level do you have? You may get it for free if you have a Premium store and are locked into that store level for a year.

cjacki · ‎11-28-2014

All of my listings are stored on 'The Ranch' and 'Crater. Don't sell all that much there but I can go anytime to cut & paste listings onto eBay. This way I take advantage of listing specials (when invited which hasn't been that often). I have just under 1,000 listings available at any one time. Works for me.

Couldn't justify store fees anymore.