FORT Koffee Klatch

[Lois Lane]

Originally Posted by Marleybone

I'm talking about people who charge $10 and $15 for something that can be shipped for $5 or $6 Priority. ... It can be fun but there are always a few persnickity buyers who are a huge pain in the butt.

Hey Marley, yikes, yeah, I've never paid that much for S/H. I remember when I sold an item, I charged $5 S/H. It was heavy so it would've cost me $3.65 for just the postage, another 55 cents for delivery confirmation and 75 cents for the large bubble wrap envelope. That comes to $4.95. And I'm like MyRosieDog. It took me a while to list it, get it packaged for shipping etc. that I had to do when I got home from work. That lady who bought it KNEW how much it cost 'cause it was listed clearly in my auction but after she won, she said, "How about I pay just $2 for shipping and handling?"

Originally Posted by Ana Bannana

My son brought home an abandoned kitten yesterday. My husband is pretty ticked off about it. He hates cats. He says if he smells that litter box even once - the cat is a goner. Anybody have advice for me? He isn't allergic, just not a cat lover. How can I keep hubby and kitty in the same house?

Yes, like Gabriel says, if you keep the litter box clean (and vacuum the house/furniture more often), your husband may not even know there's a cat in the house. Also, kittens are pretty danged cute. Maybe if the kitten likes your husband the best, he'll change his tune and come around? (Maybe you and your son can make a point of saying how the kitten likes him the best!) I have a friend who's got 3 cats (and I'm allergic to cats) and I can never even tell she has ANY animals in the house until one of the cuties come over to be petted. My cat's litter box is in the basement and even there it doesn't smell (we change the litter box often). FYI: we use Tidy Cat for multiple cats, too (the one with the red cap), even though we only have one cat and it works great!

[Google]

 

[angelic_one2002]

Speaking of "Koffee Klatch"...I just bought a coffee grinder, and wondered how many beans to put in it to grind fresh for a pot of coffee..don't want to grind too much ahead of time, as it says it's freshest to only grind what you need. Thanks to anyone who knows!

[Marleybone]

Originally Posted by myrosiedog

My time listing the item, packaging the item (and yes, sometimes I've had to buy supplies for packaging) and the time and gas it takes to take it to the post office for shipping. So I don't mind if a seller charges me a litte more for shipping because I know that it takes me about 1/2 hour or more to list, pack and go to the post office or mail center when I ship an item. And I consider my time to be valuable so why shouldn't they.

I can't justify myself charging extra for "handling" because I don't consider the time that I choose to spend listing, packing and shipping items to be somebody else's responsibility to pay for. I agree that everybody's time is valuable, but the items I sell are things I have to deal with anyway. Whether I'm sorting, tagging and packing things away for a garage sale or driving across town to drop them off at Goodwill, it still takes time. I figure the best use of that time is to list on eBay where I can get the most money for my stuff. I consider it part of my cost for accumulating so much crap in my house, and it's not somebody else's problem that I now have spend time dealing with it.

I've got it down now to where I really don't spend much money on packaging or shipping either. You can order the Priority boxes free from USPS and they deliver them right to your door, and doing the pre-paid shipping labels it doesn't take that much time. The information is already there and you just have to fill in the weight, shipping date and that's about it. Probably my only expenses for shipping are packaging tape, bubble wrap for the more fragile things, and the 1 sheet of paper and little bit of ink that it takes to print each label. The grocery store I go to is a USPS site, so I drop off packages when I do my shopping, or I send them with my husband because he stops by the post office every day to pick up our mail, so I'm never making a special trip just to mail packages. Plus, you can schedule a pick up with USPS and they will come to your house and pick up packages. I have a friend who lives out in the country, and this is what she does all the time. She never goes to the post office.

Lois Lane - Yeah, can you believe that? There are people out there who seriously charge that much. The only time I charge for packaging materials is if I'm shipping something really small in a padded envelope, then I add that cost into the shipping charge. When you do the pre-paid shipping labels they require you to buy Delivery Confirmation but it's free with Priority and with Parcel Post or First Class it's 35 cents. I think it's appropriate to charge the buyer for those things but I always make sure I say in my listing exactly what they are being charged for. I also use the shipping calculator in my listings so people can plug in their zip code and know what their cost will be before they bid.
That's funny that lady wanted to pay only $2. That's happened to me before too, my biggest one is people who win an auction and then write and say they didn't know I only take Paypal and ask if they can pay by check or money order when my auction clearly states in about 3 places that I only accept Paypal. I tell them no, I've gotten burned a few times on the checks and especially money orders so I won't take them anymore. I'm not giving in because somebody didn't bother to read my terms. Money orders seem to always get "lost in the mail". It's funny how people still expect you to send their item even when you never got their payment.

[Lois Lane]

Originally Posted by Marleybone

my biggest one is people who win an auction and then write and say they didn't know I only take Paypal and ask if they can pay by check or money order when my auction clearly states in about 3 places that I only accept Paypal. I tell them no, I've gotten burned a few times on the checks and especially money orders so I won't take them anymore. I'm not giving in because somebody didn't bother to read my terms. Money orders seem to always get "lost in the mail". It's funny how people still expect you to send their item even when you never got their payment.

OHMIGOD! That's one of the reasons why I stopped selling on ebay (although I'll still buy things on there occassionally). I was the total sucker seller--people would give me all these excuses and I'd believe them. I'm a big ol' dummy that way! They would say they mailed the payment but it got lost in the mail...but they would resend it. When they did, the date on the money order was always AFTER the date they originally said they sent it. The ones who never paid me would harrass me to no end and ebay didn't really do anything about it even though the "buyer" had no proof they sent the payment (or a receipt for their money order). After a few of those, I figured I was better off donating the items to charity. But I'm really glad to hear it worked out so well for you and some of the other folks on here. You all probably have better business sense than me!

[Sun84]

Originally Posted by angelic_one2002

Speaking of "Koffee Klatch"...I just bought a coffee grinder, and wondered how many beans to put in it to grind fresh for a pot of coffee..don't want to grind too much ahead of time, as it says it's freshest to only grind what you need. Thanks to anyone who knows!

So long as it's a "normal" size coffee grinder and a 12-cup pot of coffee, I'd fill the beans to the stainless steel line (or until the hopper is almost full to the top) and grind. Repeat. I always use 2 'grinds' of beans for a pot of coffee, ansd yes it's certainly better when you grind them fresh!!!

MMMMMMMMMM.......coffee ........off to seek caffine!

[gabriel]

As an added note about the found kitten: Usually for some reason cats always GO TO people they know don't like cats, so as Lois Lane posted, he may just find the critter so danged cute......

[angelic_one2002]

Sun84 - thanks!

[Marleybone]

Originally Posted by Lois Lane

OHMIGOD! That's one of the reasons why I stopped selling on ebay (although I'll still buy things on there occassionally). I was the total sucker seller--people would give me all these excuses and I'd believe them. I'm a big ol' dummy that way! They would say they mailed the payment but it got lost in the mail...but they would resend it. When they did, the date on the money order was always AFTER the date they originally said they sent it. The ones who never paid me would harrass me to no end and ebay didn't really do anything about it even though the "buyer" had no proof they sent the payment (or a receipt for their money order). After a few of those, I figured I was better off donating the items to charity. But I'm really glad to hear it worked out so well for you and some of the other folks on here. You all probably have better business sense than me!

The frustrating thing is people who don't send payment and don't respond to e-mail. Finally when I start the "unpaid item dispute" process I will all of a sudden get an e-mail saying either the buyer's father had a heart attack or their child is deathly ill or their mother has Alzheimer's. Every. single. time. At first I got suckered into it but that is the excuse every single time a buyer doesn't pay. Or the computer is down. I had one lady tell me her computer was down but when I did a search I found out she had been bidding on new auctions, and had already received feedback for having paid other sellers whose auctions ended after mine. When I called her on it she got all bitchy but at least I finally got paid. It's just a good thing that the majority of my transactions go perfectly because if all of them sucked as bad as that one I wouldn't be doing it either.

[Muduh]

My son sells on ebay a lot. A while back he had two identical items, both used and worn. That was how he listed them. He sold them both and one guy gave feedback that the item was "worn". well, yeah, that IS what it said in the listing. The other guy was well pleased and said so. So I'm assuming that many times satisfaction with an item is a relative thing. Sort of like the old saying, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

One thing that I bought and we still laugh about is a "bear rug" that I got for the kids room. It wasn't a real bear (we knew that) but more like a stuffed animal bear rug. When it came it was tiny. I wear a size 5 shoe and one of my feet covers the "rug". We just hung it over the canopy of his bed but I still laugh at it.

[Marleybone]

Recently I sold some bottles of scented oil for candle making to a lady who had bought from me before. She asked for Parcel Post because it was cheaper. I packaged them up with the lids taped down and bubble wrap and sent them off. She e-mailed me almost every day for 3 weeks because the package didn't come and nothing was showing up in the Delivery Confirmation. It finally arrived in a wet plastic bag, the box was completely destroyed. I don't know what happened to it but she sent me a picture and it looked like they ran over it with a truck. Fortunately all of the bottles arrived intact and not even a leak. The thing that irked me was when she left feedback she described in detail the condition of the package, which was not even my fault. She did leave positive so I didn't say anything, I wanted to but I didn't want to deal with her anymore.