Misleading Coin Listings - stuff like this gives eBay a bad name

[sin-n-dex]

So I was checking my Scotland stuff earlier (new research after the message I got, I have 500 more of those things to list, so I'm wondering if I should shift strategy).

And what comes up is...

Churchill Silver Crown 1965 (there's more in the title, but they said it was a silver crown). I don't know of any silver Churchill crown, I was wondering what the purity of the silver was figuring it was something pretty low and it's not a common variety, because the cupro-nickel ones come through our store by the bagful and end up in the junk bin.

I looked at the listing, the coin was shown at several angles showing all sorts of nice lustre and looked like it actually had silver content (you might disagree, but for a minute I really thought there was a silver Churchill crown).

I read down, I see this: "coin is silver coloured, metal is cupro-nickel".

Wow that's very misleading! If you're going to call something SILVER in the title, the buyer expect "silver metal content" not "silver colour". We can tell by looking at the picture it's silver coloured. (Generally when I have something silver coloured and I don't know much about the metal, I would refer to it as "nickel alloy" so a buyer doesn't get misled into thinking it's silver).

No wonder I get some many dumb questions from buyers about my silver coins. They're looking at stuff like that and wary of other listings.

Seller in question sold 7 of these for 14.99-19.99 GBP and accepted some offers too. For 14.99 GBP I expect a coin with silver content. Just for the record, our shop sells these for 25 cents in our junk bin, and when I was last there looking for stuff to sell (about 2 weeks ago) I was offered 20 of them if I wanted to list some. I opted to get some Queen Elizabeth II crowns instead which are cu-ni and will list for $5, which I think is fair.

C.

[slippinjimmy]

I could list pages and pages of things that eBay sellers do that are a major reason why the pool of buyers here  continues to get smaller and smaller.

Many people I know who were regular eBay buyers 20 years ago have gone elsewhere and it's almost always because of poor quality sellers giving them bad experiences. They may have had plenty of good experiences but it only take a couple of bad sellers to turn them off eBay and lead them to telling other people how bad it can be.

[onefootflipper]

There really isn't much anything you can do about widespread bad practices in any industry. No matter what you sell there is going to be something bad that is incredibly widespread in your niche.

In trading cards it is sellers selling cards for 99 cents shipped or even 99 cents plus shipping. The 99 cents shipped one loses actual money with every sale given the average cost of card supplies. While the 99 cents plus shipping model is essentially impossible to get to minimum wage listing, pulling packing and shipping cards at that price even if they have a cost basis of zero.  However you talk to any seller doing it and they tell you "works great for us" or something along those lines because they have never truly examined it. 

[reallynicestamps]

And feedback doesn't help.

Not only are the naive buyers leaving feedback when they learn they have been deceived instead of filing NAD claims, but eBay doesn't use fb to assess member accounts.

And naive buyers, who are the target for these scams, think that a 95% fb rating is still an "A" seller perhaps because they don't actually read the feedback. 

@sin-n-dex  Is the Churchill crown an actual coin that at one time could be used to buy a chocolate bar and a copy of the Beano, or is it a fantasy piece in any metal?

[sin-n-dex]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

@sin-n-dex  Is the Churchill crown an actual coin that at one time could be used to buy a chocolate bar and a copy of the Beano, or is it a fantasy piece in any metal?

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It's a "Great Britain 1 Crown 1965" that has Churchill to commemorate him (I think he died in 1964 or 1965). I'm not sure if it could ever be used to buy stuff, but it's in Krause Mishler World Coins, so it's actually a real coin.

I go through the junk at the coin shop to look for anything that doesn't belong (I collected world coins a whole lot 20 years ago so I'm familiar with most world stuff before 2005), and I find these Churchill crowns in the junk box frequently. So often in fact, I don't even pull them. If we reprice them, it would be for 75 cents and the coin shop doesn't want to pay labour for a 75 cent issue.

C.

[sin-n-dex]

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@onefootflipper wrote:

There really isn't much anything you can do about widespread bad practices in any industry. No matter what you sell there is going to be something bad that is incredibly widespread in your niche.

In trading cards it is sellers selling cards for 99 cents shipped or even 99 cents plus shipping. The 99 cents shipped one loses actual money with every sale given the average cost of card supplies. While the 99 cents plus shipping model is essentially impossible to get to minimum wage listing, pulling packing and shipping cards at that price even if they have a cost basis of zero.  However you talk to any seller doing it and they tell you "works great for us" or something along those lines because they have never truly examined it. 

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some of the people I knew (way back when) that did this 99 cent stuff were on welfare/disability and were not allowed to earn significant money, but needed to keep busy all day while remaining unemployable. To make $100 a month on these sales was good money for someone receiving welfare 20 years ago.

C.

[sin-n-dex]

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@slippinjimmy wrote:

I could list pages and pages of things that eBay sellers do that are a major reason why the pool of buyers here  continues to get smaller and smaller.

Many people I know who were regular eBay buyers 20 years ago have gone elsewhere and it's almost always because of poor quality sellers giving them bad experiences. They may have had plenty of good experiences but it only take a couple of bad sellers to turn them off eBay and lead them to telling other people how bad it can be.

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I make little gestures and do things that cost a little to give a good impression of my buyers. One thing I do is packaging. My packaging might cost me 25 cents extra on each package, but I try to offset that by buying discount priced supplies by purchasing in bulk (last bulk order was 1000 envelopes).

Another thing I do, is police the payments to make sure all money received for shipping adheres to the promos being offered in the listing and refund that overage. I don't always catch it when it's purchased, but I reconcile my orders once a week and catch them then, even thoough the package may have already been delivered and the customer left positive feedback.

Little things customers remember. So while I don't have a big pool of customers to attract anymore, I try very hard to keep the ones I have.

C.