In this episode of the What Sold Podcast, hosts Brandon and Matt navigate a tough week, discussing topics ranging from personal health to challenges shipping items. As the conversation turns toward their primary focus—buying and selling—they delve into the complexities and frustrations of eBay customer service, especially for high-volume sellers. They discuss strategies for dealing with difficult customers, shipping issues, and eBay's punitive measures for sellers. Despite these challenges, Matt shares recent successful sales, including antique mourning jewelry, collectible pocket knives, and semi-precious gemstones, illustrating the varied and intriguing world of eBay reselling.
00:00 Introduction and Slow Start 01:06 Ash Wednesday and Lent 01:31 Medical Procedure and Recovery 02:40 Nicknames and Wrestling 04:51 Customer Service Challenges 06:03 Handling Difficult Customers 13:28 Shipping Issues and eBay Policies 21:47 Shipping Challenges on eBay 21:59 Handling Combined Orders and Discounts 23:07 Issues with eBay's Automated System 25:13 Customer Communication and Shipping Delays 26:43 eBay's Focus on Part-Time Sellers 28:27 eBay's Punitive Measures for Sellers 32:11 The Need for Better Customer Support 35:41 What Sold This Week 36:07 Antique Pocket Knives and Mourning Jewelry 41:48 Selling Semi-Precious Gemstones 44:05 Conclusion and Final Thoughts The What Sold Podcast Subreddit #ebayjewelry #ebayauctions #mourningjewelry #antiquepocketknives #semipreciousjems #sellingonebay #vintage #whatsoldpodcast #rustythereseller #whatsold #reselling #ebaystore #thewhatsoldpodcast
Rusty the reseller:
https://www.youtube.com/@RustyTheReseller What Sold: https://www.youtube.com/@whatsold Postcard Planet: https://www.youtube.com/@postcardplanet What Sold Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc513e2aPbloS20mTwuv8bAMark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:37):
Welcome back to the WhatSold podcast. As usual.
I am Brandon.
This is my friend, Matt.
Not going to lie to you folks,but today we're moving a little
bit slow all the way around.
It feels like it's been a, it's onlyWednesday because we record on Wednesday.
But it feels, and it's drop onWednesday, so you can pretend it's live.
You could be listening to thisgoing, oh, it's live, the guys
(00:58):
are just talking to me live.
Through the magic ofmodern sound and whatever.
But it's been, it feels like it'sbeen a really long week already.
Today is Ash Wednesdaywhen we're recording.
For those of you that followthe Old school liturgical
calendar the lenten season.
Yeah, the Lenten seasonwe're getting ready for it.
So Matt has to think about how he'sharmed me The things he's done to, to
(01:22):
bring pain to my life, and that seemswhat one does during Count the ways.
Yeah, count the ways.
That seems like what one does during Lent.
No and I know Matt had a little bit ofa medical procedure, he's not dying,
he's doing well, he's a virile man, butit's never easy, even when you do the
simple outpatient stuff, it's always ugh.
Feels like it takesweeks to recover from it.
(01:43):
Extra virile.
There's a there's a, oneof his name is Donny Benet.
He's a musician, but I saw himrecently, and he's a bald man, and
he said something to the effect thatI'm a bald man because I'm extra
virulent, which I thought was hilarious.
Virulent.
Very virulent.
Yeah, I I had a yeah, I hada little I had a herniatic.
(02:04):
Procedure, which not pleasant and not allof those require a surgical intervention,
but this one did especially today.
I've been moving around like I'm an80 year old man, and I'm not close.
I'm not far off from that,but I'm not quite there.
You know, it's a little bit of pain,but trying to treat that and keep
things iced down and listen, it'snot going to stop me from talking
(02:25):
about buying and selling stuff.
Shoot.
That's right, man.
We're out there buying and selling.
I always say that, you're getting oldwhen you get injured in your sleep.
That's right.
That's the true sign of you'regetting old is when you wake up,
you're like, ah, how did I tear mymeniscus in the middle of the night?
Whatever it is.
Yeah.
And listen, I know that half the peoplewho listen to this podcast don't like
to hear the junk in the beginning, butI feel like I need to mention this.
(02:48):
I have some cousinsand this is not a joke.
These are my actual cousins.
These are not Rusty's cousins, thoughthey are probably Rusty's cousins as
well, because we always get on andtalk about what would our name be?
If we were in the arena, they suggestedI adopt the moniker, the liquidator.
Oh, I do that, which I thought was great.
My immediate mental image was I'mconcealing some sort of a hose
(03:12):
situation in my trench coat, and Ijust douse people with chemicals.
I don't know what chemicals it couldjust be straight water, but it's just
meant to particularly you aim for theface like you want to get the eyes.
You want to disorient them asbest as you can in the beginning.
I feel like that's the only way Iwould win any fight in wrestling or
anything else is if I somehow get acheap shot, disorient them in some way.
(03:38):
Through dust in their face.
That's exactly right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What, I feel like there are definitelymultiple movies where that happens.
They're out there, the bad guy, ofcourse, he gets knocked down, he comes
up, he throws dust, some sort of.
Of, really.
Chicanery.
You can't yeah.
Dirty, he plays dirty.
Plays dirty, and I'm, listen, I'mnot beneath biting, or whatever I
(03:58):
need to do, you know what I'm saying?
Anyhow, I don't want to throw thatout, I appreciate cousins, any family
who listen to this and support,what we're trying to do here.
That's awesome.
Keep them coming.
Keep those suggestions coming.
I think I'm stuck with Moondoggybecause you gave Hey, listen,
I didn't give that to you.
That's from college days, man.
Isn't that's from when you werea disc jockey back in the day.
Yeah, back in the day.
(04:19):
I was a disc jockey, actually.
That's what I'm saying, man.
Yeah, back in the collegeradio days, for sure.
I feel like I would more likely besomebody like the chatterbox where
you get in the ring and you just talkto somebody so much that they just
eventually get out of the ring and leave.
Dude, you're the announcer.
You're like the Vince McMahon.
You're the guy who's out there.
You're talking up the good guy.
(04:40):
You're talking down the villain.
Yeah.
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday broughtto you by the good guys.
Of Coors and Coors Light, kidsunder 12 get in half price.
That's right.
No, I don't want to be that guy.
We were talking as we are apt to do inour pre production about things, so we've
talked a lot about obviously selling andbuying and all the things, but one of
(05:01):
the things we haven't talked a lot about.
But as a reality of the job, I didn'teven mention this to you, but yesterday
I spent at least five hours dealingwith customer service because I use
a certain set of software and I knewthat it wasn't broken on my end.
I knew that I wasn't doing somethingwrong because I use this all the time.
(05:22):
So I'm like something changed and I'mlike, okay, let's try to figure this out.
So they send you to 7 million helpdesks and read this article and do this.
And I'm like, I've done allthis finally get somebody.
It turns out it was an actualissue with the software.
This has happened to me twice in a month.
And I was got so frustrated.
It burned up so many hours.
(05:43):
I began to think about, what do wedo when we run into difficult customer
service, which I know you've run intowith eBay and also difficult customers
that require a lot of our time.
And I don't know if there'sa perfect answer to this, but
we're going to delve into that.
Today in the show.
So what do you do, Matt, when yousell an item, pretty stoked about it.
(06:08):
You feel like you've sentthem you're an honest guy.
You've sent them what youthought you were sending them.
And then you get the whatever, the litanyof, I know you've talked about it in the
past, people getting mad about stuff.
Yeah.
There are a couple ofdifferent scenarios there.
There's the scenario of dealing witheBay directly, their customer service,
and then there's dealing with acustomer and then there's two things
with the customer there's dealingwith a customer that has a complaint
(06:30):
that's valid or that you just need tocommunicate with them to try to solve.
And then there's the customer thatit's pretty clear that they're
trying to scam you or something.
Nefarious is happeningthere from your perspective.
And so I deal with those differently.
The explanation for eBay is pretty simple.
If I need to contact eBay and it'sa simple thing that I will try to
(06:50):
work with the first customer serviceperson that I speak with, I don't
like doing that though, becausea lot of times in my experience,
they don't have a lot of power.
Really a lot of thingsare automated within eBay.
A lot of the policies andprocesses are in place and
computer systems and things set up.
Timetables when certain actions are totake place based on whatever the issue
(07:11):
is, and the first line of customerservices job is really more to hear the
issue and provide information to me orwhoever it is about procedures and what
to expect and what's going to happen.
They don't have a whole lot of power.
(07:32):
Very little power and control, I wouldsay, over those processes as far as
like making changes or changing thetimetables or making decisions based
on the information you're giving.
They don't really havethe power to do that.
The people that do have the power to dothat are the next... wait Matt, before
you go on to that, the people that havethe power, it's also important for us
to know that a lot of these helpdeskpeople are not actually employees of
(07:55):
whatever company you're talking to.
You'll notice at the bottom sometimesit'll say something like Zendesk.
That is a contracted company thatthe people and they're reading off
of a Basically a list of thingslike when, if then this, right?
Oh, you have this problem here.
Let me send you this article.
Most of those people are perfectly lovelypeople, but they have absolutely no.
(08:17):
They don't really knowany more than you do.
And in fact, most of the timethey know less than you do.
So just keep that in mind when you're in.
And I don't mean that.
Pejoratively, I just mean that sincerely,like they're not doing this every single
day, so they're not deep in the weeds likeyou are when you're dealing, you're like,
wait, no, eBay has the blah, blah, blah.
They're just like readingoff of a list of a script.
They do.
Yeah.
So be aware of that.
(08:38):
It's not that you can't get helpfrom them, but be aware that
they're not actually most of thetime employees of the company.
I totally agree.
And there are many times when.
I can tell the person hearing meis, I wouldn't say that they feel
bad for me, but they recognizethat the issue is a problem.
And they're even frustrated thatthey can't help me in some ways.
And maybe even they don't believethemselves that the thing they're telling
(09:00):
me is actually going to take place.
But that's what, again, that's the prompt.
That's where they're supposedto take me in that conversation.
So a lot of times I will ask to speakwith someone in, on their management team.
And.
That sometimes works.
Other times they'll say, no, it's, it'sthe escalation department I need to speak
with, or it's the restrictions department.
(09:21):
It's some other department.
And I don't know how much ofthat is a smokescreen and how
much of that is, I, I don't know,cause I don't work with anybody.
I can only go off of my ownexperiences and I've had to
speak with them many times.
I don't enjoy it because itusually takes multiple phone calls.
A lot of time to get tothe bottom of things.
And so that's not fun.
But if it gets to a point where you'rehaving an issue with a customer or
(09:43):
something that doesn't have to do thecustomer, it's more some sort of systemic
issue that you're having that has to dowith the eBay system, then you do need to
talk with eBay and you need to give thema call, but when it comes to customers.
When it's somebody that I think istrying to defraud me or something like
that, this is or it's not a pleasantconversation or there's some sort of
(10:04):
conflict there that doesn't seem likeI'm going to be able to resolve just
through normal communication with them.
A couple of things.
One.
I make sure that my communicationwith them and this should,
you should do this anyways.
I think it's common sense,but I'm just going to say it.
You should be as pleasant as possiblein your communication with them.
Not only because you're more likelyto get things resolved when you
(10:25):
behave that way, but because thatis documented in eBay's system.
So if a conflict does not getresolved and you need, you
require assistance from eBay.
You want to be everything that'sdocumented in the communications, which is
in their system, their messaging system.
You want to show that you're doing yourall that you can do to help that person
and that you're not being baited into somesort of argument or something like that
(10:50):
because that is one of the tactics that.
People who try to manipulate you througheBay systems sometimes and through
the transactions on there, they willmake threats at times, they will be
very harsh, and they're trying to geta rise out of you, they're trying to
get you upset so that you'll get onand say some things that will, That
(11:11):
they can then use against you whenthey communicate with eBay, right?
And it's a tactic, it's a reallyskeezy thing to do, but it happens.
So you think they'redoing that on purpose?
I don't think that it's, at times, itmay be, impulsive, behavior by them,
but I've encountered enough of it tosee the signs and it seems calculated.
Right.
(11:31):
It seems calculated andthat's just my assessment.
I may be incorrect on that, but I dobelieve that there are people who do that.
And I've read enough things online ofother people encountering things that
have encountered the same issues toknow that is something that happens.
So I would say if you're evergoing to need to deal with eBay
and they're going to go and accessthose communications to see what has
(11:52):
transpired and see if that matches your.
Account of what happened.
You want it to match and you want to betaken the high road when it comes to that.
So you want your communication to bepleasant, even if you're frustrated and
it's a, it can be an annoying thing.
But when I deal with someone like that,when it gets to the point where I realize
(12:13):
that no amount of communication withthem is really going to resolve this, I'm
going to reach out to eBay preemptivelybefore it becomes a major issue.
And I'm going to get their guidanceand I'm going to have them, I'm going
to ask them, they're supposed to dothis anyway, but I'm going to ask
them to document this specific thing.
Document the fact that I'm sayingthat they're threatening me.
(12:34):
Do you see the aggressive tone?
Do you see the things that they're saying?
I want that documented in mycommunication with eBay and
I want to get their guidance.
That way, even if what, oftentimesthe direction, the guidance that eBay
customer service gives me ends up being.
Not correct.
Or what they say is goingto happen, doesn't happen.
I can come back and say, look at whathas happened in this communication.
(12:56):
Look what the previousservice agent documented.
What they told me was goingto happen, it didn't happen.
And look, I was reaching out as a seller.
I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do.
I'm following eBay's policies.
And I just need some assistance from you.
I want them involved.
I want to be there talking with thempreemptively because I don't want
(13:17):
this other person to be doing that.
Because I want to win this caseor this dispute, whatever it is.
So I get involved with eBay veryquickly when it comes to that.
In a situation where it's something morebenign, like Someone's reaching out and
saying, and this has happened this week.
Hey, this item hasn't arrived.
(13:38):
Why is it taking so long?
Okay, so I go in, I look at thetracking, and sure enough, it's
been like a week and a half.
I shipped this thing, it's supposedto go to Arizona, it's been a week and
a half, it's in Colorado somewhere.
Why is it in Colorado?
I don't know.
What's going on, U. S. Postal Service?
Yeah, U. S. Postal Service.
So I respond to them andI say, I am so sorry.
(13:59):
You purchase this item on February 23rd.
I shipped it as you can see anadded tracking on February 25th.
So within two days, I shipped the itemthat's within my shipping time period.
I wasn't delayed in gettingit fulfilled for you.
I see in the tracking that's in Colorado.
I'm so sorry.
I don't know why it's taking so long.
If you can give it another dayor two, let's see what happens.
(14:21):
Also, I'll go and check in with.
The U. S. Postal Service and see ifwe can find out what's going on here.
There is a way that you can go intothe U. S. Postal Service website, and
I can't remember exactly what it'scalled, but it's something like find
missing package or something like that.
And so you go in and they'vegot a series of questions.
They want you to put the trackingin there and that sort of thing.
(14:42):
And they're going to do something extra.
There are people or systems inplace that are going to specifically
search for that item and, or reachout to the location where it's
at and be like, Hey, why is this?
Why is this in acompletely separate state?
It's been a week and a half andthey should get back in some cases.
They might call you.
You can also call.
The U. S. Postal Service, there'sa phone number and you can get and
(15:05):
talk with a person and you can givethat information over the phone and
they will help you search for it.
I've had good experiences withthe Postal Service doing that.
They don't always find thepackage, but they are available
to help, they are pleasant, theyrecognize that happens sometimes.
When it's something like that,I'm, I will work with them.
They're not trying to hurt me in any way.
They're just like, I paidfor this, where is it?
(15:26):
And I'm in the same boat, like I wantthem to get it quickly, so I'm going
to work my best to help them out.
They're not being a difficult person,they're just simply wanting answers.
And that is the most common thing.
What is eBay's policy on, like you haveno control over the U. S. Postal Service.
Yeah.
You followed the procedure,you did it within two days.
What's sort of eBay's policy on thatif the package is lost or what happens,
(15:48):
you just have to refund the money.
I will have to refund the money,hopefully, because it's not, it's also
not eBay's fault and it's not withintheir power to correct that issue
either, like they can't force that itemalong, magically to the person faster.
It's up to me as a seller.
To figure out how to resolve that.
If it's refunding them, I'm goingto have to do my due diligence
(16:09):
then to contact the postal service.
And most of these packages, like ifI send something priority mail or
something, they usually come with50 or a hundred dollars insurance.
And for most of my items, the majority ofmy items, that's sufficient to cover it.
So if they have in their system, thetracking's there, they know when it
left, it's just showing like it'son its way to the next facility.
(16:29):
Like you see that a lot.
Honestly, the next facility dayafter day, and it just lost.
It's in limbo.
You can put in a claim and thatinsurance should cover that,
but it, it's a lot of legwork.
How long does that take to get paid out?
Oh, it completely depends.
It depends on how quickly youinitiate that case with them.
But I want to try to go in and make thingsright with the buyer as fast as possible.
(16:51):
Because if I don't.
They have the ability to hurt mystore in the sense that they could
leave me a negative review, forexample, and say, yes, I see that they
shipped it, but they did not help me.
They didn't do anything.
They didn't communicate promptly.
I just wanted this item.
I didn't have a goodexperience with this seller.
And that can affect the metrics withinthe eBay system that hurts your store.
(17:13):
Also other, any other potential buyersin a read your negative reviews.
And that might.
Cause them to not be interested in buyingfrom you if they don't feel like they can
trust you, even if it's not your fault.
So most of the time when people contactme it's usually about the speed of
when the item's going to get there.
I, it's very transparent on myeBay store and items that I have
(17:35):
a three day shipping window.
Sometimes people Iwould say are impatient.
They'll buy something and noteven 24 hours later, they'll be
like, why hasn't this shipped yet?
Can you please tell mewhen it's going to ship?
I need tracking immediately andI get on and I say hi there You
know, thanks for reaching out.
I have a three day shippingand handling window I will ship
(17:57):
it within that period of time.
I endeavor to ship this faster thanthis Then that even whenever I'm able
and it just depends on the volumethat I have to ship it in a given
time I'm just one person I We'llcertainly appreciate your patience.
And I promise that as soon as Iget the ship, I'm going to add
tracking and I'll do everything Ican to get that to you promptly.
I know that's the kindof message I give them.
(18:18):
And sometimes they're like,okay, thanks for letting me know.
Other times they're like,that's unacceptable.
I need this.
This is a gift for somebody.
I needed it by the state now, and I'llsay, okay, I'm thinking why didn't
you say that to me ahead of time?
Or why didn't you reach outto me before you bought it and
say, I'm buying this as a gift.
Is there any way that you can ship thisthe next day or as quickly as possible?
The other thing that I encounter a lotof times is people purchasing something
(18:42):
and then after the fact, Saying thatthey want to have a shipping discount.
Let's say that they buy something.
There are multiple items in one order.
They don't ask me about, andI give shipping discounts.
What I usually say is, Hey, if you'regoing to buy multiple items, please
wait to pay, and then I will give you acombined invoice, but I even have people
who no joke, two or three weeks later.
(19:04):
Okay.
After they've purchased it afterI've long after I've sent it,
it's not even in my mind anymore.
They'll come back and say,Hey, I really want a shipping.
Discount.
I want you to reduce my shippingbecause I bought multiple items.
And in that case, I'm just like yeah, Ican't, I'm not really going to do that.
This is already fulfilled.
Is there a mechanism to do that?
I can.
(19:25):
Oh, you could.
About any given time I can goin and I can initiate a. A full
refund or a partial refund.
Ah, I see.
So it'd be a refund, not a discount inthe sense of when they paid, you give
them 5 percent off or 10 percent off.
Do you actually have tosubmit a refund to that?
I will submit a partial refund.
And as a part of that process, itwill, the system will ask you what's
(19:47):
the reason for the refund and youcan give, it has multiple options.
It could say something like,one's just says other adjustment.
That's basically saying, ahhhh,I'm not going to tell you why
I'm just giving them a refund.
Shipping discount is one of the options.
And that's what I would select.
In that case, the problem that I'vefound, and I only discovered this recently
(20:08):
is that if someone buys, let's sayfour items from you and they pay them.
They pay for all of them individually.
They don't wait for you to combinethe shipping, meaning that they
would all go in the same orderand have the same tracking, and I
would send them the same package.
If they buy four different items.
And I want to send them together.
I can only add tracking to one item,one transaction, because the other
(20:30):
three are going in that same package.
And eBay system won't allow you to put thesame tracking number on multiple items.
So from eBay's perspective in theirsystem, it looks as though I've
only shipped one item and that threeitems are outstanding, that I have
not fulfilled that transaction.
And.
I've been selling since 2000 on eBay.
So 25 years I've been selling.
(20:52):
I just, I was just told thisby someone within eBay for
the last, in the last month.
So I don't know if this has alwaysbeen true or if I'm just now hearing
this, but I've never had a problemwith this, but recently I had some hold
restrictions on an account that I had todo a bunch of legwork to try to resolve.
And through that process,I w I discovered that.
If you have a situation like thatwhere you have few items that don't
(21:14):
have tracking assigned even if you'vesent them in a total package that the
eBay system will, they can put holdsand restrictions on your account.
Because they, from the account, fromthe system looking at your account,
it appears as though you're notfulfilling orders that you're supposed
to, and that they're outstanding.
Wait a second.
Wait, is this the reason why youwent through so much grief lately?
(21:37):
That is one, one of thethings that I discovered.
Okay, so wait a second.
This is my, I'm like, Igot so many questions.
Yeah.
I literally have so manyquestions I can't even think.
Number one is.
eBay has been doing this forever.
Amazon does this all the time.
They'll ship, in one box andyou'll get all in one box, but
you'll get separate orders.
(21:58):
Why can't eBay do that?
There is a way, but I like to bethe one who decides how much of a
discount I'm going to give on an order.
Because if I have, let's saythat I have one item, it's small
and I know it's going to cost.
Maybe 4.
90 to ship.
Yeah.
(22:18):
Right?
That's just what it's gonna cost.
And then a person buys four items,but they're all the same size.
And I know that the weight of all ofthose, it isn't gonna be any more than 5.
I can ship all of that for 5.
There's no reason why I should chargethem 5 per item, because they're facing
20 in shipping if they bought four, right?
Unless I discount that.
(22:40):
So I want to be able to get onthere and give them a discount.
I want to reduce that down to 5, butthere's also a time when let's say
I have four items for a dollar 99each and, or three items, and it's
a dollar 99 each and it's six bucks.
I can only give them a dollar.
I can't reduce that by.
50 percent because then I would losemoney on shipping and the system is
(23:03):
not necessarily going to know thatto do that automatically for me.
So I want to be able to makethat decision, but I'm finding,
I've just found out that.
If a person preemptively pays and doesn'tgive me the chance to send them a combined
invoice Then I have a potential problem.
My only way of resolving that now isto go ahead and fulfill every item
(23:25):
individually so that every item hasan individual tracking number and
then I have to go in after the factand send them a Partial discount a
partial refund as a shipping discount.
It's more legwork for me.
It's annoying But if I don't do that Icould potentially face restrictions on
my account because the system thinksthat I haven't shipped those other items.
So it's super annoying.
(23:45):
I don't know exactly why they do that, butI've never had issues until now, 25 years.
So either that's a change or it justsomehow I've never faced the negative
consequences of that happening,within my account until now.
It is amazing to me, especially.
With how much AI is involvedwith everything now, that
(24:07):
is not a box tick on eBay.
It is not hard to create asystem that would do that.
It's just not, it's,we're not talking about.
Cold fusion here.
We're talking about keeping track witha computer and having an algorithm to
set it's a mate that blows my mind Iused to have some automated shipping
discount things set up in my storeBut I found that by doing that the
(24:29):
eBay system was incorrect too oftenMeaning they would discount it and too
much and then the shipping it wasn'taccurate You see what I'm saying?
But yeah, I ship these little itemsA hundred orders a week, a thing.
Even when I'm out looking at thingsto source, I know exactly how much
it's going to cost to ship it.
(24:49):
Before I even buy it, I already knowbecause of the size and the weight, I know
it better than the eBay system knows it,even though they're connected to, the U.
S. Postal Service, I buy all of mylabels through eBay, and it does give
me a discount by doing that because theyhave some sort of arrangement with the
U. S. Postal Service that if you buyit through eBay, it's cheaper than if
(25:10):
you just take it into the post office.
But taking this full circle, a lot oftimes the issues I have are pretty simple
when people come and I have a difficult,quote unquote, a difficult person.
Most people aren't difficult.
Most people are just looking forinformation or wanting updates from me.
And that's easy.
I, hey, sometimes I buy things.
And it takes a week to ship and Ireach out and just say, Hey there,
(25:32):
I'm just checking to see I see thatthe label was created, but it hasn't.
That's another thing that sometimespeople will do to buy them more time to
ship something, is that if you createthe label, if you purchase the label
through eBay, it shows as shipped.
It hasn't actually been shipped yet.
It's not actually shipped and intransit until it's at the post office
and some post office representativescans it into their system.
(25:56):
So sometimes you could buy somethingand maybe immediately that day.
It shows it's shipped, a tracking numberis added, then you wait five days and you
look at it and it says awaiting pickupfrom postal service or awaiting drop off.
That means that they've createdthe label, but they've not
taken it to the post office yet.
And that bought them time.
It looks like they're workingon it, but they're not.
(26:18):
And so in that case, I reachout and just say, Hey, I can
tell you created the label.
It hasn't been dropped offat the post office yet.
Can you give me a timetable on whenthat's going to, and it's going to happen?
And I, it's, I think it's a fair question.
If people ask me that,it's a fair question.
I need to give them a respectfulresponse and be prompt about it.
That's just one of those partsabout trying to run a good business
and something that people cantrust so that they come back and
(26:41):
that you can have repeat buyers.
A thing.
Can I posit a conspiracy theorythat I'm sure is absolutely wrong,
but just whether I want you to ornot, I think you're about to do it.
It seems to me that.
Ebay is more interested in the parttime seller, i. e. Somebody who's just
selling once a year, twice a year.
They must know because they have all thedata that they make more money off of
(27:05):
those people than they do off of you.
Because it, it doesn't, the fact thatthey don't have these multiple tracking
numbers and the systems in place.
Now I could be wrong.
It could just be the waythat it's just, I don't know.
They haven't invested in this, whatever.
But it seems crazy to me to thinkthat a massive shipping company.
Does not have a better systemin place for people like you.
(27:26):
That just seems something's weird.
It can't be that they make more money fromsomeone who sells less volume, because
if things continue this year, as theyhave so far in this first quarter, I'm
going to do somewhere around a quarterof a million dollars in gross sales
on eBay this year with that volume ofsales, eBay is going to make somewhere.
(27:48):
The U. S. Postal Service, letme put it this way, will earn
somewhere around 25, from me.
And eBay takes 13.
5%, so whatever 13.
5 percent is of 250, 000 iswhat eBay is going to earn
from me using their platform.
And that's not including the monthlypayments, I pay them a subscription fees.
(28:08):
It's also not including any other feesthat I would incur if say there were
restrictions on my account for somereason, because if you don't follow their
kind of baseline protocols, or if youdon't keep your metrics at a certain level
and you go below standard on your store.
They have punitive measures inplace where they will take a
(28:30):
higher percentage of your sale.
And this is here.
I'm going to, I'm just goingto make one tiny complaint.
This is what eBay will do.
And there's a number of reasons whyyou're, and it's not necessarily could
be your fault, but there are a numberof metrics and reasons why your account
could fall below a certain point.
It could simply be becauseyou have a higher number of
(28:50):
returns in a particular month.
And they may all be stupid returns.
Like I just didn't like it, whichyou're not even supposed to be able to
return something if you just don't likeit, but eBay allows that to happen.
If a bunch of people return something ina month, it could make your stats drop
to the point where you're below standard.
And, they don't review thatuntil once about every month.
(29:11):
So for the next 30 days, if it hitsthat point, anything that you sell, they
can take a higher fee from your sales.
And the only way that you can improveyour store is by continuing to sell
more items so that the percentage Ofitems that sold or the percentage of
transactions bring you back above thatbaseline that you need to get above.
(29:33):
So they force you to sell moreitems to get back to above standard.
Every one of those items that you sell,they take a higher percentage fee from.
So you're being punished essentially, orsomething that may not even be your fault.
And it may be, this is one of thereasons I have multiple eBay stores.
(29:53):
If they put a restriction onmy account, I don't like that.
The last thing I'm going to do is sella bunch more items on there so that
you can take more of my money, eBay.
That's ridiculous.
I'm going to start selling on one ofmy other stores more, and I'm just
going to let that one ride untilit naturally comes back up above.
I'm not going to sell, why am I goingto be incentivized to sell more items
(30:15):
for you to take more of my money?
That's ridiculous.
You know what I'm saying?
It's, I don't know, it's a dumb thing.
I don't like that, but that is ameasure that they have in place.
I just don't understand how amulti billion dollar company That's
been in business for a long time.
That sort of started the platform ina sense has these policies in place
that I would love to, I know it's nevergoing to happen, but man, would I love
(30:38):
to have an eBay analyst on to talkabout what's your thinking on this?
If they had to tell a truth serumwhere they had to tell you the truth.
Exactly.
The more that you sell, the moremoney you can earn, that's obvious,
but the more transactions you do, themore complicated the process becomes
and the more problems you encounter.
(30:59):
Statistically, the more you sell, themore people come and try to rip you off.
More people try to defraud you.
More chances and potentialfor your store to have holds
and restrictions put on them.
So it's actually more idealfor a part time seller.
To sell an eBay because yeah, youdon't make as much money, but also
you don't have to deal with as muchas the complications and the problems
(31:21):
that you can encounter with thesystem when you're not doing it.
So it's a bummer.
I, and we've already talkedat length about how eBay
primarily supports the buyer.
In transaction disputes overthe seller, which also is
really frustrating for a seller.
I also buy an eBay, but I do waymore selling than I do buying.
(31:42):
And so if there are disputes andtransactions in a transaction, I am
way less likely to win that regardlessof what it is, because, and that's
again, the reason why I need to be asrespectful as possible, my communication.
I need to reach out to eBay as fastas possible because I am going to be
in a better position to potentially.
Have that case cited in my favor.
(32:03):
If I'm being preemptive andcommunicative with both the buyer
and with eBay about that dispute.
It strikes me, not just with eBay,but with lots of these companies
where there really needs to bedifferent level or tiers of customer.
Like I do, I was mentioningthat software that I use.
I am pretty sure that I'm inthe top 5 percent of people that
(32:26):
use the software in terms of theamount of time in the software.
So it feels like there should be a tier.
This is, Oh, this guy's clearly been doingthis for a long, he knows about this.
We're going to ratchet him up to a level.
Whatever.
Same thing with eBay.
It seems like, Matt's been selling fora long time and they know the data.
I just don't understand why itdoesn't make sense for them to
(32:50):
care more about you than, not caremore, you know what I'm saying.
Here's what I think.
One thing I thought for a long timeis that There should be a monetary
threshold, I believe, for a seller, thatif you sell at that mark or above, you
should have a direct phone number toone person, a customer service person
that is your customer service agent.
You don't have to go through theridiculous stuff on their system to
(33:12):
just get a hold of somebody to talk.
If, I don't know what it is, 100, 000,whatever it is, you should have direct
access to a customer service person.
Because, okay, so if you sell 100,000, Thirteen and a half thousand
dollars of that goes to eBay.
They take thirteen and ahalf percent on average.
How many people could one customerservice agent represent, do you think?
(33:33):
Like how often would I have to call in?
You know what I mean?
Like maybe once a month?
They could have dozens, maybe ahundred different people that they
represent and that's one full time job.
And if every single person theyrepresent is thirteen and a half
thousand dollars that eBay made.
Ebay could have two, three, 400,000 of earnings, and they only have
to employ one person to be thatcustomer service agent and what are
(33:56):
they paying them 40, 50 grand a year?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It monetarily should make sense.
And yet they don't do that.
And that's really aggravating.
There's got to be a reason.
And I imagine that not, we won't get intolate stage capitalism here, but I got to
imagine to some degree that eBay knowsthat can do this without, and it knows
(34:17):
that it can, because they're not dumb.
They're obviously been inbusiness for a long time.
People that work for eBay and the, inthe C suite level understand the process.
They simply, perhaps.
It's about stock value.
Who knows?
If they make it easier,they will have more calls.
I think it's that simple.
If they give you direct access,you will take advantage of it.
(34:39):
And they don't want you to take advantageof it because the more advantage you
take of their customer service, the morethey're going to be on the hook for having
to resolve things and pay out stuff.
Then limit it to five a month.
Oh, for sure.
Limited to five a month.
There's a way to do this.
There should be.
You know what?
I didn't even know if we couldget through the whole show.
We're already, we're not even at the pointwhere we've talked about what's sold.
(34:59):
I know.
But I do want to, one last thoughtis, were all the packages that are
lost by the USPS, I imagine they endup in like the land of misfit toys.
Oh, sure.
Where there's some weird USPS.
Mythical creature that hordesthese treasures because they
got to end up somewhere.
Where do they end up anyway?
I mean there's enough of themfor them to have a king lion
with wings on the island, right?
(35:19):
Like how that's how he's financedis all of those lost usps packages.
Yeah, he's got his wings.
Those wings don't come cheapYeah, what's his name King?
I can't remember it.
I don't remember but yeah, I do knowit's funny every year We watch that
we're gonna talk about The customer sideof this on a later show, because we've
run up against time, but I did wantto talk about what you sold this week.
(35:41):
I know you've got a lot ofstuff, so let's do that now.
As we close out the show,what did you sell this week?
Wonderful.
Yeah.
Several things.
I'm a little slow to getting themfulfilled because I'm healing
from my recent medical issue.
And so I've put my store onpause, meaning I can still list
items, but I'm not obligated toship them until the end of my.
Time away is what they call it timeaway from the store, but I did pull
(36:03):
a few things up here I'm going toshow you four different orders one.
Well, two of them involve pocket knives.
And so this is like a great Exampleof the types of things I love to sell
something that's small can fit in yourpocket and it's pretty highly collectible
They talk about sell through rates Whichis the percentage of items that sell
in a particular category any nine every90 days and the higher the sell through
(36:26):
rate the higher percentage of the thingsthat sell Means just the more collectible
it is and the more valuable and themore that the public wants that item.
So this is a little old pocket knife.
It's probably from the 1950s or 1960s.
The blades are rusted.
I don't even know the brand becauseit's so rusted I can't actually see it.
Usually it's down by the,right at the bottom of where
(36:47):
the folding knife pops out.
It could be cleaned up.
The blades are in decentcondition, even for its age.
It involve like the handle is antler.
So like a deer antler, it's beencarved and put in as a piece
of metal along with the metal.
It's very typical of pocketknives from that age, this sold.
For 24.
That's pretty good.
(37:08):
This is actually something thatsomeone gave me to sell for them.
So I didn't pay for it, but this isthe kind of thing that I would have
paid up to three to 5 for if I saw itat a thrift store or an antique store.
Another lot is similar to pocket knives.
One has two blades, the other one has one.
And in this case, I do see the brand.
So those are visible on here.
One is probably.
(37:28):
Within the last decade or two.
The other one is they're bothwouldn't handle with metal.
The other one has a number on it too.
So that would be like a model number.
So there's, there are a lot of peopleout there who collect, there are a
lot of collectible pocket knives.
Almost every lot of pocketknives or evenindividual pocketknife I put up sells
within a month typically so they'rereally good So these two sold for 22.
(37:51):
So not as high but they're alsonot super Collectible or uncommon.
What brands are they?
So one is Valor V A L O RIt's the Supersport model.
That's the newer one.
And then another one is a universal.
It says L, F, and C. Thatwould be, the initials for
whatever the company brand is.
And the model number is 2247.
(38:13):
I don't know what that brand is.
I looked it up initially,but I don't remember off the
top of my head what it was.
I put it in a lot because if aknife doesn't seem like it's worth
more than 10 bucks or so, I'm notgoing to sell it individually.
I want more money out of that.
So I'm going to put it with asmall lot so that it just doesn't
make sense time wise for me to bejust shipping a bunch of 10 items.
(38:35):
So that's why I put it in there.
The next couple of items arealso in the same category.
They are these little bracelets.
And they are antique.
This is from like thelate 1800s, early 1900s.
The end of them almost lookslike clasps that would be on
a pocket watch chain or fob.
And they are what appear tobe just like twisted rope.
(38:56):
And then in the center they have alittle gold filled piece as well.
And to people who don't know aboutmourning jewelry, and I don't mean
like the mourning when you getup, but I mean mourning the loss
of someone who has passed away.
In the Victorian times.
There was a lot of jewelry that was madeto be worn by people who had lost a loved
(39:16):
one and it was very common for peopleto wear jewelry that involved a piece of
that person, like literally a piece ofthat person, and in this case, it's hair.
The, what looked to be twistedrope, Is actually someone's hair.
Oh my goodness.
And this was so common in fact that Youdidn't even have to send this off I mean
(39:36):
in some cases you would send the hairyou would the coroner or someone Who was
present when the person passed away wouldcut As much hair off as they felt like
they needed before they were taken to beburied and they would either send it off
to a company that did this or you couldpurchase kits where these metal pieces
came and then there was instructionson how to weave this or create this so
(40:00):
people in their own homes would taketheir, let's say a woman's husband died.
She would take his hair and she wouldsit there like she was knitting something
and she would make this bracelet or thisnecklace and then she would wear it.
There are even rings that have hairaround the ring, gold rings, solid
gold rings, but they incorporate hair.
A lot of times there'll be lockets that onone side of the locket, as like a pendant,
(40:23):
it'll have the person's photograph andon the other side, a lock of their hair.
This was very common.
They wore this around.
It's not culturally normal oracceptable today for people to do that.
People find it very creepy and grossand weird, but at that time it was
a way for them to remember them.
It was a way for them to mourn that loss.
(40:45):
And that was just a thing that people did.
So these two both sold.
They sold for about seven one sold for 70.
The other one sold for 75.
These are gold filled pieces ofmetal Some people buy these to
collect them some people buy themand if it's solid gold, they just
harvest the gold and melt it Mm hmm.
People aren't really buying them to wear.
I don't think these days do theyknow that they're haunted Matt?
(41:08):
Well, that actually would explainsome of the weird noises around
the house lately But if you finda piece of mourning jewelry, they
oftentimes incorporated the color black.
So if there are, say, cameos orthings that are black, that's
some usually a mourning jewelry.
If there's a stick pin that has agateor a dark black stone, that was probably
(41:28):
worn as a mourning jewelry piece.
And, like I said, you can find rings,brooches, pins, pendants, all of that.
If you ever find something like that,though, you should test it because
There are things in solid 1418 22karat gold, cameos and things that
are around glass around the hair.
They can have value in thegold, not just historical value.
(41:48):
The last thing I'm going toshow is a lot of, I would call
them semi precious gemstones.
This is a combination of roughcut gemstones that may or may not
have holes drilled through them.
For people who make jewelry.
Others are very rough, meaning they'vejust been pulled out of the ground and
they are, there's something that you couldcut or use in jewelry, but they've not
(42:11):
been, things have been done to them yet.
And then there are even facetcut gemstones in this lot.
I say semi precious.
We're talking about things like.
Turquoise, malachite, what do wegot in here, agate, amethyst we've
got some North Carolina rubies thatI've, I personally found, while out,
and so this lot, whenever I havethese, I collect, no I don't collect,
(42:34):
I acquire and sell periodically.
gemstones from high value, largerdiamonds and sapphires, rubies,
things like that, emeralds, all theway down to these lower quality ones
and things that are lower value.
I'll put in a lot like this and sell.
So this was on auction for seven days.
It sold for 250.
This is decent, butthat's certainly worth it.
If you're a jeweler and you want to getsome authentic stones to put into jewelry.
(42:58):
This is the way a lot of people do that.
Amateur jewelers and things.
So it's great.
I can move some of that stuff, buthigher quality things, facet cut
gemstones that you could immediatelyput in a ring or something like that.
I'll try to sell those individually.
I'll put the carat weight.
I'll give them the millimeter diameter.
And give as much information as possible.
But with this, it was just photographs.
Hey, this lot includesthis variety of things.
(43:21):
Just look at the picturesto see what you're getting.
Cool.
That's awesome.
I was thinking about, that's justone more example of where you collect
these things and put them in a lot.
Yeah.
And probably you've already made yourmoney back from the original purchase.
I have.
Most of these, exactly.
Most of these came in like rock ormineral collections that I purchased.
And have sold off in parts.
I wait till I have a decent amountthat I want to put in a lot together.
(43:44):
Otherwise, I'm selling themindividually, but it all depends.
I wasn't real concerned abouthow much I made in this.
These aren't terribly valuable.
I was happy with that sale.
But, all in all, probably 50 to 60was what was in this, and likely I
have nothing in it by this, at thispoint, because I've sold enough from
those other lots that they came into where all my money is back to me.
(44:05):
Well, We are out of time, so I will say,remember to follow, like, subscribe,
write a review if you get a chance.
Any last words, Matt, forus before we head out?
Yeah, don't get a hernia,because they are not pleasant.
Yes, and Matt, please heal quickly.
That's right.
(44:25):
And we will be, we will pick up wherewe left off on difficult customers.
But we obviously, we just, the firstpart was so much that we ran out of time.
So anyway, we will be back witha brand new show next week.
We hope everybody has a great week.
Please send us an email andlet us know what's going on.
Otherwise have a great day.
Take care, everyone.
Welcome back to the WhatSold podcast. As usual.
I am Brandon.
This is my friend, Matt.
Not going to lie to you folks,but today we're moving a little
bit slow all the way around.
It feels like it's been a, it's onlyWednesday because we record on Wednesday.
But it feels, and it's drop onWednesday, so you can pretend it's live.
You could be listening to thisgoing, oh, it's live, the guys
(00:58):
are just talking to me live.
Through the magic ofmodern sound and whatever.
But it's been, it feels like it'sbeen a really long week already.
Today is Ash Wednesdaywhen we're recording.
For those of you that followthe Old school liturgical
calendar the lenten season.
Yeah, the Lenten seasonwe're getting ready for it.
So Matt has to think about how he'sharmed me The things he's done to, to
(01:22):
bring pain to my life, and that seemswhat one does during Count the ways.
Yeah, count the ways.
That seems like what one does during Lent.
No and I know Matt had a little bit ofa medical procedure, he's not dying,
he's doing well, he's a virile man, butit's never easy, even when you do the
simple outpatient stuff, it's always ugh.
Feels like it takesweeks to recover from it.
(01:43):
Extra virile.
There's a there's a, oneof his name is Donny Benet.
He's a musician, but I saw himrecently, and he's a bald man, and
he said something to the effect thatI'm a bald man because I'm extra
virulent, which I thought was hilarious.
Virulent.
Very virulent.
Yeah, I I had a yeah, I hada little I had a herniatic.
(02:04):
Procedure, which not pleasant and not allof those require a surgical intervention,
but this one did especially today.
I've been moving around like I'm an80 year old man, and I'm not close.
I'm not far off from that,but I'm not quite there.
You know, it's a little bit of pain,but trying to treat that and keep
things iced down and listen, it'snot going to stop me from talking
(02:25):
about buying and selling stuff.
Shoot.
That's right, man.
We're out there buying and selling.
I always say that, you're getting oldwhen you get injured in your sleep.
That's right.
That's the true sign of you'regetting old is when you wake up,
you're like, ah, how did I tear mymeniscus in the middle of the night?
Whatever it is.
Yeah.
And listen, I know that half the peoplewho listen to this podcast don't like
to hear the junk in the beginning, butI feel like I need to mention this.
(02:48):
I have some cousinsand this is not a joke.
These are my actual cousins.
These are not Rusty's cousins, thoughthey are probably Rusty's cousins as
well, because we always get on andtalk about what would our name be?
If we were in the arena, they suggestedI adopt the moniker, the liquidator.
Oh, I do that, which I thought was great.
My immediate mental image was I'mconcealing some sort of a hose
(03:12):
situation in my trench coat, and Ijust douse people with chemicals.
I don't know what chemicals it couldjust be straight water, but it's just
meant to particularly you aim for theface like you want to get the eyes.
You want to disorient them asbest as you can in the beginning.
I feel like that's the only way Iwould win any fight in wrestling or
anything else is if I somehow get acheap shot, disorient them in some way.
(03:38):
Through dust in their face.
That's exactly right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What, I feel like there are definitelymultiple movies where that happens.
They're out there, the bad guy, ofcourse, he gets knocked down, he comes
up, he throws dust, some sort of.
Of, really.
Chicanery.
You can't yeah.
Dirty, he plays dirty.
Plays dirty, and I'm, listen, I'mnot beneath biting, or whatever I
(03:58):
need to do, you know what I'm saying?
Anyhow, I don't want to throw thatout, I appreciate cousins, any family
who listen to this and support,what we're trying to do here.
That's awesome.
Keep them coming.
Keep those suggestions coming.
I think I'm stuck with Moondoggybecause you gave Hey, listen,
I didn't give that to you.
That's from college days, man.
Isn't that's from when you werea disc jockey back in the day.
Yeah, back in the day.
(04:19):
I was a disc jockey, actually.
That's what I'm saying, man.
Yeah, back in the collegeradio days, for sure.
I feel like I would more likely besomebody like the chatterbox where
you get in the ring and you just talkto somebody so much that they just
eventually get out of the ring and leave.
Dude, you're the announcer.
You're like the Vince McMahon.
You're the guy who's out there.
You're talking up the good guy.
(04:40):
You're talking down the villain.
Yeah.
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday broughtto you by the good guys.
Of Coors and Coors Light, kidsunder 12 get in half price.
That's right.
No, I don't want to be that guy.
We were talking as we are apt to do inour pre production about things, so we've
talked a lot about obviously selling andbuying and all the things, but one of
(05:01):
the things we haven't talked a lot about.
But as a reality of the job, I didn'teven mention this to you, but yesterday
I spent at least five hours dealingwith customer service because I use
a certain set of software and I knewthat it wasn't broken on my end.
I knew that I wasn't doing somethingwrong because I use this all the time.
(05:22):
So I'm like something changed and I'mlike, okay, let's try to figure this out.
So they send you to 7 million helpdesks and read this article and do this.
And I'm like, I've done allthis finally get somebody.
It turns out it was an actualissue with the software.
This has happened to me twice in a month.
And I was got so frustrated.
It burned up so many hours.
(05:43):
I began to think about, what do wedo when we run into difficult customer
service, which I know you've run intowith eBay and also difficult customers
that require a lot of our time.
And I don't know if there'sa perfect answer to this, but
we're going to delve into that.
Today in the show.
So what do you do, Matt, when yousell an item, pretty stoked about it.
(06:08):
You feel like you've sentthem you're an honest guy.
You've sent them what youthought you were sending them.
And then you get the whatever, the litanyof, I know you've talked about it in the
past, people getting mad about stuff.
Yeah.
There are a couple ofdifferent scenarios there.
There's the scenario of dealing witheBay directly, their customer service,
and then there's dealing with acustomer and then there's two things
with the customer there's dealingwith a customer that has a complaint
(06:30):
that's valid or that you just need tocommunicate with them to try to solve.
And then there's the customer thatit's pretty clear that they're
trying to scam you or something.
Nefarious is happeningthere from your perspective.
And so I deal with those differently.
The explanation for eBay is pretty simple.
If I need to contact eBay and it'sa simple thing that I will try to
(06:50):
work with the first customer serviceperson that I speak with, I don't
like doing that though, becausea lot of times in my experience,
they don't have a lot of power.
Really a lot of thingsare automated within eBay.
A lot of the policies andprocesses are in place and
computer systems and things set up.
Timetables when certain actions are totake place based on whatever the issue
(07:11):
is, and the first line of customerservices job is really more to hear the
issue and provide information to me orwhoever it is about procedures and what
to expect and what's going to happen.
They don't have a whole lot of power.
(07:32):
Very little power and control, I wouldsay, over those processes as far as
like making changes or changing thetimetables or making decisions based
on the information you're giving.
They don't really havethe power to do that.
The people that do have the power to dothat are the next... wait Matt, before
you go on to that, the people that havethe power, it's also important for us
to know that a lot of these helpdeskpeople are not actually employees of
(07:55):
whatever company you're talking to.
You'll notice at the bottom sometimesit'll say something like Zendesk.
That is a contracted company thatthe people and they're reading off
of a Basically a list of thingslike when, if then this, right?
Oh, you have this problem here.
Let me send you this article.
Most of those people are perfectly lovelypeople, but they have absolutely no.
(08:17):
They don't really knowany more than you do.
And in fact, most of the timethey know less than you do.
So just keep that in mind when you're in.
And I don't mean that.
Pejoratively, I just mean that sincerely,like they're not doing this every single
day, so they're not deep in the weeds likeyou are when you're dealing, you're like,
wait, no, eBay has the blah, blah, blah.
They're just like readingoff of a list of a script.
They do.
Yeah.
So be aware of that.
(08:38):
It's not that you can't get helpfrom them, but be aware that
they're not actually most of thetime employees of the company.
I totally agree.
And there are many times when.
I can tell the person hearing meis, I wouldn't say that they feel
bad for me, but they recognizethat the issue is a problem.
And they're even frustrated thatthey can't help me in some ways.
And maybe even they don't believethemselves that the thing they're telling
(09:00):
me is actually going to take place.
But that's what, again, that's the prompt.
That's where they're supposedto take me in that conversation.
So a lot of times I will ask to speakwith someone in, on their management team.
And.
That sometimes works.
Other times they'll say, no, it's, it'sthe escalation department I need to speak
with, or it's the restrictions department.
(09:21):
It's some other department.
And I don't know how much ofthat is a smokescreen and how
much of that is, I, I don't know,cause I don't work with anybody.
I can only go off of my ownexperiences and I've had to
speak with them many times.
I don't enjoy it because itusually takes multiple phone calls.
A lot of time to get tothe bottom of things.
And so that's not fun.
But if it gets to a point where you'rehaving an issue with a customer or
(09:43):
something that doesn't have to do thecustomer, it's more some sort of systemic
issue that you're having that has to dowith the eBay system, then you do need to
talk with eBay and you need to give thema call, but when it comes to customers.
When it's somebody that I think istrying to defraud me or something like
that, this is or it's not a pleasantconversation or there's some sort of
(10:04):
conflict there that doesn't seem likeI'm going to be able to resolve just
through normal communication with them.
A couple of things.
One.
I make sure that my communicationwith them and this should,
you should do this anyways.
I think it's common sense,but I'm just going to say it.
You should be as pleasant as possiblein your communication with them.
Not only because you're more likelyto get things resolved when you
(10:25):
behave that way, but because thatis documented in eBay's system.
So if a conflict does not getresolved and you need, you
require assistance from eBay.
You want to be everything that'sdocumented in the communications, which is
in their system, their messaging system.
You want to show that you're doing yourall that you can do to help that person
and that you're not being baited into somesort of argument or something like that
(10:50):
because that is one of the tactics that.
People who try to manipulate you througheBay systems sometimes and through
the transactions on there, they willmake threats at times, they will be
very harsh, and they're trying to geta rise out of you, they're trying to
get you upset so that you'll get onand say some things that will, That
(11:11):
they can then use against you whenthey communicate with eBay, right?
And it's a tactic, it's a reallyskeezy thing to do, but it happens.
So you think they'redoing that on purpose?
I don't think that it's, at times, itmay be, impulsive, behavior by them,
but I've encountered enough of it tosee the signs and it seems calculated.
Right.
(11:31):
It seems calculated andthat's just my assessment.
I may be incorrect on that, but I dobelieve that there are people who do that.
And I've read enough things online ofother people encountering things that
have encountered the same issues toknow that is something that happens.
So I would say if you're evergoing to need to deal with eBay
and they're going to go and accessthose communications to see what has
(11:52):
transpired and see if that matches your.
Account of what happened.
You want it to match and you want to betaken the high road when it comes to that.
So you want your communication to bepleasant, even if you're frustrated and
it's a, it can be an annoying thing.
But when I deal with someone like that,when it gets to the point where I realize
(12:13):
that no amount of communication withthem is really going to resolve this, I'm
going to reach out to eBay preemptivelybefore it becomes a major issue.
And I'm going to get their guidanceand I'm going to have them, I'm going
to ask them, they're supposed to dothis anyway, but I'm going to ask
them to document this specific thing.
Document the fact that I'm sayingthat they're threatening me.
(12:34):
Do you see the aggressive tone?
Do you see the things that they're saying?
I want that documented in mycommunication with eBay and
I want to get their guidance.
That way, even if what, oftentimesthe direction, the guidance that eBay
customer service gives me ends up being.
Not correct.
Or what they say is goingto happen, doesn't happen.
I can come back and say, look at whathas happened in this communication.
(12:56):
Look what the previousservice agent documented.
What they told me was goingto happen, it didn't happen.
And look, I was reaching out as a seller.
I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do.
I'm following eBay's policies.
And I just need some assistance from you.
I want them involved.
I want to be there talking with thempreemptively because I don't want
(13:17):
this other person to be doing that.
Because I want to win this caseor this dispute, whatever it is.
So I get involved with eBay veryquickly when it comes to that.
In a situation where it's something morebenign, like Someone's reaching out and
saying, and this has happened this week.
Hey, this item hasn't arrived.
(13:38):
Why is it taking so long?
Okay, so I go in, I look at thetracking, and sure enough, it's
been like a week and a half.
I shipped this thing, it's supposedto go to Arizona, it's been a week and
a half, it's in Colorado somewhere.
Why is it in Colorado?
I don't know.
What's going on, U. S. Postal Service?
Yeah, U. S. Postal Service.
So I respond to them andI say, I am so sorry.
(13:59):
You purchase this item on February 23rd.
I shipped it as you can see anadded tracking on February 25th.
So within two days, I shipped the itemthat's within my shipping time period.
I wasn't delayed in gettingit fulfilled for you.
I see in the tracking that's in Colorado.
I'm so sorry.
I don't know why it's taking so long.
If you can give it another dayor two, let's see what happens.
(14:21):
Also, I'll go and check in with.
The U. S. Postal Service and see ifwe can find out what's going on here.
There is a way that you can go intothe U. S. Postal Service website, and
I can't remember exactly what it'scalled, but it's something like find
missing package or something like that.
And so you go in and they'vegot a series of questions.
They want you to put the trackingin there and that sort of thing.
(14:42):
And they're going to do something extra.
There are people or systems inplace that are going to specifically
search for that item and, or reachout to the location where it's
at and be like, Hey, why is this?
Why is this in acompletely separate state?
It's been a week and a half andthey should get back in some cases.
They might call you.
You can also call.
The U. S. Postal Service, there'sa phone number and you can get and
(15:05):
talk with a person and you can givethat information over the phone and
they will help you search for it.
I've had good experiences withthe Postal Service doing that.
They don't always find thepackage, but they are available
to help, they are pleasant, theyrecognize that happens sometimes.
When it's something like that,I'm, I will work with them.
They're not trying to hurt me in any way.
They're just like, I paidfor this, where is it?
(15:26):
And I'm in the same boat, like I wantthem to get it quickly, so I'm going
to work my best to help them out.
They're not being a difficult person,they're just simply wanting answers.
And that is the most common thing.
What is eBay's policy on, like you haveno control over the U. S. Postal Service.
Yeah.
You followed the procedure,you did it within two days.
What's sort of eBay's policy on thatif the package is lost or what happens,
(15:48):
you just have to refund the money.
I will have to refund the money,hopefully, because it's not, it's also
not eBay's fault and it's not withintheir power to correct that issue
either, like they can't force that itemalong, magically to the person faster.
It's up to me as a seller.
To figure out how to resolve that.
If it's refunding them, I'm goingto have to do my due diligence
(16:09):
then to contact the postal service.
And most of these packages, like ifI send something priority mail or
something, they usually come with50 or a hundred dollars insurance.
And for most of my items, the majority ofmy items, that's sufficient to cover it.
So if they have in their system, thetracking's there, they know when it
left, it's just showing like it'son its way to the next facility.
(16:29):
Like you see that a lot.
Honestly, the next facility dayafter day, and it just lost.
It's in limbo.
You can put in a claim and thatinsurance should cover that,
but it, it's a lot of legwork.
How long does that take to get paid out?
Oh, it completely depends.
It depends on how quickly youinitiate that case with them.
But I want to try to go in and make thingsright with the buyer as fast as possible.
(16:51):
Because if I don't.
They have the ability to hurt mystore in the sense that they could
leave me a negative review, forexample, and say, yes, I see that they
shipped it, but they did not help me.
They didn't do anything.
They didn't communicate promptly.
I just wanted this item.
I didn't have a goodexperience with this seller.
And that can affect the metrics withinthe eBay system that hurts your store.
(17:13):
Also other, any other potential buyersin a read your negative reviews.
And that might.
Cause them to not be interested in buyingfrom you if they don't feel like they can
trust you, even if it's not your fault.
So most of the time when people contactme it's usually about the speed of
when the item's going to get there.
I, it's very transparent on myeBay store and items that I have
(17:35):
a three day shipping window.
Sometimes people Iwould say are impatient.
They'll buy something and noteven 24 hours later, they'll be
like, why hasn't this shipped yet?
Can you please tell mewhen it's going to ship?
I need tracking immediately andI get on and I say hi there You
know, thanks for reaching out.
I have a three day shippingand handling window I will ship
(17:57):
it within that period of time.
I endeavor to ship this faster thanthis Then that even whenever I'm able
and it just depends on the volumethat I have to ship it in a given
time I'm just one person I We'llcertainly appreciate your patience.
And I promise that as soon as Iget the ship, I'm going to add
tracking and I'll do everything Ican to get that to you promptly.
I know that's the kindof message I give them.
(18:18):
And sometimes they're like,okay, thanks for letting me know.
Other times they're like,that's unacceptable.
I need this.
This is a gift for somebody.
I needed it by the state now, and I'llsay, okay, I'm thinking why didn't
you say that to me ahead of time?
Or why didn't you reach outto me before you bought it and
say, I'm buying this as a gift.
Is there any way that you can ship thisthe next day or as quickly as possible?
The other thing that I encounter a lotof times is people purchasing something
(18:42):
and then after the fact, Saying thatthey want to have a shipping discount.
Let's say that they buy something.
There are multiple items in one order.
They don't ask me about, andI give shipping discounts.
What I usually say is, Hey, if you'regoing to buy multiple items, please
wait to pay, and then I will give you acombined invoice, but I even have people
who no joke, two or three weeks later.
(19:04):
Okay.
After they've purchased it afterI've long after I've sent it,
it's not even in my mind anymore.
They'll come back and say,Hey, I really want a shipping.
Discount.
I want you to reduce my shippingbecause I bought multiple items.
And in that case, I'm just like yeah, Ican't, I'm not really going to do that.
This is already fulfilled.
Is there a mechanism to do that?
I can.
(19:25):
Oh, you could.
About any given time I can goin and I can initiate a. A full
refund or a partial refund.
Ah, I see.
So it'd be a refund, not a discount inthe sense of when they paid, you give
them 5 percent off or 10 percent off.
Do you actually have tosubmit a refund to that?
I will submit a partial refund.
And as a part of that process, itwill, the system will ask you what's
(19:47):
the reason for the refund and youcan give, it has multiple options.
It could say something like,one's just says other adjustment.
That's basically saying, ahhhh,I'm not going to tell you why
I'm just giving them a refund.
Shipping discount is one of the options.
And that's what I would select.
In that case, the problem that I'vefound, and I only discovered this recently
(20:08):
is that if someone buys, let's sayfour items from you and they pay them.
They pay for all of them individually.
They don't wait for you to combinethe shipping, meaning that they
would all go in the same orderand have the same tracking, and I
would send them the same package.
If they buy four different items.
And I want to send them together.
I can only add tracking to one item,one transaction, because the other
(20:30):
three are going in that same package.
And eBay system won't allow you to put thesame tracking number on multiple items.
So from eBay's perspective in theirsystem, it looks as though I've
only shipped one item and that threeitems are outstanding, that I have
not fulfilled that transaction.
And.
I've been selling since 2000 on eBay.
So 25 years I've been selling.
(20:52):
I just, I was just told thisby someone within eBay for
the last, in the last month.
So I don't know if this has alwaysbeen true or if I'm just now hearing
this, but I've never had a problemwith this, but recently I had some hold
restrictions on an account that I had todo a bunch of legwork to try to resolve.
And through that process,I w I discovered that.
If you have a situation like thatwhere you have few items that don't
(21:14):
have tracking assigned even if you'vesent them in a total package that the
eBay system will, they can put holdsand restrictions on your account.
Because they, from the account, fromthe system looking at your account,
it appears as though you're notfulfilling orders that you're supposed
to, and that they're outstanding.
Wait a second.
Wait, is this the reason why youwent through so much grief lately?
(21:37):
That is one, one of thethings that I discovered.
Okay, so wait a second.
This is my, I'm like, Igot so many questions.
Yeah.
I literally have so manyquestions I can't even think.
Number one is.
eBay has been doing this forever.
Amazon does this all the time.
They'll ship, in one box andyou'll get all in one box, but
you'll get separate orders.
(21:58):
Why can't eBay do that?
There is a way, but I like to bethe one who decides how much of a
discount I'm going to give on an order.
Because if I have, let's saythat I have one item, it's small
and I know it's going to cost.
Maybe 4.
90 to ship.
Yeah.
(22:18):
Right?
That's just what it's gonna cost.
And then a person buys four items,but they're all the same size.
And I know that the weight of all ofthose, it isn't gonna be any more than 5.
I can ship all of that for 5.
There's no reason why I should chargethem 5 per item, because they're facing
20 in shipping if they bought four, right?
Unless I discount that.
(22:40):
So I want to be able to get onthere and give them a discount.
I want to reduce that down to 5, butthere's also a time when let's say
I have four items for a dollar 99each and, or three items, and it's
a dollar 99 each and it's six bucks.
I can only give them a dollar.
I can't reduce that by.
50 percent because then I would losemoney on shipping and the system is
(23:03):
not necessarily going to know thatto do that automatically for me.
So I want to be able to makethat decision, but I'm finding,
I've just found out that.
If a person preemptively pays and doesn'tgive me the chance to send them a combined
invoice Then I have a potential problem.
My only way of resolving that now isto go ahead and fulfill every item
(23:25):
individually so that every item hasan individual tracking number and
then I have to go in after the factand send them a Partial discount a
partial refund as a shipping discount.
It's more legwork for me.
It's annoying But if I don't do that Icould potentially face restrictions on
my account because the system thinksthat I haven't shipped those other items.
So it's super annoying.
(23:45):
I don't know exactly why they do that, butI've never had issues until now, 25 years.
So either that's a change or it justsomehow I've never faced the negative
consequences of that happening,within my account until now.
It is amazing to me, especially.
With how much AI is involvedwith everything now, that
(24:07):
is not a box tick on eBay.
It is not hard to create asystem that would do that.
It's just not, it's,we're not talking about.
Cold fusion here.
We're talking about keeping track witha computer and having an algorithm to
set it's a mate that blows my mind Iused to have some automated shipping
discount things set up in my storeBut I found that by doing that the
(24:29):
eBay system was incorrect too oftenMeaning they would discount it and too
much and then the shipping it wasn'taccurate You see what I'm saying?
But yeah, I ship these little itemsA hundred orders a week, a thing.
Even when I'm out looking at thingsto source, I know exactly how much
it's going to cost to ship it.
(24:49):
Before I even buy it, I already knowbecause of the size and the weight, I know
it better than the eBay system knows it,even though they're connected to, the U.
S. Postal Service, I buy all of mylabels through eBay, and it does give
me a discount by doing that because theyhave some sort of arrangement with the
U. S. Postal Service that if you buyit through eBay, it's cheaper than if
(25:10):
you just take it into the post office.
But taking this full circle, a lot oftimes the issues I have are pretty simple
when people come and I have a difficult,quote unquote, a difficult person.
Most people aren't difficult.
Most people are just looking forinformation or wanting updates from me.
And that's easy.
I, hey, sometimes I buy things.
And it takes a week to ship and Ireach out and just say, Hey there,
(25:32):
I'm just checking to see I see thatthe label was created, but it hasn't.
That's another thing that sometimespeople will do to buy them more time to
ship something, is that if you createthe label, if you purchase the label
through eBay, it shows as shipped.
It hasn't actually been shipped yet.
It's not actually shipped and intransit until it's at the post office
and some post office representativescans it into their system.
(25:56):
So sometimes you could buy somethingand maybe immediately that day.
It shows it's shipped, a tracking numberis added, then you wait five days and you
look at it and it says awaiting pickupfrom postal service or awaiting drop off.
That means that they've createdthe label, but they've not
taken it to the post office yet.
And that bought them time.
It looks like they're workingon it, but they're not.
(26:18):
And so in that case, I reachout and just say, Hey, I can
tell you created the label.
It hasn't been dropped offat the post office yet.
Can you give me a timetable on whenthat's going to, and it's going to happen?
And I, it's, I think it's a fair question.
If people ask me that,it's a fair question.
I need to give them a respectfulresponse and be prompt about it.
That's just one of those partsabout trying to run a good business
and something that people cantrust so that they come back and
(26:41):
that you can have repeat buyers.
A thing.
Can I posit a conspiracy theorythat I'm sure is absolutely wrong,
but just whether I want you to ornot, I think you're about to do it.
It seems to me that.
Ebay is more interested in the parttime seller, i. e. Somebody who's just
selling once a year, twice a year.
They must know because they have all thedata that they make more money off of
(27:05):
those people than they do off of you.
Because it, it doesn't, the fact thatthey don't have these multiple tracking
numbers and the systems in place.
Now I could be wrong.
It could just be the waythat it's just, I don't know.
They haven't invested in this, whatever.
But it seems crazy to me to thinkthat a massive shipping company.
Does not have a better systemin place for people like you.
(27:26):
That just seems something's weird.
It can't be that they make more money fromsomeone who sells less volume, because
if things continue this year, as theyhave so far in this first quarter, I'm
going to do somewhere around a quarterof a million dollars in gross sales
on eBay this year with that volume ofsales, eBay is going to make somewhere.
(27:48):
The U. S. Postal Service, letme put it this way, will earn
somewhere around 25, from me.
And eBay takes 13.
5%, so whatever 13.
5 percent is of 250, 000 iswhat eBay is going to earn
from me using their platform.
And that's not including the monthlypayments, I pay them a subscription fees.
(28:08):
It's also not including any other feesthat I would incur if say there were
restrictions on my account for somereason, because if you don't follow their
kind of baseline protocols, or if youdon't keep your metrics at a certain level
and you go below standard on your store.
They have punitive measures inplace where they will take a
(28:30):
higher percentage of your sale.
And this is here.
I'm going to, I'm just goingto make one tiny complaint.
This is what eBay will do.
And there's a number of reasons whyyou're, and it's not necessarily could
be your fault, but there are a numberof metrics and reasons why your account
could fall below a certain point.
It could simply be becauseyou have a higher number of
(28:50):
returns in a particular month.
And they may all be stupid returns.
Like I just didn't like it, whichyou're not even supposed to be able to
return something if you just don't likeit, but eBay allows that to happen.
If a bunch of people return something ina month, it could make your stats drop
to the point where you're below standard.
And, they don't review thatuntil once about every month.
(29:11):
So for the next 30 days, if it hitsthat point, anything that you sell, they
can take a higher fee from your sales.
And the only way that you can improveyour store is by continuing to sell
more items so that the percentage Ofitems that sold or the percentage of
transactions bring you back above thatbaseline that you need to get above.
(29:33):
So they force you to sell moreitems to get back to above standard.
Every one of those items that you sell,they take a higher percentage fee from.
So you're being punished essentially, orsomething that may not even be your fault.
And it may be, this is one of thereasons I have multiple eBay stores.
(29:53):
If they put a restriction onmy account, I don't like that.
The last thing I'm going to do is sella bunch more items on there so that
you can take more of my money, eBay.
That's ridiculous.
I'm going to start selling on one ofmy other stores more, and I'm just
going to let that one ride untilit naturally comes back up above.
I'm not going to sell, why am I goingto be incentivized to sell more items
(30:15):
for you to take more of my money?
That's ridiculous.
You know what I'm saying?
It's, I don't know, it's a dumb thing.
I don't like that, but that is ameasure that they have in place.
I just don't understand how amulti billion dollar company That's
been in business for a long time.
That sort of started the platform ina sense has these policies in place
that I would love to, I know it's nevergoing to happen, but man, would I love
(30:38):
to have an eBay analyst on to talkabout what's your thinking on this?
If they had to tell a truth serumwhere they had to tell you the truth.
Exactly.
The more that you sell, the moremoney you can earn, that's obvious,
but the more transactions you do, themore complicated the process becomes
and the more problems you encounter.
(30:59):
Statistically, the more you sell, themore people come and try to rip you off.
More people try to defraud you.
More chances and potentialfor your store to have holds
and restrictions put on them.
So it's actually more idealfor a part time seller.
To sell an eBay because yeah, youdon't make as much money, but also
you don't have to deal with as muchas the complications and the problems
(31:21):
that you can encounter with thesystem when you're not doing it.
So it's a bummer.
I, and we've already talkedat length about how eBay
primarily supports the buyer.
In transaction disputes overthe seller, which also is
really frustrating for a seller.
I also buy an eBay, but I do waymore selling than I do buying.
(31:42):
And so if there are disputes andtransactions in a transaction, I am
way less likely to win that regardlessof what it is, because, and that's
again, the reason why I need to be asrespectful as possible, my communication.
I need to reach out to eBay as fastas possible because I am going to be
in a better position to potentially.
Have that case cited in my favor.
(32:03):
If I'm being preemptive andcommunicative with both the buyer
and with eBay about that dispute.
It strikes me, not just with eBay,but with lots of these companies
where there really needs to bedifferent level or tiers of customer.
Like I do, I was mentioningthat software that I use.
I am pretty sure that I'm inthe top 5 percent of people that
(32:26):
use the software in terms of theamount of time in the software.
So it feels like there should be a tier.
This is, Oh, this guy's clearly been doingthis for a long, he knows about this.
We're going to ratchet him up to a level.
Whatever.
Same thing with eBay.
It seems like, Matt's been selling fora long time and they know the data.
I just don't understand why itdoesn't make sense for them to
(32:50):
care more about you than, not caremore, you know what I'm saying.
Here's what I think.
One thing I thought for a long timeis that There should be a monetary
threshold, I believe, for a seller, thatif you sell at that mark or above, you
should have a direct phone number toone person, a customer service person
that is your customer service agent.
You don't have to go through theridiculous stuff on their system to
(33:12):
just get a hold of somebody to talk.
If, I don't know what it is, 100, 000,whatever it is, you should have direct
access to a customer service person.
Because, okay, so if you sell 100,000, Thirteen and a half thousand
dollars of that goes to eBay.
They take thirteen and ahalf percent on average.
How many people could one customerservice agent represent, do you think?
(33:33):
Like how often would I have to call in?
You know what I mean?
Like maybe once a month?
They could have dozens, maybe ahundred different people that they
represent and that's one full time job.
And if every single person theyrepresent is thirteen and a half
thousand dollars that eBay made.
Ebay could have two, three, 400,000 of earnings, and they only have
to employ one person to be thatcustomer service agent and what are
(33:56):
they paying them 40, 50 grand a year?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It monetarily should make sense.
And yet they don't do that.
And that's really aggravating.
There's got to be a reason.
And I imagine that not, we won't get intolate stage capitalism here, but I got to
imagine to some degree that eBay knowsthat can do this without, and it knows
(34:17):
that it can, because they're not dumb.
They're obviously been inbusiness for a long time.
People that work for eBay and the, inthe C suite level understand the process.
They simply, perhaps.
It's about stock value.
Who knows?
If they make it easier,they will have more calls.
I think it's that simple.
If they give you direct access,you will take advantage of it.
(34:39):
And they don't want you to take advantageof it because the more advantage you
take of their customer service, the morethey're going to be on the hook for having
to resolve things and pay out stuff.
Then limit it to five a month.
Oh, for sure.
Limited to five a month.
There's a way to do this.
There should be.
You know what?
I didn't even know if we couldget through the whole show.
We're already, we're not even at the pointwhere we've talked about what's sold.
(34:59):
I know.
But I do want to, one last thoughtis, were all the packages that are
lost by the USPS, I imagine they endup in like the land of misfit toys.
Oh, sure.
Where there's some weird USPS.
Mythical creature that hordesthese treasures because they
got to end up somewhere.
Where do they end up anyway?
I mean there's enough of themfor them to have a king lion
with wings on the island, right?
(35:19):
Like how that's how he's financedis all of those lost usps packages.
Yeah, he's got his wings.
Those wings don't come cheapYeah, what's his name King?
I can't remember it.
I don't remember but yeah, I do knowit's funny every year We watch that
we're gonna talk about The customer sideof this on a later show, because we've
run up against time, but I did wantto talk about what you sold this week.
(35:41):
I know you've got a lot ofstuff, so let's do that now.
As we close out the show,what did you sell this week?
Wonderful.
Yeah.
Several things.
I'm a little slow to getting themfulfilled because I'm healing
from my recent medical issue.
And so I've put my store onpause, meaning I can still list
items, but I'm not obligated toship them until the end of my.
Time away is what they call it timeaway from the store, but I did pull
(36:03):
a few things up here I'm going toshow you four different orders one.
Well, two of them involve pocket knives.
And so this is like a great Exampleof the types of things I love to sell
something that's small can fit in yourpocket and it's pretty highly collectible
They talk about sell through rates Whichis the percentage of items that sell
in a particular category any nine every90 days and the higher the sell through
(36:26):
rate the higher percentage of the thingsthat sell Means just the more collectible
it is and the more valuable and themore that the public wants that item.
So this is a little old pocket knife.
It's probably from the 1950s or 1960s.
The blades are rusted.
I don't even know the brand becauseit's so rusted I can't actually see it.
Usually it's down by the,right at the bottom of where
(36:47):
the folding knife pops out.
It could be cleaned up.
The blades are in decentcondition, even for its age.
It involve like the handle is antler.
So like a deer antler, it's beencarved and put in as a piece
of metal along with the metal.
It's very typical of pocketknives from that age, this sold.
For 24.
That's pretty good.
(37:08):
This is actually something thatsomeone gave me to sell for them.
So I didn't pay for it, but this isthe kind of thing that I would have
paid up to three to 5 for if I saw itat a thrift store or an antique store.
Another lot is similar to pocket knives.
One has two blades, the other one has one.
And in this case, I do see the brand.
So those are visible on here.
One is probably.
(37:28):
Within the last decade or two.
The other one is they're bothwouldn't handle with metal.
The other one has a number on it too.
So that would be like a model number.
So there's, there are a lot of peopleout there who collect, there are a
lot of collectible pocket knives.
Almost every lot of pocketknives or evenindividual pocketknife I put up sells
within a month typically so they'rereally good So these two sold for 22.
(37:51):
So not as high but they're alsonot super Collectible or uncommon.
What brands are they?
So one is Valor V A L O RIt's the Supersport model.
That's the newer one.
And then another one is a universal.
It says L, F, and C. Thatwould be, the initials for
whatever the company brand is.
And the model number is 2247.
(38:13):
I don't know what that brand is.
I looked it up initially,but I don't remember off the
top of my head what it was.
I put it in a lot because if aknife doesn't seem like it's worth
more than 10 bucks or so, I'm notgoing to sell it individually.
I want more money out of that.
So I'm going to put it with asmall lot so that it just doesn't
make sense time wise for me to bejust shipping a bunch of 10 items.
(38:35):
So that's why I put it in there.
The next couple of items arealso in the same category.
They are these little bracelets.
And they are antique.
This is from like thelate 1800s, early 1900s.
The end of them almost lookslike clasps that would be on
a pocket watch chain or fob.
And they are what appear tobe just like twisted rope.
(38:56):
And then in the center they have alittle gold filled piece as well.
And to people who don't know aboutmourning jewelry, and I don't mean
like the mourning when you getup, but I mean mourning the loss
of someone who has passed away.
In the Victorian times.
There was a lot of jewelry that was madeto be worn by people who had lost a loved
(39:16):
one and it was very common for peopleto wear jewelry that involved a piece of
that person, like literally a piece ofthat person, and in this case, it's hair.
The, what looked to be twistedrope, Is actually someone's hair.
Oh my goodness.
And this was so common in fact that Youdidn't even have to send this off I mean
(39:36):
in some cases you would send the hairyou would the coroner or someone Who was
present when the person passed away wouldcut As much hair off as they felt like
they needed before they were taken to beburied and they would either send it off
to a company that did this or you couldpurchase kits where these metal pieces
came and then there was instructionson how to weave this or create this so
(40:00):
people in their own homes would taketheir, let's say a woman's husband died.
She would take his hair and she wouldsit there like she was knitting something
and she would make this bracelet or thisnecklace and then she would wear it.
There are even rings that have hairaround the ring, gold rings, solid
gold rings, but they incorporate hair.
A lot of times there'll be lockets that onone side of the locket, as like a pendant,
(40:23):
it'll have the person's photograph andon the other side, a lock of their hair.
This was very common.
They wore this around.
It's not culturally normal oracceptable today for people to do that.
People find it very creepy and grossand weird, but at that time it was
a way for them to remember them.
It was a way for them to mourn that loss.
(40:45):
And that was just a thing that people did.
So these two both sold.
They sold for about seven one sold for 70.
The other one sold for 75.
These are gold filled pieces ofmetal Some people buy these to
collect them some people buy themand if it's solid gold, they just
harvest the gold and melt it Mm hmm.
People aren't really buying them to wear.
I don't think these days do theyknow that they're haunted Matt?
(41:08):
Well, that actually would explainsome of the weird noises around
the house lately But if you finda piece of mourning jewelry, they
oftentimes incorporated the color black.
So if there are, say, cameos orthings that are black, that's
some usually a mourning jewelry.
If there's a stick pin that has agateor a dark black stone, that was probably
(41:28):
worn as a mourning jewelry piece.
And, like I said, you can find rings,brooches, pins, pendants, all of that.
If you ever find something like that,though, you should test it because
There are things in solid 1418 22karat gold, cameos and things that
are around glass around the hair.
They can have value in thegold, not just historical value.
(41:48):
The last thing I'm going toshow is a lot of, I would call
them semi precious gemstones.
This is a combination of roughcut gemstones that may or may not
have holes drilled through them.
For people who make jewelry.
Others are very rough, meaning they'vejust been pulled out of the ground and
they are, there's something that you couldcut or use in jewelry, but they've not
(42:11):
been, things have been done to them yet.
And then there are even facetcut gemstones in this lot.
I say semi precious.
We're talking about things like.
Turquoise, malachite, what do wegot in here, agate, amethyst we've
got some North Carolina rubies thatI've, I personally found, while out,
and so this lot, whenever I havethese, I collect, no I don't collect,
(42:34):
I acquire and sell periodically.
gemstones from high value, largerdiamonds and sapphires, rubies,
things like that, emeralds, all theway down to these lower quality ones
and things that are lower value.
I'll put in a lot like this and sell.
So this was on auction for seven days.
It sold for 250.
This is decent, butthat's certainly worth it.
If you're a jeweler and you want to getsome authentic stones to put into jewelry.
(42:58):
This is the way a lot of people do that.
Amateur jewelers and things.
So it's great.
I can move some of that stuff, buthigher quality things, facet cut
gemstones that you could immediatelyput in a ring or something like that.
I'll try to sell those individually.
I'll put the carat weight.
I'll give them the millimeter diameter.
And give as much information as possible.
But with this, it was just photographs.
Hey, this lot includesthis variety of things.
(43:21):
Just look at the picturesto see what you're getting.
Cool.
That's awesome.
I was thinking about, that's justone more example of where you collect
these things and put them in a lot.
Yeah.
And probably you've already made yourmoney back from the original purchase.
I have.
Most of these, exactly.
Most of these came in like rock ormineral collections that I purchased.
And have sold off in parts.
I wait till I have a decent amountthat I want to put in a lot together.
(43:44):
Otherwise, I'm selling themindividually, but it all depends.
I wasn't real concerned abouthow much I made in this.
These aren't terribly valuable.
I was happy with that sale.
But, all in all, probably 50 to 60was what was in this, and likely I
have nothing in it by this, at thispoint, because I've sold enough from
those other lots that they came into where all my money is back to me.
(44:05):
Well, We are out of time, so I will say,remember to follow, like, subscribe,
write a review if you get a chance.
Any last words, Matt, forus before we head out?
Yeah, don't get a hernia,because they are not pleasant.
Yes, and Matt, please heal quickly.
That's right.
(44:25):
And we will be, we will pick up wherewe left off on difficult customers.
But we obviously, we just, the firstpart was so much that we ran out of time.
So anyway, we will be back witha brand new show next week.
We hope everybody has a great week.
Please send us an email andlet us know what's going on.
Otherwise have a great day.
Take care, everyone.
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