You've found the famous Dave's Garden website! Join this friendly global community that shares tips and ideas for home and gardens, along with seeds and plants!
Check out the DG homepage for a brief overview of what you'll find in this gardening mega-site.
Login
If you don't have an account yet, visit the registration page to sign up.
I recently sold something on ebay. When I got the notification, the buyers address was listed as in the US so I added the proper shipping cost. Received a question from them saying that they are in Canada and I over charged. When they paid, the addy is different, Canadian one...Same last name, different first name, Paypal, unverified addy, should I be suspicious?
I've sold exactly 3 things there and 2 of them have been a pain, very discouraging!!
I would be suspicious, yes. Probably, though, they have a friend in the US and they order things using their friend's address so they can order things from the US without paying the customs fee.
You can choose to oblige them (if they asked nicely) by sending the items to them anyway. Check their feedback very well, though, first. They have, technically, violated eBay policy, so if their feedback is off, you can tell them that you will only send it to their "official" address. If you send it to the "new" address and they claim that they didn't get it, PayPal will not cover you since the "new" address is unverified.
I'm sorry eBay has been so difficult for you! We've had mostly good customers, but there are always a few that make you growl/cringe/shake your head. :-)
I'm thinking now it may be a relative, same last name after all...for the reasons you said above, customs problems. They were very co-operative when I was "talking" to them. Excellent feedback. Maybe I'm just too suspicious by nature?
Yup, ebay has been very disappointing so far. Maybe/hopefully I'm just off to a rough start, has to get better from here on in, I've got the bad ones out of the way, right?
This sounds to me as if a U.S. resident wants to send the item to a Canadian relative. If that is the case, then ordering from a Canadian source and having it shipped directly to the relative in Canada makes perfect sense.
Your customer should have told you if that's what he or she was doing rather than complaining to you about the amount of charges based on the U.S. shipping address you were given. Sometimes a buyer can be a jerk, but I don't think you really need to be concerned. I would adjust the shipping based on the new address and re-invoice.
Whether you send to a verified or unverified address or an address different from the one in PP, if the customer says the item was not received and you can't prove otherwise PayPal will refund the $$. PP seller protection really only protects you from fraud, which is hard to prove anyway. If the item is relatively inexpensive, I wouldn't worry about fraud. If you are selling expensive items, you might want to look into shipping insurance.
Thanks Karen! I think you're right...it isn't an expensive item, just getting rid of some x-box360 games that DH doesn't play anymore. I took them to trade in and refused to accept the 25 cents they offered me...sold them on e-bay as used and got $25. Plus, it was a way to get my feet wet with the e-bay thing...better to learn the ropes on something...um...insignificant, than on something really valuable.
You may also see different ebay names going to the same Paypal address.For instance,my wife,daughter and I all have different ebay names but all sales,or purchases,go to the same PP id and address.
25 cents? Ha-ha, you got the last laugh; didn't you? It definitely is a learning process for sure, but it sounds to me as if you are doing just fine.
gone2seed,
I didn't know you could share a PP account with more than one ID/e-mail. Thanks for the info. Stands to reason maybe you could, but I never thought of it.
So, although I'm having a bit of fun and learning a lot, I'm discovering it to be an organizational nightmare!
It would be easier if I could print things off and keep them in folders, that kind of organizing I'm good at. I can't though so how do you keep everything tidy? How long do you keep all of the e-mails? One item was ok, but now that I have 6 or 7 all in different stages I'm finding it harder to keep organized.
We sell stuff for other people, as well as for ourselves, and you're right - keeping up with all of the e-mails from all of the stages of each sale gets nuts! So for each account (person we sell for), we have multiple e-mail folders. We have the same folders for "our" sales. Here is a list of our folders...
>Items Listed
>Buyer Questions
>Items Sold
>Invoices
>Payment Received
>eBay Fees and Invoices (we stick PayPal notices in this one, too)
>USPS Shipping Labels
>FedEx
>Purchases
I try to file the e-mails as I deal with them, but sometimes I get behind so every couple of weeks I sit down and shuffle e-mails so the inbox isn't quite so overwhelming. We have a separate e-mail address just for eBay stuff, so those e-mails don't get mixed in with our every day ones.
So, do you move an e-mail from one folder to the next or just delete it from a folder when a new one comes in? for instance...a sold item goes in the sold folder, when it is paid for the new e-mail goes into a paid folder, do you delete the e-mail in the sold folder so you know its been paid? Did that make sense?
I keep everything - which has its own issues, of course. LOL But I like to be able to backtrack through all of the stages of things, so I keep all of the e-mails. If I want to see all of the e-mails regarding any one item, I do a search in our e-mail program for the item number (since it appears on all of the e-mails.)
That answered my next question! Was going to ask how long do we have to keep the records. I was thinking of deleting as soon a shipped, paypal keeps records in our files forever don't they?
You can't access records on eBay after a few months. I don't remember about PayPal... I would at least keep the items sold or payments received folders, just in case.
Now I'm going to poke around in PayPal, just to see how long back I can access our records, cuz I'm curious. :-)
Humm - I always make 2 hard copies of the packing slips, one to go in the package and one for me to keep, I attach the part of the shipping label to the one I keep. I delete mail after they are shipped. I keep a dated manila folder for each month. I kep DG and Ebay sales in separate folders. I would have way too much on my computer to try to keep all correspondence.
Just use whatever system works best for you. :-) You can print out a packing slip from PayPal after the person pays. We also print out two of those - one to put in the box, and one that we staple the shipping label to. We keep those for a year. I didn't think of mentioning that earlier, so thanks for the reminder, Azalea.
we do something similar:
print two packing slips (for our copy we use previously printed paper), stick the postage receipt to our copy and file (we keep for 7 years in case we get audited for state sales tax) and put the other in the box with the items.
I also use file exchange on ebay to download all our orders monthly and keep the excel spreadsheet on two different drives (one as a backup).
I download our web orders to an excel spreadsheet also and save them the same way.
I import different sections of these spreadsheets into other excel sheets that monitor my sales, inventory and business data. sounds complicated but i use formulas that fetch data automatically, so overall it's a pretty simple system.
now if i just could get my brain to understand php and mysql to manage my website...
It doesn't really seem that complicated to me. I sell roughly 5 items a day, for an average of $100-$150 in sales. Most of my buyers are repeat customers & like for me to hold onto items to combine shipping.
I don't do ANYTHING with printed paperwork. EBay updates your Sold page to show whether the item is invoiced/paid/shipped/feedbacked, but I just check my PayPal account each day to see whose payment has popped in there, then I print their label & off the package goes.
All email goes into an eBay folder, and I delete old stuff every few weeks.
My only problem was remembering who was who between eBay names, email names & real names, so now I write all of that on a Post-It to keep track. The Post-It goes on their stack of kimonos & then into my Rolodex.
I had everything bad that could happen happen to me the first season I sold on the internet. I now keep a customer file on the computer for each buyer. All emails and IDs ever used are stored there, invoice copies, shipping copies and emails. When I need to find something I make the computer search for it. Everything I need to know is in that one file. All files get backed up every month or so, including my field inventory, plant descriptions and photos, backups are stored in a fireproof root cellar. There is no room inside the house to store all this stuff, too many bulbs and seeds! We already have too much paperwork we have to do and store just because we are in the AG business.
our nursery was mentioned in a print magazine article in Feb and i have been so busy with the system i described above - it was not working for us any longer.
i just switched from using multiple excel spreadsheets to InFlow - OMG. i wish i had found this program a year ago.
like buggycrazy, we have lots of inventory and sell on multiple venues - so it's important to keep track of all our customers and their orders.
for instance when someone emails 'i bought x last fall and it's not sprouted' , i can quickly see which 'x' they bought, their location and whether this 'x' should have sprouted by now.
or 'i liked what i bought last spring and want 6 more of THEM' - i can see what 'them' is and invoice for 6 more easily.
we are also required to collect state sales tax and one never knows when an audit might be in the making - so we keep paper records just in case.
our accountant also like neat records, makes it much easier at tax time and also to do payroll when we have seasonal help.
