Matt is off in Jolly Old England for a couple of more days so we decided since it is summer and all that we would release an early episode.
In this episode of the What Sold podcast, hosts Brandon and Matt delve into the intricacies of the reselling business, sharing personal experiences and valuable insights. They explore how to identify treasures in thrift stores, the dynamics of the reselling market, and the importance of reputation. Matt, a full-time reseller, shares his mixed experiences with platforms like eBay, highlighting both the benefits and the pitfalls. The discussion covers scenarios ranging from eBay's authenticity checks to the challenges of customer disputes. The episode also touches on other selling platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Etsy, offering a well-rounded view of modern reselling. Listeners are encouraged to share their own experiences and questions, fostering a community of shared knowledge and support. 00:00 Introduction to Thrift Store Treasures 00:31 Meet the Hosts: Brandon and Matt 01:49 The Life of a Full-Time Reseller 02:37 Challenges and Misconceptions in Reselling 04:59 The Importance of Reputation 08:26 Navigating eBay as a Seller 12:18 eBay's Authentication Issues 19:20 Dealing with eBay's Customer Service 27:57 Exploring Other Selling Platforms 32:01 Conclusion and Listener Engagement The What Sold Podcast Subreddit #sellingonebay #vintage #whatsoldpodcast #rustythereseller #whatsold #reselling #ebaystoreRusty 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.
(00:08):
Every single day, people takeunwanted or unused items to thrift
and antique stores across the country.
But as the saying goes, one man'strash is another man's treasure,
and we're here to prove it.
Identify valuable thingsbefore you throw them away.
Join us as we show and tell oftreasures found and sold by a full time
reseller, with the hopes of helpingyou find some treasures of your own.
(00:31):
Welcome to the What's Sold Podcast.
Welcome back to the what's old podcast.
Again, my name is Brandon herewith my good friend, Matt.
Hello.
Good to see you, Matt.
How's your week been going?
Week has been good.
You know, it's always, and you'rein the same boat with small kids.
You never know what's going to happen.
(00:53):
You have plans for what's going to happenin the week, and then, you know, your
daughter comes in the middle of thenight, my stomach hurts, hours later of no
sleep, she's throwing up, and you're like,okay, that changes the next day or two.
So, we had that earlier in, I guess, lastweek, or a little bit through the weekend,
and here we are, sort of mid week.
You, you know, I think I know whatI'm doing the rest of the week, but
(01:14):
I don't, I can't predict the future.
Oh no.
Hey, wait Matt, you could have olderkids and then your wife decides to
get an eight month old medicallyfragile baby into your house.
Sure.
And then, then the whole worldtilts on its axis again, so.
That's where we are.
It's like a giant poop storm in our house,but hey man, I'm, I'm, we're ready to go.
Let's do this.
Well, that has nothingto do with the baby.
(01:34):
Let's be honest.
This is partly you.
That's true.
That's true.
Mostly me.
But partly baby, mostly me.
Anyway we'll stay awayfrom the fecal talk, Matt.
Let's let's talk what's sold andagain, tell us what we're going
to be talking about today on theshow and then we'll launch into it.
Yeah.
For those who are just tuning in maybefirst time, I, I'm a full time reseller.
I don't exactly love thatterm, but that is what I do.
(01:56):
I take things.
Wait, wait, what didyou, what do you prefer?
I don't know.
One's ever asked me that.
I guess I just don't like that termbecause it, it somehow makes you sound.
Listen, if you go to a store andyou buy, like, let's say I go to
a guitar center in a nearby town.
There are going to be new products inthere, but there are also going to be.
(02:17):
Things that have beentraded in, they sell.
Nobody thinks of GuitarCenter as a resale shop.
They're not doing anything,and lots of places don't do
anything differently than I do.
They get, I, they have maybe differentways of obtaining their product than I
do, but they're getting something that'sused, and they're turning around and
selling it for more than they got it for.
That's what I do.
I just do it.
(02:37):
Individually from my own home, but Idon't have a storefront and I don't
have that overhead that they havethe Negative connotation that sort of
surrounds the world of people doingwhat I do as individuals is pretty
negative Generally speaking I havefound sadly and that's why I don't like
that because I don't like being lumpedinto This grouping of people that maybe
(02:58):
are behaving in ways that Other peopledon't like and that's essentially it.
I don't know.
I'm a merchant, you know, people beingmerchants buying and selling has been
happening since the dawn of mankind.
It's not a new idea.
It's not something I came up with.
It's not even new in the last few decades.
But for whatever reason, there's been a, Ithink it's because of COVID and, and other
(03:21):
things happening economically, at leastin our country, that has caused a gigantic
increase in the number of people doing it.
Individually found thatthey can make money.
They don't have to rely ongoing out to stores to do it.
But with that, the good, the goodand the bad come with that, right?
When, when things jump up dramaticallyin a very short amount of time, it
doesn't give people a chance to.
(03:42):
Adjust their expectations and knowkind of what that's like, and people
distrust it, all of those things.
We could do an entirepodcast on, on just that.
Oh, yeah, I think a lot of peoplewhen they think about that,
they think used car salesman.
You're buying a used car and they've runback to, I mean, they're, they're the,
(04:02):
yeah, watch out for this person, right?
The problem with the secondary marketis that you can get people that are
shady, which ruins the reputation forpeople that like you that are not shady.
So that's, I'm going to call you.
A secondary market merchant.
There you go.
I mean, the, the eBay store I operateoff of is called the modern day merchant.
And that's, that's how I view myself.
(04:23):
I am not that being a merchant is a newidea, but the idea of obtaining things
in your community and selling them.
On the internet to someone in anothercountry within a day or two That
hasn't been possible until the lastfew years if you look at historically
speaking It's a very very new concept.
I am I am a merchant, but i'm doingit in modern times So, I mean I you
(04:48):
can call me, you know, the the thesail commander You're like a tinker.
You could call me the the king of Idunno, something that's regal and has
prestige The king of the secondary market?
Yeah, exactly.
Well, ultimately what we're talkingabout, though, is reputation.
For sure.
I think about my mechanic, which is, he'sthe greatest mechanic I've ever known.
I've been really fortunate inmy life to have found mechanics,
(05:11):
and it's always word of mouth.
But I've talked to him about it.
He it's like the reputationof a mechanic is critical.
If they have a good reputationas honest and fair, they can,
there's, there's no way they, theycould ever have not enough work.
They just, he is busy all the time.
And it's because people go, Hey,that guy, Bobby at Monte thought a
little shout out to my boy, Bobbyboom, always takes care of you.
(05:34):
And he's the kind of guy.
And we always hear this from people.
They're like, yeah, I looked at it.
You know what?
You could fix this, but it'sprobably not worth it right now.
Okay.
Let's not do that.
And the same thing with you, if yousell something, and I think eBay
is sort of, we're going to talkabout eBay today, I think, right?
We are.
Yes.
Yeah.
So on eBay, they sort of forcedthe issue because they're like, the
customer has all the control and, ormost of the control, I should say.
(05:57):
So they're forcing you to be honest.
If you, a cruddy good.
eBay's going to get you.
So reputation, I mean, we could do a wholeshow and we should on reputation alone
and how important it is in any business,but especially the kind of work you're
doing, it's the most important thing.
In fact, you know, years ago, I, Idon't know, I was at some sort of talk.
And they, they ask, like, what is themost important thing to you in your life?
(06:19):
And everyone is saying thingslike, my spouse, my children,
you know, my pet, or my home.
Or, you know, you had lots of things.
Nobody said reputation.
They said, I want you toconsider that reputation is the
most important thing to you.
Because, all of those things thatyou mentioned, that the people
mentioned are very important.
But you consider, if tomorrow,somebody accused you of something,
(06:41):
and everyone believed it, includingyour family, And all of a sudden
your reputation is heavily tarnished.
That, that permeatesevery aspect of your life.
Right.
And it's, it's very difficultto recover from that.
And I, I try to operate my businesswith as much integrity as possible.
But even when you do that, when you'reinteracting with people, you, you
(07:02):
still have to defend yourself at times.
You will be accused.
I have been accused ofthings I haven't done.
And I have to tread lightly becauseI operate a lot in my community.
I visit the same places.
For If I go in a store and someone says,Hey, you stole from me, all of us, whether
it's true or not, if they stick to it,I've just lost a sourcing location, which
(07:24):
is a big deal for me and my business.
And so you have to tread lightlyand you, you do your best.
I do my best, you know?
Yeah.
And I think that's a real, a really,really good point for anybody out
there listening is that protecting.
That it might take a little bit of extrawork or a lot of extra work to protect
that reputation, but your reputation,you're only really as good as your
(07:45):
reputation, especially when you get intothings like a secondary markets or car.
Like if you're a carsalesman and you're shady.
You know, the challenge there is that notpeople don't buy cars like they share in
the reseller market per se, like everyother week or something, but you see
those car salesmen that are really, reallywell respected, have a good reputation.
(08:06):
People go back to them every time.
I would much rather pay moremoney to somebody I trusted.
Who's going to tell me the truth.
That somebody is going to giveme a slightly better deal.
And that goes for every industry,contractors, everything.
Then if I'm going to save a few dollars,but I'm going to lose in the long run.
So reputation for sureis absolutely paramount.
That's an okay segue.
(08:26):
I think into these platforms, we'regoing to talk about today that I, I,
or, you know, avenues through whichI attempt to sell items that I get
the primary one being eBay, but we'llalso talk about other, other sites
like Etsy, you know, Possibly Facebookmarketplace that kind of thing.
So yeah, so let's let's get intothat Yeah, the the primary spot
(08:49):
that I Sell my items is eBay.
The reason for that is There are severalreasons, but the primary reason is that
they bring in the the most Potentialbuyers to their platform of any platform
that does that offers that service andit's not even close the second place is is
(09:11):
Way less than half of the number of peoplethat are coming to the platform to look to
purchase things So that's the number onereason I can sell to people not only in
my state my country But around the worldif I opt to you don't have to sell things
to internationally But you certainly canand eBay has some some kind of platform
Procedures set up around internationalsales where they kind of do a little work
(09:35):
in the, in the, in the middle of thatprocess that kind of helps the sellers.
But I do that.
I've been selling oneBay since about 2000.
So, you know, 24, 24 years, I've notbeen doing it full time since then.
I've only been doing it full time forabout the last four years, but you
know, that as you, it's a dynamic world.
The, the platform has changed a lotfor better in some ways for, you
(09:59):
know, for the worse in others, but Iwas I'm familiar with the platform.
It's pretty intuitive.
They still make changes every yearbased on what they're seeing, but
I have found a way to carve outa full time income by selling.
I could use them exclusively and Iwould, I would be able to pay my bills.
I don't use them exclusively, andwe'll get into that in a few minutes,
(10:22):
mainly because I don't want to haveall my, you know, eggs in one basket.
If something happens, it's a, youknow, I'm paying them with proceeds
from my sales, and I'm also payingthem a monthly subscription fee to
list a certain number of items forfree per month, that sort of thing.
So it's a service they provide, it's aplatform, they allow me to sell on their
platform, and I pay them for that service.
(10:42):
However, that service, not onlydoes it come at a price, but
I don't have a lot of control.
Like they set up the policies andprocedures for how I'm supposed to
interact with that site and how I'msupposed to interact with potential
customers or other sellers, because I'ma buyer as well as a seller on eBay.
So it's a good site to you.
It has been a good site for me.
(11:04):
It comes with downsides as well, becauseas you sort of alluded to before.
eBay heavily sides on the, on buyers.
So if there's ever a conflict orthere's a, something happens and they're
taking two people's points of view or,or information about what happened.
You know, nine times out of10, they're going to side with
the buyer and not the seller.
(11:25):
It's odd to me because they make theirmoney from the proceeds of a sale of
an item that was sold by the seller.
So, but they have their ownreasons for, for doing it that way.
And you said, I want to weed out peoplewho try to scam you, who are, who are
trying to be dishonest or manipulate.
Well, right.
Because ultimately that's great thatyou're on there and you're selling
(11:47):
correct, because if that's not there, butat the end of the day, if the customer
says, well, I can't trust anythingon eBay, I'm not going to come there.
There is no business.
There is nobody to sell to.
So you could kind of understand thereason why I don't, I've had a really
bad experience personally, justas a personal seller that I had no
idea about eBay and how it worked.
(12:08):
And you're going to explain that.
But I was flummoxed when I sent thisthing that worked perfectly well,
the person said, Oh, it didn't work.
And then I had to send their money back.
And I was like, wait, what?
Why would I have to say you'rejust because you couldn't
figure it out means I have to.
Eat it, but that's the deal.
Yeah, I have lost, and I do mean lost,just evaporated, probably two or three
(12:31):
thousand dollars in the last threeyears from some, some bad situations
on eBay where, like in one case, soif you sell shoes on eBay, and I can't
remember what the monetary thresholdis today, I think it's around 200, but
if you sell a pair of shoes for lessthan 200, When you go to fulfill that
order and you send it, you're sending itdirectly to the buyer, like most things.
(12:53):
However, if shoes are above thatthreshold, and again, that may have
changed, but, it goes to a third partythat eBay contracts with to do quote
unquote, Authentication services for them.
So what happens is if I sell you a pair ofshoes for 201, it's a pair of Nike Jordan
(13:15):
1s, and I send them off, I'm not actuallysending them to you, Brandon, I'm sending
them to an address of a third party that'scontracted with eBay, and some worker is
going to open that box, they're going toexamine those shoes, and they're going
to make a determination as to whetheror not They are in fact what I said they
were and that I described them correctly.
(13:36):
You have to have specific typesof pictures that they can look at.
You have to have, everything has to beintact the way that you described it.
And if it is, then they, youknow, quote unquote approve that
and they send it on to the buyer.
If they find some issue and they don'tthink that you were honest or maybe you
were honest, you just didn't providethe information that they require,
(13:57):
They essentially deny that, they boxit up, and they send it back to you.
And they immediately refund the buyer,and then you have to do your own legwork
to figure out what happened here.
So, two things that happened withregard to shoes in the last four years.
One was, I had a pair of Jordan 1s, theywere brand new, they were in the box.
(14:17):
I didn't even remove them from theoriginal factory box that said Nike.
I just, I opened it to look in tomake sure it was what it was, it
was the correct size, all of that.
But it was a pair of brand newshoes, they have a hang tag
that has the Jordan logo on it.
Really cool shoes.
I sent them off, theygo to the authenticator.
The authenticator, to my surprise,after about a week, denies.
(14:40):
The sale they immediately refund thebuyer and they send me the shoes back
when I get the shoes and I open them.
I'm obviously I'm thinking what inthe world could have been wrong here
because I didn't even remove them fromthe original boxes or everything when
I get them back and I look at them.
I find that the hang tag is missing.
Now the hang tag was in there.
I saw it before I sent it.
(15:02):
So I contact eBay and I say,hey, this is the situation.
They say, well, it was denied becausethey said, the authenticator said that
some of the item, like the item, thehang tag specifically was not present and
therefore not everything was complete.
And so they wouldn't sign.
I said, hold on a second.
I know that it was complete, Ididn't remove it from the box, I
saw it when I got it, and it wasfrom the, from the factory, from
(15:23):
Nike factory, sent directly to me.
And it, it basically came downto one of two things, either the
worker, in removing those shoes andinspecting them, dropped it, or lost
the tag, or there was theft involved.
Because those tags by themselves, Imean these shoes were probably like
a thousand dollar pair of shoes.
The tag alone is worth 150 to 200.
(15:45):
So if I were just to sell the tag.
So the tag by itself has monetary value.
It's small, it would be easy to pocket.
So, I was either there was negligenceinvolved in the authentication or there
was theft and I proposed those things.
It came down to them sayingessentially, Hey, I know you've been
on this platform for a long time.
You sold lots of the items,but we trust our authenticators
(16:08):
who are not eBay employees.
They are a contracted other company.
So, well, could you have taken apicture of that tag before you sent it?
I could have, and I should have.
However, It wouldn't have matteredbecause it's my word against
the word of an employee orsomeone that eBay contracts with.
And they would again say, well,we trust their word over yours.
(16:30):
And when they make that decision,there's nothing I can do.
So what happened was I got a pair ofshoes sent back to me that are now
worth about 200 less than they werewhen I sent them, because it's now
missing a piece and I cannot sell itin the same way that I sold it before.
I've also lost a good marketfor those shoes because a person
wants to buy them Complete.
They don't want to buythem without the hang tag.
(16:50):
So that was one stinkysituation that happened to me.
Another was a time I sold, on the sameday, two different pairs of shoes to
two different people in the country.
Both of which needed to be authenticated.
Same situation.
They get sent off.
About a week later, I get a messagefrom one of the buyers saying,
Hey, I got the wrong pair of shoes.
(17:12):
And they send me a picture, and it is notthe pair of shoes that was sent to them.
It should have been sent to them.
It was the pair of shoes that was supposedto have been sent to the other buyer.
So, I had to contact and say, Hey, theseboth went to your authentication center.
They didn't know.
I mean, I was speakingwith an eBay manager.
They had no idea what happened.
I was like, You sentthem to the wrong people.
You got them swapped.
(17:33):
You, your authenticator lookedat them and then sent them off
from there to the wrong people.
It was the same day, two separateorders, two separate people.
So the, the downside was the person whocontacted me about receiving the wrong
shoes were the ones who were supposedto receive shoes that were quite a
bit more valuable than the others.
So it was on me to try to contact theother buyer and say, Hey, you know,
(17:57):
Did you happen to get some reallyvaluable Jordan 1s, like 1, 000 shoes,
instead of your 80 or, you know, your200 pair of shoes that you ordered?
And they're like, Oh, yeah,you know, I did get these, but
I'm not in the country now.
I'm in Costa Rica.
So it's going to be reallyhard for me to send these back.
(18:17):
And I go, Well, I'll payyou for the shipping.
According to eBay and people I talkedto, it should take approximately two
weeks and it's going to take about 75.
I'll pay that to get them back.
And then dead silence.
Never heard from him again.
So I contact eBay and I say, Hey,you sent these to the wrong people.
And, essentially, theyThere was no culpability.
There was no Well, youknow, we sent these.
(18:40):
We think we sent them to the right person.
We can't for If, in fact, this otherperson got this person's shoes, we
can't force them to send them back.
So what happened?
They refunded both buyers.
And I did not get either pair ofshoes back because they would not
force, they could not, they said,legally force them to return the item.
And I just lost the money and the items.
(19:01):
But I, what I don't understandabout that is, where, does eBay
just basically say screw you?
Because that sounds likea screw you type thing.
Because they were the onesthat made the mistake, not you.
You can prove they made themistake, so why wouldn't eBay
say to the authenticator,You're on the hook for this.
Yeah, that is an excellent question.
(19:23):
They should, I feel like they shouldhave, there's no answer to that.
Well, the answer is they could acceptresponsibility and pay me out, but they
didn't want to, I guess, because I spokewith multiple managers sometimes when
you run into these situations and youhave multiple calls and you talk with a
manager, they essentially say, Hey, likeI'm the one who makes the final decision.
(19:44):
I'm going to make this decision tonot, you know, to, to enact this course
of action, and I just have to eat it.
So, what I'm trying to say is that,like, this is, this is not common.
This is a rare occurrence.
This has happened three to fourtimes, not these exact occurrences,
but things like this in the course ofthree or four years of working on eBay.
(20:04):
But, one item that it was a separateissue entirely, Was a situation where I
sent them an item, it was very valuableand heavy, cost a lot to ship there,
they said it was missing a couple ofcomponents, it was like a, a piece,
like a device, like a electronic device.
I actually contacted the manufacturerand ordered those additional parts.
And then ship them on my own dime tothat person to try to make things right.
(20:30):
When they got them, they said,yeah, this still isn't what I need.
So I'm going to send the item back.
And I was like, wait, I'vealready paid extra money and
I've sent you these other items.
I went back.
I didn't feel like I should have to accepta return since I was trying to work,
work with them and I had paid additionalmoney at the end of the day, eBay said.
You're going to have to accept thereturn, and we can't force them
(20:53):
to send you the items you alreadypaid for and sent them back either.
So, after about 60 days of going backand forth with eBay and this buyer, I
did receive the item back, which they hadput in an empty box with no packaging.
The item was completely destroyed.
It was about a 1200 item.
So, I was out the money.
I got an item back, but it was entirelydestroyed, so I could not resell it.
(21:15):
And eBay would not refund me the money.
And basically said, you know,everything's done, you got your item
back, they were refunded, we're fine.
So the only way I could salvage thatwas I actually had to deconstruct that
device, take components from it, andtry to sell those components as pieces
that people could use, who needed them,things that had broken on their devices.
(21:36):
And I ended up recoupingabout 40 to 50 percent.
But it was a lot of, a lot of time,a lot of extra work on my part.
So sometimes you don't.
That kind of thing can happen.
Now, a lot of people, maybe like yourself,Brandon, if you had experienced that
early on, if you were not a full timereseller, didn't depend on this type
of work to pay your bills, you wouldsay, forget this, I'm never using this
(21:58):
platform again, and you're not thefirst person that I've heard say that.
And I don't blame you.
I don't blame you.
But for me, I accept that thereare risks involved in this.
I accept that there isgoing to be some loss.
And it's very aggravating to me.
It has not been so aggravating that Ihave completely changed the platform.
Because at the end of the day, withthe number of buyers and the business I
(22:20):
have set up for myself, it still makessense for me to continue using them.
But, you know, it hurts.
It hurts to deal with that sort of thing.
Yeah.
So it strikes me a little bit of, I, youknow, Uber, I never realized this about
Uber, but when you take an Uber cab,there's a rating system for the driver.
A lot of people like, Oh,I give the driver five,
whatever the driver's batting.
(22:41):
There's also a ratingsystem for the passenger.
And if you're a drunken idiotin the cat and that Uber car,
they can rate you really low.
And then Uber drivers will, it happensa lot where Uber drivers will not
come and pick someone up because.
They have a low rating below acertain point because they've had
bad experiences in their journey.
So I, it's kind of interesting to methat, that does eBay have a rating
(23:05):
system for sellers and buyers?
So sellers and buyers can ratea transaction or an interaction
with another person themselves.
So buyers can, every time there'sa transaction, a buyer can rate the
seller, the seller can rate the buyer.
So that can happen, and your rating,particularly for a seller, pops up there
and it will show you, like, their rating.
(23:26):
Now, I do a high volume of items.
I sell between 12, I do between 12and 1500 transactions on eBay, not
individual items, but transactions.
Some of those transactionscould be a hundred items, or a
thousand items in one transaction.
So I do a lot of transactions.
I have a lot of ratings.
I'm not as, first of all, I feel like I doa good job, like I said, I try to operate
(23:49):
with integrity, I try to describe thingswell, I try to get them shipped quickly,
that your shipping speed, all of that israted and, and available for people to
see, so, if I'm getting on as a buyer,and I'm looking at an item, and I want
to go just see, okay, what is the storeabout, you can see what their Take care.
What their rating is.
Is it 100%?
Is it 90%?
Is it 75%?
(24:10):
If you start to dip below a certainthresholds in these criteria
that eBay have set up, they willstart to, it will start to affect
your store in a monetary way.
If you start having low ratings andyou're not shipping things off in
time, eBay will actually start takinga higher percentage of a fee when you
sell a transaction, sell something.
(24:30):
Yeah.
So like right now it's13 and a half percent.
That could jump up five to 10 percentmore that I will have to pay eBay if
they feel like I'm not operating mystore at standards that they've set up.
So they incentivize, I don't knowif you would call it an incentive
or a dis incentive, but they, theyhave some of those metrics in place.
(24:50):
So that they can try to keep the levelof, I don't know what you would say,
like a high standard for their sellersso that people can buy with confidence.
Because like you said,it's all about confidence.
Where they want more and morepeople to come to their platform.
If they have people leaving theirplatform, then that, that, that hurts
their bottom line, their investors thatthey, I mean they're a, I don't know if
(25:12):
they're a fortune 500 company, but it'scertainly a publicly traded company.
Oh, yeah.
So yeah, they, they want youto do, do what you say you're
going to do on this platform.
Well, Peter Thiel are notgoing broke anytime soon, and
they created the platform.
So it is interesting.
I was just thinking, I think theindividual seller guy, a person like
me that doesn't sell all the time.
(25:34):
I did catch you when callingyourself a reseller, I'd like to
call you a merchant, but thank you.
Force of habit is you, again,we talk about this a lot on this
show about business calculus.
You would look at this and say,okay, so let's say I sold a hundred.
This for a round number, a hundredthousand dollars worth of material
throughout the course of the year.
Mm-Hmm . And of that a hundred thousanddollars a point, 1% of 1% is lost.
(25:55):
Let's see.
I don't know, a thousand dollars, right?
Or whatever, make, make it simple.
You would have to look atthat and say, is it worth it?
If this business, this model broughtme X amount of dollars, there's
going to be some loss along the way.
That's just business for, itdoesn't matter if you're massive
or small, there's going to be loss.
So you hope that you don't have that.
(26:16):
And there's some things in place.
I think that eBay probably airs a littlebit too much on the side of the buyer.
That said.
They're trying to protect their, wesaid at the beginning reputation with
buyers so that you go on there and youcan trust that you're not going to be
buying from some unscrupulous seller.
So I could see why I could see thenuance of it is what I'm trying to say.
(26:39):
Yeah.
Well, you are describing me.
I do six figure sales on eBay.
I have multiple eBay stores.
I do this full time, so I'mnot doing a part time I am.
It's about volume, it's about, you know,selling as much stuff as I can and,
and, and paying my bills, and there isloss, it's different every year, but
what I stand to gain is so much greaterthan those frustrations and that loss,
(26:59):
and I just have to factor that in, Ihave to save money back, I have to, I
save money back for, for low months,you know, when I have a good month,
I don't just go blow that money, I'vegot to save it back, we've talked about
this on a previous And so, the thingis, it is a good platform overall.
It's glitchy sometimes, but it's a verydynamic and a very complicated system
that they've got running across the world.
(27:21):
And so, I will say that if Iever need help, they have a good
setup for answering questions.
I can chat with somebody.
I can get somebody on the phone.
And if I'm Really frustrated.
Or I need to talk to somebody who actuallyhas the authority to make, you know,
unilateral decisions that I ask for amanager and they cannot deny you a manager
and may take some time sometimes, but theywill get you to a manager to speak with.
(27:44):
And oftentimes they can makea decision on their own.
They have the authority to do that.
Whereas.
The people, the first line ofpeople to help you can't do that.
They're just following prompts andthey're following certain policies
that they can't, they can't overstep.
So I'll say eBay was my primary thing.
I'll real quick, just say, I also sell atan antique store locally because I like to
(28:04):
have some larger items that I don't wantto ship and mess with the cost of that.
There.
It's almost like a storage.
It's being stored for me, butit's also available to be sold.
So I don't have to pay for storage.
I pay for.
But the sales cover that and then Ialso sell on Facebook Marketplace.
Sometimes of all places to sell asmy least favorite platform because
(28:26):
You just get, you have to kind of betied to that, because they're sending,
people are sending you messages, askingquestions, wanting to meet up, and you
have to be, it just affects my time.
I don't like, I like to be able to setthings up on my own schedule, I don't have
to work with other people's schedules.
Also, you get tons ofpeople trying to scam you.
Hey, is this available?
Yes it is.
Alright, great, send me your phone number.
(28:47):
Nope, not gonna, getout of here with that.
Junk.
They're trying to getyour number and use it.
It's, it's ridiculous.
Right.
Yeah, a Facebook marketplaceis so sketchy sometimes.
It's crazy.
It is, it is.
But, you know, sometimes I get big items.
I get a table.
You know, I get a desk.
I get something large that isbreakable, and I don't want to,
maybe somebody locally wants that.
(29:07):
I also find that I have to sell thingsat like, I'm not kidding you, 50 percent
or less than what I would sell itfor online if I'm selling it locally.
Because people, it's like they want, it'slike they think they're at a yard sale.
And so they're like, hey, I know yougot this for 100, would you take 15?
And you're like, no, I don'tget out of bed for that.
Well, the best is when peoplego, hey, will you take 15 cash?
(29:30):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, as opposed to what?
Sure, sure.
Two grand?
You know, bear bonds?
I mean, what do you, I mean, what?
I mean, it's crazy how often times thatstuff happens on, I agree with you.
Well, and people trade too.
It's, you know, sometimes you canbarter and any time, almost any time I
see somebody who's willing to barter,they're like, what would they want?
I'll take old coins, firearms.
(29:50):
They're like, people are out theretrading, trading all kinds of
things that they probably shouldn't.
And so I just kind of like tostay away from that if I can,
but I'm very well versed in eBay.
So.
We'll go, we'll go deeper intoFacebook marketplace on a later show.
Cause it's worth talking about sort ofhow the, the sort of type of person in
the things to look out for on Facebookmarketplace, regardless of how you do
(30:13):
it, it's, it's, it is an important, itis truly a big, like when I was in San
Francisco, Craigslist was everything.
You haven't even mentioned Craigslist,but Craigslist was everybody.
But sold on Craigslistand that's changeable.
I know I did.
I did, you know, I, I used to, yeah.
And we'll talk about how that changedand what changed and all that stuff.
But ultimately what we're trying todo is bring awareness around the goods
(30:37):
and the bads of these platforms andthe places, because ultimately what
we're trying to do is sell things.
Yeah.
And that's true.
I feel like I have.
Two too heavily talked about like my veryfew bad situations with ebay So I don't
mean to to bash ebay I i'm very happythat that platform exists because i'm
making my living primarily as you knowby using that platform So it is good.
(31:01):
But you know, these are all thisworld of The world of reselling, I'll
say it's a dynamic and it's, it'sevolving quite a bit and very rapidly.
So, you know, Craigslistwas the big thing.
Facebook marketplace kind of tooka lot of those people away because
a lot of scammers got in thereand it wasn't a lot of regulation.
And so, and now Facebookmarketplace has gotten that way.
There will be others that you can sell,but, but listen, people do what I do.
(31:23):
On, on eBay, on Marketplaceall the time and do very well.
I, this is just my experience.
Etsy's another one.
I think Etsy's a great platform, but it'smore geared towards people who hand make
things, create things, that's not theonly stuff you have to sell on there.
But I will probably startusing them more in the future.
Now that I've got multiple eBay storesset up and things for stuff that's,
that's more in that kind of realm.
(31:45):
But I like it.
I like selling online.
I think it's good.
I'm able to make a livingat it and future episodes.
Hopefully I can give more.
Guidance on how to do that.
Yeah.
And I think we'll talk about multiplestores, not just like why to have
them, but more like how to havethem and what to put in there.
We are sort of up againsttime though, right now.
This has been an amazing, I'velearned so much, which is great.
(32:06):
Hopefully those of you out in theaudience have learned a lot as well.
When you come listen to us, makesure you subscribe to the podcast.
It really helps us also write commentson Apple podcasts, check out the rusty,
the reseller channel and you can emailus at the what's old podcast at gmail.
com.
If you have any questions about resellingor anything like that, we're always there.
(32:26):
We can't promise we'll answeryou in the next hour, but we
will answer you eventually.
So we really appreciate the peoplethat are listening and it's great
to see the audience growing.
It's super cool.
Yeah, definitely.
Me and, and.
If you have experiences yourself, goodor bad that you want to share, leave a
comment on that or send us a message.
We like to hear kind ofwhat's going on out there.
This is a, hopefully going to becomean environment where people can share
(32:47):
information and just help everyone.
Absolutely.
All right, Matt.
Well, thank you.
We will see you guyssoon for another show.
Otherwise signing off now.
Thank you.
Every single day, people takeunwanted or unused items to thrift
and antique stores across the country.
But as the saying goes, one man'strash is another man's treasure,
and we're here to prove it.
Identify valuable thingsbefore you throw them away.
Join us as we show and tell oftreasures found and sold by a full time
reseller, with the hopes of helpingyou find some treasures of your own.
(00:31):
Welcome to the What's Sold Podcast.
Welcome back to the what's old podcast.
Again, my name is Brandon herewith my good friend, Matt.
Hello.
Good to see you, Matt.
How's your week been going?
Week has been good.
You know, it's always, and you'rein the same boat with small kids.
You never know what's going to happen.
(00:53):
You have plans for what's going to happenin the week, and then, you know, your
daughter comes in the middle of thenight, my stomach hurts, hours later of no
sleep, she's throwing up, and you're like,okay, that changes the next day or two.
So, we had that earlier in, I guess, lastweek, or a little bit through the weekend,
and here we are, sort of mid week.
You, you know, I think I know whatI'm doing the rest of the week, but
(01:14):
I don't, I can't predict the future.
Oh no.
Hey, wait Matt, you could have olderkids and then your wife decides to
get an eight month old medicallyfragile baby into your house.
Sure.
And then, then the whole worldtilts on its axis again, so.
That's where we are.
It's like a giant poop storm in our house,but hey man, I'm, I'm, we're ready to go.
Let's do this.
Well, that has nothingto do with the baby.
(01:34):
Let's be honest.
This is partly you.
That's true.
That's true.
Mostly me.
But partly baby, mostly me.
Anyway we'll stay awayfrom the fecal talk, Matt.
Let's let's talk what's sold andagain, tell us what we're going
to be talking about today on theshow and then we'll launch into it.
Yeah.
For those who are just tuning in maybefirst time, I, I'm a full time reseller.
I don't exactly love thatterm, but that is what I do.
(01:56):
I take things.
Wait, wait, what didyou, what do you prefer?
I don't know.
One's ever asked me that.
I guess I just don't like that termbecause it, it somehow makes you sound.
Listen, if you go to a store andyou buy, like, let's say I go to
a guitar center in a nearby town.
There are going to be new products inthere, but there are also going to be.
(02:17):
Things that have beentraded in, they sell.
Nobody thinks of GuitarCenter as a resale shop.
They're not doing anything,and lots of places don't do
anything differently than I do.
They get, I, they have maybe differentways of obtaining their product than I
do, but they're getting something that'sused, and they're turning around and
selling it for more than they got it for.
That's what I do.
I just do it.
(02:37):
Individually from my own home, but Idon't have a storefront and I don't
have that overhead that they havethe Negative connotation that sort of
surrounds the world of people doingwhat I do as individuals is pretty
negative Generally speaking I havefound sadly and that's why I don't like
that because I don't like being lumpedinto This grouping of people that maybe
(02:58):
are behaving in ways that Other peopledon't like and that's essentially it.
I don't know.
I'm a merchant, you know, people beingmerchants buying and selling has been
happening since the dawn of mankind.
It's not a new idea.
It's not something I came up with.
It's not even new in the last few decades.
But for whatever reason, there's been a, Ithink it's because of COVID and, and other
(03:21):
things happening economically, at leastin our country, that has caused a gigantic
increase in the number of people doing it.
Individually found thatthey can make money.
They don't have to rely ongoing out to stores to do it.
But with that, the good, the goodand the bad come with that, right?
When, when things jump up dramaticallyin a very short amount of time, it
doesn't give people a chance to.
(03:42):
Adjust their expectations and knowkind of what that's like, and people
distrust it, all of those things.
We could do an entirepodcast on, on just that.
Oh, yeah, I think a lot of peoplewhen they think about that,
they think used car salesman.
You're buying a used car and they've runback to, I mean, they're, they're the,
(04:02):
yeah, watch out for this person, right?
The problem with the secondary marketis that you can get people that are
shady, which ruins the reputation forpeople that like you that are not shady.
So that's, I'm going to call you.
A secondary market merchant.
There you go.
I mean, the, the eBay store I operateoff of is called the modern day merchant.
And that's, that's how I view myself.
(04:23):
I am not that being a merchant is a newidea, but the idea of obtaining things
in your community and selling them.
On the internet to someone in anothercountry within a day or two That
hasn't been possible until the lastfew years if you look at historically
speaking It's a very very new concept.
I am I am a merchant, but i'm doingit in modern times So, I mean I you
(04:48):
can call me, you know, the the thesail commander You're like a tinker.
You could call me the the king of Idunno, something that's regal and has
prestige The king of the secondary market?
Yeah, exactly.
Well, ultimately what we're talkingabout, though, is reputation.
For sure.
I think about my mechanic, which is, he'sthe greatest mechanic I've ever known.
I've been really fortunate inmy life to have found mechanics,
(05:11):
and it's always word of mouth.
But I've talked to him about it.
He it's like the reputationof a mechanic is critical.
If they have a good reputationas honest and fair, they can,
there's, there's no way they, theycould ever have not enough work.
They just, he is busy all the time.
And it's because people go, Hey,that guy, Bobby at Monte thought a
little shout out to my boy, Bobbyboom, always takes care of you.
(05:34):
And he's the kind of guy.
And we always hear this from people.
They're like, yeah, I looked at it.
You know what?
You could fix this, but it'sprobably not worth it right now.
Okay.
Let's not do that.
And the same thing with you, if yousell something, and I think eBay
is sort of, we're going to talkabout eBay today, I think, right?
We are.
Yes.
Yeah.
So on eBay, they sort of forcedthe issue because they're like, the
customer has all the control and, ormost of the control, I should say.
(05:57):
So they're forcing you to be honest.
If you, a cruddy good.
eBay's going to get you.
So reputation, I mean, we could do a wholeshow and we should on reputation alone
and how important it is in any business,but especially the kind of work you're
doing, it's the most important thing.
In fact, you know, years ago, I, Idon't know, I was at some sort of talk.
And they, they ask, like, what is themost important thing to you in your life?
(06:19):
And everyone is saying thingslike, my spouse, my children,
you know, my pet, or my home.
Or, you know, you had lots of things.
Nobody said reputation.
They said, I want you toconsider that reputation is the
most important thing to you.
Because, all of those things thatyou mentioned, that the people
mentioned are very important.
But you consider, if tomorrow,somebody accused you of something,
(06:41):
and everyone believed it, includingyour family, And all of a sudden
your reputation is heavily tarnished.
That, that permeatesevery aspect of your life.
Right.
And it's, it's very difficultto recover from that.
And I, I try to operate my businesswith as much integrity as possible.
But even when you do that, when you'reinteracting with people, you, you
(07:02):
still have to defend yourself at times.
You will be accused.
I have been accused ofthings I haven't done.
And I have to tread lightly becauseI operate a lot in my community.
I visit the same places.
For If I go in a store and someone says,Hey, you stole from me, all of us, whether
it's true or not, if they stick to it,I've just lost a sourcing location, which
(07:24):
is a big deal for me and my business.
And so you have to tread lightlyand you, you do your best.
I do my best, you know?
Yeah.
And I think that's a real, a really,really good point for anybody out
there listening is that protecting.
That it might take a little bit of extrawork or a lot of extra work to protect
that reputation, but your reputation,you're only really as good as your
(07:45):
reputation, especially when you get intothings like a secondary markets or car.
Like if you're a carsalesman and you're shady.
You know, the challenge there is that notpeople don't buy cars like they share in
the reseller market per se, like everyother week or something, but you see
those car salesmen that are really, reallywell respected, have a good reputation.
(08:06):
People go back to them every time.
I would much rather pay moremoney to somebody I trusted.
Who's going to tell me the truth.
That somebody is going to giveme a slightly better deal.
And that goes for every industry,contractors, everything.
Then if I'm going to save a few dollars,but I'm going to lose in the long run.
So reputation for sureis absolutely paramount.
That's an okay segue.
(08:26):
I think into these platforms, we'regoing to talk about today that I, I,
or, you know, avenues through whichI attempt to sell items that I get
the primary one being eBay, but we'llalso talk about other, other sites
like Etsy, you know, Possibly Facebookmarketplace that kind of thing.
So yeah, so let's let's get intothat Yeah, the the primary spot
(08:49):
that I Sell my items is eBay.
The reason for that is There are severalreasons, but the primary reason is that
they bring in the the most Potentialbuyers to their platform of any platform
that does that offers that service andit's not even close the second place is is
(09:11):
Way less than half of the number of peoplethat are coming to the platform to look to
purchase things So that's the number onereason I can sell to people not only in
my state my country But around the worldif I opt to you don't have to sell things
to internationally But you certainly canand eBay has some some kind of platform
Procedures set up around internationalsales where they kind of do a little work
(09:35):
in the, in the, in the middle of thatprocess that kind of helps the sellers.
But I do that.
I've been selling oneBay since about 2000.
So, you know, 24, 24 years, I've notbeen doing it full time since then.
I've only been doing it full time forabout the last four years, but you
know, that as you, it's a dynamic world.
The, the platform has changed a lotfor better in some ways for, you
(09:59):
know, for the worse in others, but Iwas I'm familiar with the platform.
It's pretty intuitive.
They still make changes every yearbased on what they're seeing, but
I have found a way to carve outa full time income by selling.
I could use them exclusively and Iwould, I would be able to pay my bills.
I don't use them exclusively, andwe'll get into that in a few minutes,
(10:22):
mainly because I don't want to haveall my, you know, eggs in one basket.
If something happens, it's a, youknow, I'm paying them with proceeds
from my sales, and I'm also payingthem a monthly subscription fee to
list a certain number of items forfree per month, that sort of thing.
So it's a service they provide, it's aplatform, they allow me to sell on their
platform, and I pay them for that service.
(10:42):
However, that service, not onlydoes it come at a price, but
I don't have a lot of control.
Like they set up the policies andprocedures for how I'm supposed to
interact with that site and how I'msupposed to interact with potential
customers or other sellers, because I'ma buyer as well as a seller on eBay.
So it's a good site to you.
It has been a good site for me.
(11:04):
It comes with downsides as well, becauseas you sort of alluded to before.
eBay heavily sides on the, on buyers.
So if there's ever a conflict orthere's a, something happens and they're
taking two people's points of view or,or information about what happened.
You know, nine times out of10, they're going to side with
the buyer and not the seller.
(11:25):
It's odd to me because they make theirmoney from the proceeds of a sale of
an item that was sold by the seller.
So, but they have their ownreasons for, for doing it that way.
And you said, I want to weed out peoplewho try to scam you, who are, who are
trying to be dishonest or manipulate.
Well, right.
Because ultimately that's great thatyou're on there and you're selling
(11:47):
correct, because if that's not there, butat the end of the day, if the customer
says, well, I can't trust anythingon eBay, I'm not going to come there.
There is no business.
There is nobody to sell to.
So you could kind of understand thereason why I don't, I've had a really
bad experience personally, justas a personal seller that I had no
idea about eBay and how it worked.
(12:08):
And you're going to explain that.
But I was flummoxed when I sent thisthing that worked perfectly well,
the person said, Oh, it didn't work.
And then I had to send their money back.
And I was like, wait, what?
Why would I have to say you'rejust because you couldn't
figure it out means I have to.
Eat it, but that's the deal.
Yeah, I have lost, and I do mean lost,just evaporated, probably two or three
(12:31):
thousand dollars in the last threeyears from some, some bad situations
on eBay where, like in one case, soif you sell shoes on eBay, and I can't
remember what the monetary thresholdis today, I think it's around 200, but
if you sell a pair of shoes for lessthan 200, When you go to fulfill that
order and you send it, you're sending itdirectly to the buyer, like most things.
(12:53):
However, if shoes are above thatthreshold, and again, that may have
changed, but, it goes to a third partythat eBay contracts with to do quote
unquote, Authentication services for them.
So what happens is if I sell you a pair ofshoes for 201, it's a pair of Nike Jordan
(13:15):
1s, and I send them off, I'm not actuallysending them to you, Brandon, I'm sending
them to an address of a third party that'scontracted with eBay, and some worker is
going to open that box, they're going toexamine those shoes, and they're going
to make a determination as to whetheror not They are in fact what I said they
were and that I described them correctly.
(13:36):
You have to have specific typesof pictures that they can look at.
You have to have, everything has to beintact the way that you described it.
And if it is, then they, youknow, quote unquote approve that
and they send it on to the buyer.
If they find some issue and they don'tthink that you were honest or maybe you
were honest, you just didn't providethe information that they require,
(13:57):
They essentially deny that, they boxit up, and they send it back to you.
And they immediately refund the buyer,and then you have to do your own legwork
to figure out what happened here.
So, two things that happened withregard to shoes in the last four years.
One was, I had a pair of Jordan 1s, theywere brand new, they were in the box.
(14:17):
I didn't even remove them from theoriginal factory box that said Nike.
I just, I opened it to look in tomake sure it was what it was, it
was the correct size, all of that.
But it was a pair of brand newshoes, they have a hang tag
that has the Jordan logo on it.
Really cool shoes.
I sent them off, theygo to the authenticator.
The authenticator, to my surprise,after about a week, denies.
(14:40):
The sale they immediately refund thebuyer and they send me the shoes back
when I get the shoes and I open them.
I'm obviously I'm thinking what inthe world could have been wrong here
because I didn't even remove them fromthe original boxes or everything when
I get them back and I look at them.
I find that the hang tag is missing.
Now the hang tag was in there.
I saw it before I sent it.
(15:02):
So I contact eBay and I say,hey, this is the situation.
They say, well, it was denied becausethey said, the authenticator said that
some of the item, like the item, thehang tag specifically was not present and
therefore not everything was complete.
And so they wouldn't sign.
I said, hold on a second.
I know that it was complete, Ididn't remove it from the box, I
saw it when I got it, and it wasfrom the, from the factory, from
(15:23):
Nike factory, sent directly to me.
And it, it basically came downto one of two things, either the
worker, in removing those shoes andinspecting them, dropped it, or lost
the tag, or there was theft involved.
Because those tags by themselves, Imean these shoes were probably like
a thousand dollar pair of shoes.
The tag alone is worth 150 to 200.
(15:45):
So if I were just to sell the tag.
So the tag by itself has monetary value.
It's small, it would be easy to pocket.
So, I was either there was negligenceinvolved in the authentication or there
was theft and I proposed those things.
It came down to them sayingessentially, Hey, I know you've been
on this platform for a long time.
You sold lots of the items,but we trust our authenticators
(16:08):
who are not eBay employees.
They are a contracted other company.
So, well, could you have taken apicture of that tag before you sent it?
I could have, and I should have.
However, It wouldn't have matteredbecause it's my word against
the word of an employee orsomeone that eBay contracts with.
And they would again say, well,we trust their word over yours.
(16:30):
And when they make that decision,there's nothing I can do.
So what happened was I got a pair ofshoes sent back to me that are now
worth about 200 less than they werewhen I sent them, because it's now
missing a piece and I cannot sell itin the same way that I sold it before.
I've also lost a good marketfor those shoes because a person
wants to buy them Complete.
They don't want to buythem without the hang tag.
(16:50):
So that was one stinkysituation that happened to me.
Another was a time I sold, on the sameday, two different pairs of shoes to
two different people in the country.
Both of which needed to be authenticated.
Same situation.
They get sent off.
About a week later, I get a messagefrom one of the buyers saying,
Hey, I got the wrong pair of shoes.
(17:12):
And they send me a picture, and it is notthe pair of shoes that was sent to them.
It should have been sent to them.
It was the pair of shoes that was supposedto have been sent to the other buyer.
So, I had to contact and say, Hey, theseboth went to your authentication center.
They didn't know.
I mean, I was speakingwith an eBay manager.
They had no idea what happened.
I was like, You sentthem to the wrong people.
You got them swapped.
(17:33):
You, your authenticator lookedat them and then sent them off
from there to the wrong people.
It was the same day, two separateorders, two separate people.
So the, the downside was the person whocontacted me about receiving the wrong
shoes were the ones who were supposedto receive shoes that were quite a
bit more valuable than the others.
So it was on me to try to contact theother buyer and say, Hey, you know,
(17:57):
Did you happen to get some reallyvaluable Jordan 1s, like 1, 000 shoes,
instead of your 80 or, you know, your200 pair of shoes that you ordered?
And they're like, Oh, yeah,you know, I did get these, but
I'm not in the country now.
I'm in Costa Rica.
So it's going to be reallyhard for me to send these back.
(18:17):
And I go, Well, I'll payyou for the shipping.
According to eBay and people I talkedto, it should take approximately two
weeks and it's going to take about 75.
I'll pay that to get them back.
And then dead silence.
Never heard from him again.
So I contact eBay and I say, Hey,you sent these to the wrong people.
And, essentially, theyThere was no culpability.
There was no Well, youknow, we sent these.
(18:40):
We think we sent them to the right person.
We can't for If, in fact, this otherperson got this person's shoes, we
can't force them to send them back.
So what happened?
They refunded both buyers.
And I did not get either pair ofshoes back because they would not
force, they could not, they said,legally force them to return the item.
And I just lost the money and the items.
(19:01):
But I, what I don't understandabout that is, where, does eBay
just basically say screw you?
Because that sounds likea screw you type thing.
Because they were the onesthat made the mistake, not you.
You can prove they made themistake, so why wouldn't eBay
say to the authenticator,You're on the hook for this.
Yeah, that is an excellent question.
(19:23):
They should, I feel like they shouldhave, there's no answer to that.
Well, the answer is they could acceptresponsibility and pay me out, but they
didn't want to, I guess, because I spokewith multiple managers sometimes when
you run into these situations and youhave multiple calls and you talk with a
manager, they essentially say, Hey, likeI'm the one who makes the final decision.
(19:44):
I'm going to make this decision tonot, you know, to, to enact this course
of action, and I just have to eat it.
So, what I'm trying to say is that,like, this is, this is not common.
This is a rare occurrence.
This has happened three to fourtimes, not these exact occurrences,
but things like this in the course ofthree or four years of working on eBay.
(20:04):
But, one item that it was a separateissue entirely, Was a situation where I
sent them an item, it was very valuableand heavy, cost a lot to ship there,
they said it was missing a couple ofcomponents, it was like a, a piece,
like a device, like a electronic device.
I actually contacted the manufacturerand ordered those additional parts.
And then ship them on my own dime tothat person to try to make things right.
(20:30):
When they got them, they said,yeah, this still isn't what I need.
So I'm going to send the item back.
And I was like, wait, I'vealready paid extra money and
I've sent you these other items.
I went back.
I didn't feel like I should have to accepta return since I was trying to work,
work with them and I had paid additionalmoney at the end of the day, eBay said.
You're going to have to accept thereturn, and we can't force them
(20:53):
to send you the items you alreadypaid for and sent them back either.
So, after about 60 days of going backand forth with eBay and this buyer, I
did receive the item back, which they hadput in an empty box with no packaging.
The item was completely destroyed.
It was about a 1200 item.
So, I was out the money.
I got an item back, but it was entirelydestroyed, so I could not resell it.
(21:15):
And eBay would not refund me the money.
And basically said, you know,everything's done, you got your item
back, they were refunded, we're fine.
So the only way I could salvage thatwas I actually had to deconstruct that
device, take components from it, andtry to sell those components as pieces
that people could use, who needed them,things that had broken on their devices.
(21:36):
And I ended up recoupingabout 40 to 50 percent.
But it was a lot of, a lot of time,a lot of extra work on my part.
So sometimes you don't.
That kind of thing can happen.
Now, a lot of people, maybe like yourself,Brandon, if you had experienced that
early on, if you were not a full timereseller, didn't depend on this type
of work to pay your bills, you wouldsay, forget this, I'm never using this
(21:58):
platform again, and you're not thefirst person that I've heard say that.
And I don't blame you.
I don't blame you.
But for me, I accept that thereare risks involved in this.
I accept that there isgoing to be some loss.
And it's very aggravating to me.
It has not been so aggravating that Ihave completely changed the platform.
Because at the end of the day, withthe number of buyers and the business I
(22:20):
have set up for myself, it still makessense for me to continue using them.
But, you know, it hurts.
It hurts to deal with that sort of thing.
Yeah.
So it strikes me a little bit of, I, youknow, Uber, I never realized this about
Uber, but when you take an Uber cab,there's a rating system for the driver.
A lot of people like, Oh,I give the driver five,
whatever the driver's batting.
(22:41):
There's also a ratingsystem for the passenger.
And if you're a drunken idiotin the cat and that Uber car,
they can rate you really low.
And then Uber drivers will, it happensa lot where Uber drivers will not
come and pick someone up because.
They have a low rating below acertain point because they've had
bad experiences in their journey.
So I, it's kind of interesting to methat, that does eBay have a rating
(23:05):
system for sellers and buyers?
So sellers and buyers can ratea transaction or an interaction
with another person themselves.
So buyers can, every time there'sa transaction, a buyer can rate the
seller, the seller can rate the buyer.
So that can happen, and your rating,particularly for a seller, pops up there
and it will show you, like, their rating.
(23:26):
Now, I do a high volume of items.
I sell between 12, I do between 12and 1500 transactions on eBay, not
individual items, but transactions.
Some of those transactionscould be a hundred items, or a
thousand items in one transaction.
So I do a lot of transactions.
I have a lot of ratings.
I'm not as, first of all, I feel like I doa good job, like I said, I try to operate
(23:49):
with integrity, I try to describe thingswell, I try to get them shipped quickly,
that your shipping speed, all of that israted and, and available for people to
see, so, if I'm getting on as a buyer,and I'm looking at an item, and I want
to go just see, okay, what is the storeabout, you can see what their Take care.
What their rating is.
Is it 100%?
Is it 90%?
Is it 75%?
(24:10):
If you start to dip below a certainthresholds in these criteria
that eBay have set up, they willstart to, it will start to affect
your store in a monetary way.
If you start having low ratings andyou're not shipping things off in
time, eBay will actually start takinga higher percentage of a fee when you
sell a transaction, sell something.
(24:30):
Yeah.
So like right now it's13 and a half percent.
That could jump up five to 10 percentmore that I will have to pay eBay if
they feel like I'm not operating mystore at standards that they've set up.
So they incentivize, I don't knowif you would call it an incentive
or a dis incentive, but they, theyhave some of those metrics in place.
(24:50):
So that they can try to keep the levelof, I don't know what you would say,
like a high standard for their sellersso that people can buy with confidence.
Because like you said,it's all about confidence.
Where they want more and morepeople to come to their platform.
If they have people leaving theirplatform, then that, that, that hurts
their bottom line, their investors thatthey, I mean they're a, I don't know if
(25:12):
they're a fortune 500 company, but it'scertainly a publicly traded company.
Oh, yeah.
So yeah, they, they want youto do, do what you say you're
going to do on this platform.
Well, Peter Thiel are notgoing broke anytime soon, and
they created the platform.
So it is interesting.
I was just thinking, I think theindividual seller guy, a person like
me that doesn't sell all the time.
(25:34):
I did catch you when callingyourself a reseller, I'd like to
call you a merchant, but thank you.
Force of habit is you, again,we talk about this a lot on this
show about business calculus.
You would look at this and say,okay, so let's say I sold a hundred.
This for a round number, a hundredthousand dollars worth of material
throughout the course of the year.
Mm-Hmm . And of that a hundred thousanddollars a point, 1% of 1% is lost.
(25:55):
Let's see.
I don't know, a thousand dollars, right?
Or whatever, make, make it simple.
You would have to look atthat and say, is it worth it?
If this business, this model broughtme X amount of dollars, there's
going to be some loss along the way.
That's just business for, itdoesn't matter if you're massive
or small, there's going to be loss.
So you hope that you don't have that.
(26:16):
And there's some things in place.
I think that eBay probably airs a littlebit too much on the side of the buyer.
That said.
They're trying to protect their, wesaid at the beginning reputation with
buyers so that you go on there and youcan trust that you're not going to be
buying from some unscrupulous seller.
So I could see why I could see thenuance of it is what I'm trying to say.
(26:39):
Yeah.
Well, you are describing me.
I do six figure sales on eBay.
I have multiple eBay stores.
I do this full time, so I'mnot doing a part time I am.
It's about volume, it's about, you know,selling as much stuff as I can and,
and, and paying my bills, and there isloss, it's different every year, but
what I stand to gain is so much greaterthan those frustrations and that loss,
(26:59):
and I just have to factor that in, Ihave to save money back, I have to, I
save money back for, for low months,you know, when I have a good month,
I don't just go blow that money, I'vegot to save it back, we've talked about
this on a previous And so, the thingis, it is a good platform overall.
It's glitchy sometimes, but it's a verydynamic and a very complicated system
that they've got running across the world.
(27:21):
And so, I will say that if Iever need help, they have a good
setup for answering questions.
I can chat with somebody.
I can get somebody on the phone.
And if I'm Really frustrated.
Or I need to talk to somebody who actuallyhas the authority to make, you know,
unilateral decisions that I ask for amanager and they cannot deny you a manager
and may take some time sometimes, but theywill get you to a manager to speak with.
(27:44):
And oftentimes they can makea decision on their own.
They have the authority to do that.
Whereas.
The people, the first line ofpeople to help you can't do that.
They're just following prompts andthey're following certain policies
that they can't, they can't overstep.
So I'll say eBay was my primary thing.
I'll real quick, just say, I also sell atan antique store locally because I like to
(28:04):
have some larger items that I don't wantto ship and mess with the cost of that.
There.
It's almost like a storage.
It's being stored for me, butit's also available to be sold.
So I don't have to pay for storage.
I pay for.
But the sales cover that and then Ialso sell on Facebook Marketplace.
Sometimes of all places to sell asmy least favorite platform because
(28:26):
You just get, you have to kind of betied to that, because they're sending,
people are sending you messages, askingquestions, wanting to meet up, and you
have to be, it just affects my time.
I don't like, I like to be able to setthings up on my own schedule, I don't have
to work with other people's schedules.
Also, you get tons ofpeople trying to scam you.
Hey, is this available?
Yes it is.
Alright, great, send me your phone number.
(28:47):
Nope, not gonna, getout of here with that.
Junk.
They're trying to getyour number and use it.
It's, it's ridiculous.
Right.
Yeah, a Facebook marketplaceis so sketchy sometimes.
It's crazy.
It is, it is.
But, you know, sometimes I get big items.
I get a table.
You know, I get a desk.
I get something large that isbreakable, and I don't want to,
maybe somebody locally wants that.
(29:07):
I also find that I have to sell thingsat like, I'm not kidding you, 50 percent
or less than what I would sell itfor online if I'm selling it locally.
Because people, it's like they want, it'slike they think they're at a yard sale.
And so they're like, hey, I know yougot this for 100, would you take 15?
And you're like, no, I don'tget out of bed for that.
Well, the best is when peoplego, hey, will you take 15 cash?
(29:30):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, as opposed to what?
Sure, sure.
Two grand?
You know, bear bonds?
I mean, what do you, I mean, what?
I mean, it's crazy how often times thatstuff happens on, I agree with you.
Well, and people trade too.
It's, you know, sometimes you canbarter and any time, almost any time I
see somebody who's willing to barter,they're like, what would they want?
I'll take old coins, firearms.
(29:50):
They're like, people are out theretrading, trading all kinds of
things that they probably shouldn't.
And so I just kind of like tostay away from that if I can,
but I'm very well versed in eBay.
So.
We'll go, we'll go deeper intoFacebook marketplace on a later show.
Cause it's worth talking about sort ofhow the, the sort of type of person in
the things to look out for on Facebookmarketplace, regardless of how you do
(30:13):
it, it's, it's, it is an important, itis truly a big, like when I was in San
Francisco, Craigslist was everything.
You haven't even mentioned Craigslist,but Craigslist was everybody.
But sold on Craigslistand that's changeable.
I know I did.
I did, you know, I, I used to, yeah.
And we'll talk about how that changedand what changed and all that stuff.
But ultimately what we're trying todo is bring awareness around the goods
(30:37):
and the bads of these platforms andthe places, because ultimately what
we're trying to do is sell things.
Yeah.
And that's true.
I feel like I have.
Two too heavily talked about like my veryfew bad situations with ebay So I don't
mean to to bash ebay I i'm very happythat that platform exists because i'm
making my living primarily as you knowby using that platform So it is good.
(31:01):
But you know, these are all thisworld of The world of reselling, I'll
say it's a dynamic and it's, it'sevolving quite a bit and very rapidly.
So, you know, Craigslistwas the big thing.
Facebook marketplace kind of tooka lot of those people away because
a lot of scammers got in thereand it wasn't a lot of regulation.
And so, and now Facebookmarketplace has gotten that way.
There will be others that you can sell,but, but listen, people do what I do.
(31:23):
On, on eBay, on Marketplaceall the time and do very well.
I, this is just my experience.
Etsy's another one.
I think Etsy's a great platform, but it'smore geared towards people who hand make
things, create things, that's not theonly stuff you have to sell on there.
But I will probably startusing them more in the future.
Now that I've got multiple eBay storesset up and things for stuff that's,
that's more in that kind of realm.
(31:45):
But I like it.
I like selling online.
I think it's good.
I'm able to make a livingat it and future episodes.
Hopefully I can give more.
Guidance on how to do that.
Yeah.
And I think we'll talk about multiplestores, not just like why to have
them, but more like how to havethem and what to put in there.
We are sort of up againsttime though, right now.
This has been an amazing, I'velearned so much, which is great.
(32:06):
Hopefully those of you out in theaudience have learned a lot as well.
When you come listen to us, makesure you subscribe to the podcast.
It really helps us also write commentson Apple podcasts, check out the rusty,
the reseller channel and you can emailus at the what's old podcast at gmail.
com.
If you have any questions about resellingor anything like that, we're always there.
(32:26):
We can't promise we'll answeryou in the next hour, but we
will answer you eventually.
So we really appreciate the peoplethat are listening and it's great
to see the audience growing.
It's super cool.
Yeah, definitely.
Me and, and.
If you have experiences yourself, goodor bad that you want to share, leave a
comment on that or send us a message.
We like to hear kind ofwhat's going on out there.
This is a, hopefully going to becomean environment where people can share
(32:47):
information and just help everyone.
Absolutely.
All right, Matt.
Well, thank you.
We will see you guyssoon for another show.
Otherwise signing off now.
Thank you.
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