I just woke up to 3 problems as usual. One big one is web-interpret cross border welcoming me and saying that ebay opted me in. Im not clicking through anything and I know there were major issues in the past. I never would opt in and have offered international shipping for 10 years. Im at a point where I may stop all international shipping. I had 2 - no pickups, 1 in Germany and 1 in the UK. Really Im at the point of about closing my store after almost 3 million in sales.
The last thing I want is being auto-opted into a program that is scammy. Also telling me I have to offer 30 day paid returns, which I will close my store before doing that. Ive always taken returns, Ive always shipped international but, I need to have some control over that. An overseas return is costly and buyers not wanting to pay customs is becoming common.
I want to sell to everyone, everywhere. Its in our best business interest but, when ever little thing is micromanaged poorly, we stand to lose more money and time which gives us no time to actually work on our store.
I called ebay while writing this and couldnt be told if I was opted in or not. I was told to go to webinterpret and click a link and send a message and to report to spoof@ebay. It seems rather antiquated that ebay couldnt tell me and that I have to write companies to see if Im opted in. Its just one thing after another here.
Another issue some of you may be able to clarify for me. Weve shipped everyday since the beginning. Noone had to make us do this or threaten us with defects. Yet of course they did. The most common feedback we get is super fast shipping or something like that.
it took us a long time to sort out usps as we had no full time carrier becasue our mail route was long and noone wanted it. For a long time, we were literally chasing carriers, running to the post office before close and always stressed out about something we already did but, to get that scan. We had 7 different carriers some weeks, all at different times. After a lot of begging, we got on a route for pickups becasue we did enough volume. We have guy who comes everyday so it was a load off our shoulders. Now we moved close by and the same guy comes and he's great. The issue is now that due to our sales taking a dump, and some days we have 0-2 packages, it looks like we are losing our pickup. USPS will not pickup on a route unless you do x amount of packages, which we no longer do and it is 100% ebays issues. We never had blackouts and were on a constant climb until June 2018.
Recently with the quadrupling of returns, we started charging shipping again. Things changed for the worse and free shipping became an open invite to buy without thinking. We have no discounts, I dont beleive anything we do can make Cassinni like us, so if we lose our carrier we will stop shipping daily. Not intentionally, as we will still do the packages but, we will not drive to the post office daily or have the stress of chasing down an unsuspecting mailman with a bunch of packages. We will have to put them out with scan sheet and cross our fingers. We have a job box with a code and instructions on our porch. We can request pickups through the site again and add instructions but, we know how that worked out last time, which was sometimes packages wouldnt be picked up.
This will surely tank our shipping % if a decent size load doesnt get picked up and I cant bare to call ebay everyday like the old days. What will this do to our account ? We dont care about badges, weve been here long enough to have repeat customers and weve seen this terror ship coming at us for years so made lots of money and diversified, assuming that we wouldnt be selling here some day. Of course I dont want to see the work weve put in to the store go away but sunk cost fallacy be damned.
So many unintended consequences have made doing business here harder. We have almost always been 100% feedback sellers, we had all the discounts and shipped 6 days a week. 45k a month was average. Almost 3 million in sales. Right now if 1 of of every item in our store sold, the value of current prices is 500k. much of that stuff we have in large quantities not listed on ebay. We also have enough inventory to quadruple the size of our store but, severely diminished returns if we go at it like we used to for much less. Many millions in inventory.
Weve done every edit and change over the years, weve tried free returns, done free shipping for years and now find ourselves selling much less but constant issues. The customer has almost become a unintended adversary. We block at the slightest hint of issue and look at feedback left by buyers when they ask questions. This is the only protection we have when ebay stopped protecting us. We have always been top sellers , never losing discounts and being crazy to get our scans and packages out as intended. Ebay has constantly made this harder to achieve through the one size fits all, treating us all like were crooks and not doing something right. We used to rewards, now we get threats constantly. Psychologically, its pretty messed up. It doesnt matter if its un-intended, thats what it is. Constant problems, different solutions from different people and usually several cs calls or emails to get a halfway decent solution.
This is different than what has ever happened here. I would bet that some of us sellers were ebays best buyers as well. Now we see no reason to invest more and more time and money as the present and end looks bleak. I'll beleive seller protections when I see them.
Started the day out with manufactured problems is becoming more the norm and it doesnt get ant easier, it just builds up until we are about to pop.
- but if there is some way to mess that up then Webinterpret will find a way to do so.
