Vaacation ??

SammysSupplies · Posts: 1631

There is nothing wrong with putting a store on hold. Not everyone has the capability to ship items to wherever they are going. No all of us have a store behind us. It is just one person doing all the work. I have no one I can rely to send stuff out for me. Not everyone does. There is no reason to put down the people that ship quickly...there is no way I could could sit on money for 10+ days....that is just very unprofessional. When I was housebound for most of a month....I cut back on my auctions. (Which are the majority of sales for me) The sales here I could handle.

Besides, the OP said he would be without internet for most of a month. That is to long to let a store be open with no service. Of course, if you have people at your beck and call, then it is a non-issue.

lastade-designs · moderator Posts: 2905

While I have my store on vacation hold, I use any extra time I have to revise and revamp my listings, plus I do lots of searching for inventory. I love to search in new places far from my usual haunts. I also add my new inventory to my store but people can't see them because I am on vacation hold. So you can still be working on your store and while you may not have sales, you can improve your store.

tigercreekgifts · Posts: 6293

Universal, why would anyone pay to have their inventory shipped to their hotel when they can just bring it with them?

Unless they are traveling by plane, train or boat but the OP stated they are moving, not actually going on vacation so I can't see why anyone moving would take a plane or boat to do so unless they are moving to an island like Hawaii and they have no other choice.

But they are moving, so their inventory will be with them but they stated they will not have internet until they get their new service turned on so either way, they cannot ship anything without internet to know what was purchased. In their case, they have to put the store on hold because without internet, they could come back a month later to find they had 11 sales they didn't even know about plus 5 negative feedbacks and 9 emails from concerned or ticked off customers like, where's my purchase?

universalcomputers · Posts: 217

Well if anyone else had that idea of going on vacation, they will look here.

The problem with going on vacation is the loss of income. You loose income the whole time your on vacation and then when you come back you have to wait another time period to get your cash flow going. Regardless of whether your on vacation or not, you still have repeated bills every single month.

So to minimize disruptions in your cash flow, those are what we would recommend. If you do alot of business online, those ideas are more practical, because making money in ecommerce is all about here and now and how much money you can get in that time period.

If this guy is moving, then its obvious of what he has to do. Shut the store down temporarily and when he moves into his place, start it back up again. Unless he eBay's it with his laptop. Thats all they can do.

MoonwishesStore · moderator Posts: 17389

universalcomputers · Posts: 217

Like we've said a few times. Sellers run their business how they want and do what they feel comfortable. If you want to ship an item in 24 hours, 10 minutes, after the purchase then go for it. Whatever the risks or rewards are is what your faced with.

If you want to ship an item out in 24 hours to a non confirmed address then even before the money hits your bank account, get the funds pulled from you, for a dispute go for it. If you want to ship the item 24 hours - 10 minutes later and then get nailed with a non authorized dispute, go knock yourself out.

Your not legally paid for an item until the funds 100% in your possession, not your sitting in your PayPal account, or just processed by Stripe waiting to be batched out. The second it hits your bank account thats when and only when your paid. Once they hit your bank account, PayPal or Stripe cant touch it for the reason you can pull a non ach dispute to get it back.

But its your store, do what you want, how you want to operate it and run it. No one can tell you elsewise, but listen to the wise so you dont repeat the past.

SammysSupplies · Posts: 1631

The one and only dispute I have had, PP covered for me, so I was out no money. I know there are horror stories out there, but I have not had any trouble. I just think it must be hard to always think the worst of people. Not a way I want to live my life.

tigercreekgifts · Posts: 6293

MoonwishesStore · moderator Posts: 17389

universalcomputers · Posts: 217

Moon : run your store the way you want.

Every single transaction you encounter is a possible scam. Every single payment is subject to fraud, subject to a buyer filing a false dispute.

REGARDLESS of how great you think your running your business or how much you kiss the buyers butt, your going to run into it.

And if you dont prepare yourself for every single possibility, the day it happens, you get caught with your pants down! We dont. Its a small percentage, but we go through about 200 sales a day, but we have to fill out paperwork over a dispute a few times a week. So even though its a small percentage, the fact that you have to spend continuous time doing the same thing over again because of one person - it adds up.

Dont tell us with your thousands of transactions - you never received a dispute or had someone that was trying to scam you. In either event, the products you sell also increase your chances of being scammed. Because there's a demand for it and they can turn it over and resell it. In your case, and we believe you sell clothing patterns, no one is really going to pull a scam on your products, where as what we sell is the opposite as yours.

As we have said a few times, buyer leaves negative feedback and files a dispute agaisnt one seller because he couldnt get a warranty from the buyer's home country of Koreas even though its a US product, what does the buyer do? takes it out on the seller and scams him.

Another buyer, immediatley leave a seller netrual feedback and says they will change it the second they get the item back, 5 years later its still neutral.

-The Nigerian Scam
-Overpayment Scam
-The bait and switch
-The forced refund

Theres about 500 others in our database just on the buyers side.

The whole point is to help sellers avoid from being scammed. If your not being scammed good for you, but there are thousands of other sellers who are. And this information will minmize or help them to some extent. So its not about this and that, and making commentary such as yours, its about a seller or sellers reading about the experiences and the information other sellers have wrote to help them.

This forum is about helping individual sellers and sellers as a group.

universalcomputers · Posts: 217

The Let’s-Finish-This-Elsewhere
A potential buyer will contact you and offer to make an immediate payment if you settle the transaction outside of eBay. The transaction will go smoothly, until they contact you afterwards and complain of a defective product / false advertisement / dishonest eBay listing. They’ll blackmail you into paying them or else they’ll contact eBay and get you banned.

How It Gets You: The promise of guaranteed money, as opposed to potential money from an auction, can sweep you off your guard. Plus, these people are going out of their way to pay real money and make this transaction happen. They couldn’t possibly be con artists, right? Wrong.

The Bait-and-Switch Refund

The Scam: In this Ebay scam, everything goes according to plan. You put up an item for sale, a buyer bids on it (or Buys It Now if you allowed it), you receive payment, you send the item, done! However, before he bought your item, he also bought a broken version of the same exact item. They use this to blackmail you into giving them a full refund or else they’ll report you to eBay.

How It Gets You: When something like this happens, it’s easy to feel helpless. You feel like they outsmarted you, you have no evidence that your item was functional, you can’t prove that they’re lying. In order to mitigate your losses, you agree to the full refund and move on while the scammer just got a free item from you.

How to Avoid It: Sadly, this scam is a little harder to avoid. You have two options. One, you can require your buyers to purchase shipping insurance to protect yourself against this kind of thing. Two, you can state on your eBay listings that there are NO REFUNDS on your items.

universalcomputers · Posts: 217

-Deleted Due To Duplicate Post-

lastade-designs · moderator Posts: 2905

universalcomputers · Posts: 217

Glad your doing great. But alot of the scams go on online on a daily basis, hundred thousands, possibly tens of thousands. The first thing that gets involved in a scam, is the product itself. Is it in high demand for being scamable. A tablet computer vs. a sewing pattern are opposite sides of the coin. Plus price is another factor. Find it rare that someone is going to try to steal a sewing pattern (correct us if we're wrong in what you sell), vs an electronic device. The two products are night and day.

Second factor is the target audience, who buys your product and how can they turn it into a profit, or how can they keep it for themselves. As we said before who's going to scam a pattern (just going to refer it to as that) vs a xbox system, a notebook, etc.

There's so many variables. Electronics are classified as "high risk" to merchant companies vs clothing not so.

universalcomputers · Posts: 217

Almost borderline - "Told you so!"

As we were repeating ourselves about buyers who scam, while we were typing this, guess what, some buyer tried to pull a false scam on us. Files a dispute claiming non receipt of merchandise while they were in possession of the item. Sign for in his own name, the signature from the courier matches that of the form he signed. Been in possession of the item for 3 weeks, and then tries to falisfy a claim stating non receipt of merchandise.

Case opened and in 2 minutes closed because we had all our policies and procedures in place.

4 am in the morning on a Saturday? really now!