Has it Really been 2 months?

2 Holidays combined with House Guests for 2 weeks at a time, as well as working around 10 hours more a week to bring in what I brought in last year and cover the rising price of gas, has left me little time to blog.

But Alas I have something to Bitch about!!!! It’s about another seller, and Ebay seller to be exact. But I also have something good to say about another Ebay seller

I engage in the fine art of arbitrage, though, I’m leery to spend very much since i have the sentiment that if the people selling these items really knew what they were doing, they probably wouldn’t let them go so cheap.

Anyway. . .I found a gem, but the seller charged $8 for S & H by Media Mail. Of course hardly anyone in their right mind will spend $8 to ship ship a $2.00 - $10 book, cept me–and believe me it took me some time to bid on it, as I almost didn’t bid out of principle. I knew I could turn around and sell the book for $60. . .As it turned out, no one else bid on the item except for me. It was described as “In excellent Condition.” And it looked well enough in the photo to sell.

Cut to 7 days later, the 4lb book arrives by Media Mail in an ENVELOPE!!! Now I realize that this seller says they charge a high S & H to cover gas money, labels, electricity and time spent packaging the item, but at $8 they could’ve spent and extra 30 cents for a box, or used recycled one. The book now has heavy bumping at all corners, as well as creasing. AND to top it off, it stank like SMOKE. At least I know how to remove odors, can’t do much about the other damage.

So I e-mail the seller saying that I am disappointed that the book smells like smoke, and that my $8 did not include better packaging. Seller says that I can return the book at my cost. Well, of course it will cost me more to return the book than the book itself, unless I include shipping, which of course is not going to be refunded.

Now sure, it was a cheap book, but when that seller put it up for auction, they had no idea how much it was going to sell for. . .It could’ve went for the $60 that it was worth. . .They should’ve disclosed that it smelled like smoke. . .they should’ve either offer to pay for the return, or, to give me some kind of discount. But when all is said and done, I will keep the book and still sell it for $40.

I unfortunately bought this book under my bookseller account, so I can’t leave negative feedback as my bookseller name is used on all venues.

Then there are good sellers–One sent me the wrong book, another steal that I happened to find over the 4th of July, this seller told me to just go ahead and keep it, and he would send the right book out next day. The book I get to keep is worth $40, although, it was meant for someone else who won it for 99 cents. . .An INTL shipment, if it wasn’t INTL I would’ve offered to forward it, a heavy book and INTL shipping is a situation I don’t want to get in the middle of. Maybe he sent the INTL customer my book, I’ll never know until my original book arrives.

My break from bitching-Superb Customer:)

Whew, is my blog getting hit today because of the Big Ebay changes taking place today.. . .

Instead of bitching more about that though, I’ve decided to post a short story with a happy ending. . .I hope.

So, my ABE sales have sucked more than usual for the last 3 months. . .I decided that before dropping ABE, I would try the paypal thing again–I had dropped paypal on Abe a couple years ago cuz it was a pain in the ass getting some people to pay ,and keeping track of it–at that time.

Long story short, I enabled paypal again last Monday, but I kinda forgot about it.  I shipped a $50 art Book to Sweden with a shipping confirmation e-mail. The customer e-mailed me a wonderful letter thanking me for my trust in these times of shady internet scams and such, and saying that he would like to pay now even though he hadn’t received the book yet. That was pretty awesome of him.  Sure, I would’ve figured it out once my next ABE payment rolled around, but even then once someone has the book, there is no guarantee that they will pay. Of course, now I am nervous that he won’t like the the book or something. . .

********

I do have a few things that I want to write about, and will try to do a few posts this week, raising prices after the postal increase, only to see people pricing $15 books at $4 & $5, yet still selling my $15 books over their copies in same condition.

Idiot with a laptop

This post could prob give my anon identity away. . .I’ve sat on it for 3 days b4 writing it because I have been busy trying to level my Evasion Barbarian.

I had one of those scouting days last week. I walk into my favorite spot, and first thing I see is a guy with a worker cart from the store, filled with 100 books, ah bummer. . .but on closer look most were titles I had passed up the day b4. Most likely he was buying B &M stock.

Then there was the Weird Old Couple –the lady has been known to wear one of those flashlight headbands while scouting, and the husband throws books willy nilly all over the place. I have never been able to figure out who, or what they are buying for.

Then I notice a guy in his late 60’s maybe early 70’s, sporting a baseball cap and has that spends alot of time boating look to him. I see he is setting his grabs on the bookshelf–which is never a good idea, I went through them once and he didn’t even notice. His books for the most part were things I had passed up the day b4, or would’ve passed up.

And then he not only whips out his laptop, but sets up all his elaborate tools. I live in a highly populated urban area, laptop not good. Heck it;s not even good if ya live in the sticks.

I say to him:

“No wonder they keep raising the prices here.”

“Oh, are you buying books for charity?”

“No, I do the same thing that you do, only I am more discreet.”

Argh, I wanted to yell at this dude, but I kept a calm and even voice.

And not to be an ageist, but it seems that the older generation just doesn’t realize that their actions not only create more competition, but their indiscretion draws in get rich quick people who could care less about books, who never even read books.

The older folks, they love to blab to everyone about how much money they can make selling books ( or glassware, etc) including store workers. They don’t seem to realize that these days almost everyone has a laptop, or, at least a good internet connection where they can do a search to see what this guy is doing, and find out that they don’t even need a laptop, they can just use their tiny phone.

There is a huge gap between people under a certain age who happen to know how fast information can travel because they have grown up with computers all their lives, and people who just started using a computer a few years ago. Because I’ve grown up with computers my whole life, I know how to get any information I want, I know how to turn information into profit for me, I also know how to pass info out. I understand how info travels. I mean even without whipping out a laptop, people know your up to something when you buy 20 books, but, most people think that they don’t have the knowledge to do the same thing . . .and even if they bring their laptops, they still won’t–but they can really take a chunk out of product availability until they quit.

Back to the guy. By his actions, and his picks, I don’t think he was an experienced seller, he grabbed almost all hardcovers, most of them dusty, but still had ISBNs, not the type to be worth more if they were first editions. I live in a part of the country where finding books without ISBNS, is rather slim pickings. Heck, I rarely even see books published b4 1950, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book published before 1900 in these parts. And the stores, if it is published b4 1960 they will automatically price them $5 - $10 even if they are BCEs, thinking old = good, just like this guy. I grabbed 3 $25 - $75 books that he passed up.

This store is my favorite spot, they put out books 2 - 3 times a day, but, I think I may have to start passing it up as it is on every other books dealers radar, some will even sit there all day, pouncing on the cart as soon as it comes out. I just can’t do that, it would bore the hell out of me.

I know a few people who say they chat up the store employees because they get first dibs on books.  Well, believe me, so do I and I never talk to them unless they talk to me first, even then I keep it short, I think they like me because I don’t no pester them to death. A couple even bring books out whenever I am there, and I didn’t even have to go and be all fake about it, or tell them anything that would make their store start selling books online instead of offering them to the public, or, make the book people go into business for themselves.

Behold the Week of Glitchdom AMAZON, HALF-And AOB bitching.

I’ll start off with the big Glitch first. AMAZON.

Amazon is doing something that has prevented 3rd party services and even individuals from pulling order reports on consistent, timely basis for about 2 days now. It is aggravating. I’ve had a stellar 2 days of sales and have had to hand delete all my Amazon sales. OF COURSE I am not Home 24/7 so this doesn’t work out good for me.

The most aggravating thing in all of this, is that AOB once again is choosing not to communicate with their customers about this issue–sure, it’s on Amazon’s end, but Aman Pro, Fillz, and Sellerengine have all posted things to their customer base, as well as answered questions on the AZ boards.

And the most ridiculous thing ever is that one poster on Amazon said that they asked AOB to keep to post something about the issue and keep the users up to date, and their answer was to read the Amazon Boards.

Ok, well, most days I am way too busy to read those boards–I only went there today in search of an answer– I noticed that my Amazon orders were taking 3 - 7 hours to be pulled. So I had to waste 20 mins reading threads on Amazon–when AOB could’ve just made a post at the top of their pages like they used to do, and saved me that 20 mins. No wonder people bash AOB so much. It’s like AOB wants us to quit their service. Or perhaps they think that the majority of their users are such small sellers that they would never leave? Can’t afford another service? Well, I’m a large enough seller to use Fillz, and even though I don’t like their set up, I found myself once again looking a fillz today–more precious time that I don’t really have. Why can’t AOB just communicate better?

And I wish that they would cut with the Blessings crap. Saying “Blessings,” doesn’t give a big OK for crappy customer service. I once thought about leaving AOB on their use of “Blessings” alone. I don’t like religion interjected with business, I find that too many people ty to use piety to cover up things. Maybe they think that we are all just dirty sinners, and therefore do not deserve to be communicated with about venue problems.

HALF-make sure your getting paid for every order.

Well this is kind of a big one too, but it doesn’t result in dbl sales, and it can be fixed. All sales are not being posted to payment history. Thank goodness I had a big enough sale to notice that my payment amount was off by glancing at it. I investigated further and found that a couple of my sales were not in my payment history despite being on the sales page. I did some research and it was a known issue though HALF did not post anything about it. I e-mailed HALF with the transaction info, and they posted them to my payment history. Also, from the info I read this happened sometime last year as well, and was fixed without a word as well. I have not had to the time to go through all my transactions to see if I am missing any other payments.

ALIBRIS

Is still processing upload files out of order. Thanx. I got 3 dbl orders, books with rankings over 500K. My rating is going to take a huge ding without the BN or Half sales to keep 5 stars.

To Fillz or not to Fillz

With AOBs recent unexplained downtime–in which there has been no communication whatsover about–I’ve decided to look at Fillz again.

I mean, if AOB would just communicate when this stuff happens, I wouldn’t even look at Fillz. A friend of mine sent them an e-mail asking what the downtime was all about, and all he got back was,

“The site has been repaired, Blessings”

No mention of whether the site was still pulling orders for the 12 or so hours that they were up and down, nada. No mention if this a a problem that will happen again, nada. No mention of the source of the problem. I don’t expect a site to be up 24/7, I know that there will be issues, I know that maintenance needs to be done, but I do expect to be communicated with. In the past if the site went down, they would post something about it, and also something about if orders were still being pulled, sometimes even a backdoor.

Images of Roger just being pissed off at AOB customers and unplugging the system have popped into our heads because there has been no explanation for the downtime.

And yes, we were just kidding around, but because of the non communication there are AOB customers that swear the more they complain about service the more their shit gets fucked up. Now, if AOB would communicate, no one in the world would believe these silly allegations, but since they don’t, there are people who do.

On to Fillz.

They are awesome about posting service outages, and maintenance times. But, the thing that gets me about Fillz, is that it seems like I have to take 2 - 4 steps to do things that I can do on AOB in one click. These are things that I do everyday so this is a biggie.

Also, I like the repricing better on AOB, I can run my repricer, and then pull up a page to reprice the books that weren’t auto repriced. This page shows 25 items with pricing in all Amazon cats. I can also set my repricer to not auto reprice, and do it all via the reprice inventory page. Maybe Fillz has this, but I can’t see it in the TEST site. AOB also allows me to really customize my repricer specs via check items and fill in the blanks, I dont even have to write my own script, or get one written for me.

I like the AOB venue sales break down, I saw a graph on Fillz, but it did not break down by venue, then again, this was the TEST site.

Also, AOB has an Expense Area, I can add all my expenses, and get a 1 page screenshot of a month with venue sales. item costs. and expenses.

So, for the time being I will be sticking with AOB, but if the site goes down again with no communication during, or even after the fact as to the specifics, I will have to suck it up and try Fillz

Heads Up, Somehow I was sent on Vacation by Half.com

So when checking my payment deposit yesterday, I found out that my listings were on Vacation. I’m thinking that maybe this somehow happened when I told Alibris I wanted them to take me out of their Half.com program, but who knows? It was only for a few days, but still. . .I don’t get sales everyday at Half, and It was tax time and rather slow everywhere for me, or maybe I would’ve noticed it sooner.

What I did find odd during my time that Alibris “opted” me into the Half.com program, was the amount of people that ordered my books through Alibris instead of directly through me–despite my better feedback. Maybe some people just like buying from big nameless corporations. I have around 3000 feedbacks so it’s not a case of having excellent feedback but only 20 of them.

Alibris and Dbl Orders, Half, BN, AOB, Fillz, etc

An Albris repsonse that those of you who reprice might want to read. I will post their it below my summary.

I’ve had 2 dbl orders in the past week through Alibris, both were for items that sold and were deleted 5 - 7 days earlier. One item sold through Half ( which I finally opted out of) and the other through BN-which I will also be opting out of. I’ve been selling on Alibris for 5 years and know that it can be wonky, so instead of blaming AOB right off the bat, When this happens I always contact Alibris so that my rating doesn’t take a hit. In every case over the past few years, they were able to find the deletion file-so not AOBs problem.
In these 2 cases, I can see that this happened with books that had been repriced, and the processing on the repricing upload was delayed, while the deletion went through before it. .

For anyone who uses AOB or Fillz, this looks like some of these double sales can’t be helped if you reprice on a regular basis, until Alibris is at full speed again. Alibris, Half, and BN are slow as heck anyway. For the time being, I’m not sure how to solve it. . .Send deletes twice? I suspect that my probs will be mostly eliminated by opting out of those porgrams–if only Half.com would fix the whole book in a shopping cart can’t be deleted when sold on another venue issue.

Hello from Alibris,

Recently we have been experiencing longer-than-normal processing delays with respect to uploaded files as well as changes made to inventory using the tools on the Seller Hub. As a result it is sometimes possible that an order will occur and automatically delete any item while a waiting upload file still containing that item as available won’t process until after that deletion has happened. This would restore that item For Sale after it has already been sold and deleted once.

In this case, an upload file from you deleted the item on 4/5/08 just 4 minutes after midnight on April 5th, but another file containing that same item as “Available” (though it was probably an earlier file) was processed at 2:54am the same day, returning that item as available and leading to the order.

Don’t People Say Thank You Anymore?

I get an inquiry through Abebooks about a month ago, asking me a few questions, and asking me to send photos of signature, artwork, pages, ephemera, etc. So I answer the questions and send 5 photos of various things that the prospective buyer was asking for, and tada! He doesn’t even e-mail to say that he has received them. Knowing that some email can’t handle photos –sometimes they are blocked, or too large–I sent 2 separate e-mails, one with and one without the photos.

Its sad to say but this is not an isolated case. Several times during the past year BWB has primped her books, photographed them, and has been left standing at the altar.

Are people afraid to say thank you? Thinking that I will somehow make them purchase the book? I don’t know. . .At least in most cases the books have already sold to other suiters.

Fun with Search Terms And Hits

Remember back when I talked about that Amazon thread? The one where BWB was mentioned on the 3rd or 4th page and got 140 hits–Well direct hits from that thread are still rolling in, at least one a day. . .and that thread must be 100 pages deep by now–so,yeah, it just might be that only 20 people post all their secrets for Noobs and hold their hands every step of the way–thinking that it’s harmless, but, believe me, it’s getting read by thousands.

Anyway, I thought that some would get some laughs out of the search engine terms bringing people knocking on BWB’s door. Ebay’s new predator friendly feedback policy is by far the winner in making people go out and search the web for the arms of bloggers…

This is not all the search terms. . .I cut some out and some of them seem to have disappeared, like the search term “bitch”. How crazy was the person who used that term and came to this blog? They must’ve went through 200 pages b4 hitting BWB! I’ll figure out this blog thing yet.

ebay’s new feedback policy 3
stupid ebay feedback 1
ebay feedback is stupid 1
new feedback policy explained ebay 1
ebay new feedback policy 1
ebay mean feedback percentage 1
new ebay feedback policy 2
send ebay an email about new feedback po 1
ebay new feedback policy may 20 1
new ebay feedback guidelines policy 1
dissatisfied with ebay’s new policy 2
ebay international shipping precautions 2
ebays new feedback starts 2
ebay store stupid 2
how to stop people seeing my feedback eb 1
ebay feedback held hostage 1
new ebay guidelines 1
new ebay policy sellers can’t leave feed
ebay stupid buyers who never contact abo 1
positive feedback on cancelled ebay tran 1
what sellers are doing about ebay’s new 1
ebay 100% positive feedback in past year 1
ebay new feedback policy’s 1
if the buyer fills out an unpaid item di 1

how to deal with customers paying late o 1
i can’t pay for items on ebay 1
how many ebay negatives are you allowed 1

ebay’s stupid new search 1

can half.com sellers leave negative feed 1

what percentage of people leave feedback 1
book feedbacks 2
will it ship even if i dont leave feedba 1
what can i do if someone dont leave me a 1
stupid feedback 1
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amazon used booksellers feedback 2
amazon leave buyer feedback 2
how to get feedback on amazon 1
amazon soapbox stupid seller 2
amazon sellers burned by a to z 2

book repricers 1
will the sky fall 1
asin new 1
asin naked bitch 1
asin bitch 1
how much is a 2lb book to ship 1
bookseller lingo 2
price of gas for usps 1
bitter book 1
where do booksellers find inventory 1
most aggravating questiond 1
bookseller scouting 1
scoutpal issues amazon details 1
alibris business model
what to do about the dreaded blue screen 2

F*ing Scoutpal and Beeping Noobs

As promised. . . .And no, this is not a conversation about how some people are smart enough to not have to use a look up service. I don’t use it all the time, but, I also don’t like to buy an OOP book that I know sold for $20 a month ago only to find that a remainder house got a hold of 200 copies somehow, and has priced them at $6. It has it’s uses.

Scoutpal. . .I’ve used it for a few years. . .I only use a phone though, not the super fancy expensive equipment.

I have been hating Scoutpal for about 3 months now, I stuck it out at first because I had been with SP for so long, I wanted to believe in SP, and have been sticking it out the past month because I’m simply busy, and when I switch I plan on getting a new system.

Here’s what is sucking. . .

I used SP because of the ability to look up the 3 lowest prices, block sellers, see prices on Abe and price grabber. For a long time SP was the only Look up Service whom offered these options.

The regular SP login went to the crapper 3 months ago, timed out all the time, and when they fixed that, it would only show the lowest price. . .Not Good. Looking up 5 ISBNs at once is extremely painful now.

I moved to using the Metapal link instead, which would show me 3 lowest, other editions available, as well as details of other listings if I wanted. . .One drawback to Meta is that depsite updating my settings, I can only search 1 ISBN at a time. But, since I specialize in genres that always have bottom feeders in the Acceptable and Good Cats, I have always used Meta for certain titles if I was holding a Very Good copy or better.

So, then Meta started turning out “Not Found” for every item. Fixed. Then it started timing out all the time. Fixed. Now it just returns one result and times out on the “details” option if you click it.

it used to be that Dave would send out an update e-mail whenever there was a problem that affected quite a few people, sometimes there would be a post to various seller boards, now, getting a reply to a support e-mail can take over a week if one gets one at all.

I have used the same phone for the past 14 months, and have cleared my cache and memory, so it is not my phone. Also other people have posted about their SP probs.

So, within the next month I plan on switching to a new service. I’m done. Just got to pack my things, and get it all in order first.

*******Beeping Noobs******

Alright Noobs! You got a fancy new scanner, it beeps every time you check and item! Everyone in the store is looking at you! Turn the damn sound off or get ear phones, lest you find a few of these people also get the same new toy that you have!

I saw yet another 2 new scouters using brand new Scanners and a beep beep beeping everywhere a couple weeks ago. How annoying. And how dumb.