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Drive up in a restored '57 Chevy and you're going to attract a crowd, even amongst people with no particular interest in cars. Get out your Altair or Commodore 64 and if there are any hardcore geeks or tech hipsters around you'll get their attention, but you're not gonna draw a crowd.
yes, if you have ever take a ticker for the CCC (Computer Chaos Campus) then you know that's the Holy Truth, since even when the public scene is composed by tech hipsters of every kind (hackers rather than enthusiasts), the most of them are more attracted by motor show (that is a subset of pure entertainment in the kind of event) rather than talks on vintage computing, but being the public of CCC composed by tech hipsters than the 99% of them is attracted by the hacking camp with all the events about modern technology, and people like me, restorers, are called "the low-tech", pretty ignored by the mass.
next time I will take a ticker for CCC, I will give them a few talks about bitcoins, mining, and how to crack a detachable lock hanging by a pivoted hook on the object fastened, rather than how to polish plastic and metal for a perfect restoration
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and with PayPal I am responsible for everything, including a damages that only happen due to a poor shipping service
What's wrong with that? You packed the stuff for shipping, you contract with the shipper to ship. The buyer doesn't take control until it is on his doorstep, so you can't pass off your faulty packing on him if there is shipping damage. This is how the normal business world works, at least here: any damage up until the point the buyer receives it is the senders problem (because only the sender can claim compensation from the shipper). If you're not happy with buyers wanting a cheap uninsured drop-kicked delivery, don't offer to send it via one.
Y'know, the impression I got from your posts is that you think you have a right to make a profit on whatever you choose to do business in. It doesn't work like that. You have a right to offer stuff for sale, but it's up to buyers whether your price is worth it to them. (Apparently) derisory offers aren't meant to be offensive, just a statement of what your stuff is worth to that buyer. Don't treat it as a personal affront; it is just business.QuoteThis saved me to pay Paypal's commision (6% of the value).
See, you're not averse to being offensive yourself when it suits you. That commission pays for buyer and seller protection insurance, which you benefit from when it's your turn. You are doing exactly what you accuse those buyers that want cheaper-than-USPS shipping of doing.
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next time I will take a ticker for CCC, I will give them a few talks about bitcoins, mining, and how to crack a detachable lock hanging by a pivoted hook on the object fastened, rather than how to polish plastic and metal for a perfect restoration
I polish plastic and metal for a perfect restoration *for me* because I enjoy restoring stuff and having nice examples of vintage tech to play with and show off to my other geek friends. I don't even pretend it will be worth it from a business perspective. I enjoy restoring vintage gear and preserving it, it doesn't have to have profit potential.
A couple years ago I cleaned up and de-yellowed a tired old Wyse dumb terminal and then paid ~$80 for a brand new CRT to replace the very tired one that was in it. It's cool, I now have a very nice vintage terminal to play with, but would I make a profit if I ever tried to sell it? Highly unlikely, even if I value my labor at $0. It's ok though, I didn't do it to profit, I did it for myself and there are far less interesting ways to blow 80 bucks and a couple of afternoons. -
What's wrong with that?
it's wrong that- customers on eBay are not willing to pay for insurance, but they claim to Paypal to have the money back if something goes wrong during shipping ---> workaround to fix it: you have to force them to pay the insurance by increasing the selling price up to the 10% in order to cover the insurance cost
- customers are not willing to pay for a serious shipping service, e.g. UPS, Fedex, etc, and they want shitty cheap services that are prone to lost/damage the parcel, and you have to refund ---> workaround to fix it: drop the whole auction, money back, relist it on eBay, and ban the user if he/she insists on getting good via cheap shipping
With shitty shipping services like Ecoparcel the failure rate is like 4 parcels lost/damaged every 10 you ship: too bad business with them! -
See, you're not averse to being offensive yourself when it suits you. That commission pays for buyer and seller protection insurance, which you benefit from when it's your turn. You are doing exactly what you accuse those buyers that want cheaper-than-USPS shipping of doing.
I already offer the warranty and assistance on everything I sell, and eBay already takes my money (up to the 10% of value) even if they provide zero assistance when something goes wrong.
You know you have to pay eBay even when you don't sell anything? It's costly at the end of the year.
Let me tell two years ago I sold a RISC-workstation, the customer had persuaded me to use Ecoparcel for the shipping method, and the parcel got lost (rather than stolen property, I have the suspect), and I was not covered by any insurance to save the customer to pay the cost.
My big mistake. What do you think it happened with eBay?
I had to refund the whole commission via Paypal due to their protection program, my account was blocked for 4 days, this caused a lot of problems with my balance since my account was linked to a bank account, and phoning/emailing to eBay was completely futile since the only reply I got was: they wanted me to pay their commissions.
Thus, 430 euro of goods and S/H gone lost, plus 41.50 euro to eBay for their commissions, it means I was off by 471.50 euro.
Who has ever helped or protected me? eBay doesn't consider the case when the parcel is lost/damaged, they want their money, they don't listen to your reasons, neither they accept a delay for your refund, you are obliged to pay immediately, this is the irritating point, they block your account, thus even your pending business (aka money that you are waiting from customers) is blocked, and if you have the account linked to a bank, this is alarming since they can access to your money in a very irritating.
Usually, in real business, payments are issued with 60 days of time, whereas eBay via Paypal immediately blocks the bank, and this might cause problems.
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This is how the normal business world works
Have you ever bought something from companies like Newark? Moates? They don't offer PayPal as the payment method, they only accept bank money transfer, and they don't ship anything if you don't subscribe an insurance and accept FedEx costs.
They are not willing to give you money back if something goes wrong with the shipping, they readdress the problem to a third party company that *might* refound withing 20 days.
Mr Ian at sgidepot.co.uk doesn't sell on eBay, and he doesn't accept Paypal unless you send the money via "send money to friend/family" that means- you can't claim money back, not even if the parcel is lost
- you pay commissions (the 5%..10% of the value, it depends if it's international or national payment)
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but would I make a profit if I ever tried to sell it?
it sounds like you haven't yet understood I need to do it for a living. -
What's wrong with that?
it's wrong that- customers on eBay are not willing to pay for insurance, but they claim to Paypal to have the money back if something goes wrong during shipping ---> workaround to fix it: you have to force them to pay the insurance by increasing the selling price up to the 10% in order to cover the insurance cost
- customers are not willing to pay for a serious shipping service, e.g. UPS, Fedex, etc, and they want shitty cheap services that are prone to lost/damage the parcel, and you have to refund ---> workaround to fix it: drop the whole auction, money back, relist it on eBay, and ban the user if he/she insists on getting good via cheap shipping
With shitty shipping services like Ecoparcel the failure rate is like 4 parcels lost/damaged every 10 you ship: too bad business with them!
i totally get where your coming from but you can't force a customer into something they don't want.
To be honest i think ebay is not the right platform for selling restored vintage hardware due to the fragile nature of old systems. They can work one day and blow up the next, they are often big & heavy and are a massive PITA to ship.
i sold a quantel paintbox to a guy in Oregon a few months back, shipping was $150 by UPS and that was without insurance, then the video output card crapped out shortly after it arrived
. Thankfully he's been really good about it, probably because he works with vintage hardware and knows how temperamental it can be. I am just waiting to hear if the replacement i sent to him has fixed it. It also took many emails before the deal to work out exactly what he needed and what i could help with, i bet it can be hard to do that when someone just hits the BiN button and expects everything to be perfect like it was a new product.
i said before, i think you should put your skills into something else that is more profitable and doesn't require you to ship large fragile computers around the world -
i totally get where your coming from but you can't force a customer into something they don't want.
if they don't want to pay for insurance they don't have to insist on getting stuff. It's simple, but people usually insist on their reasons to persuade you.To be honest I think eBay is not the right platform for selling restored vintage hardware due to the fragile nature of old systems. They can work one day and blow up the next, they are often big & heavy and are a massive PITA to ship.
eBay is just platform, an occasion to meet, and it worked until new customers injected a distorted view of the business, whose solution was readdressed by eBay into new ridiculous protection program that forces you to refund money without any protection for the seller, plus their ridiculous form that forces people to offer shitty shipping services.
It's not what you see from respectable serious companies like Newark and Moates.
Have you noted that a lot of sellers are no more selling on eBay?i said before, i think you should put your skills into something else that is more profitable and doesn't require you to ship large fragile computers around the world
Out of eBay, I do usually ship glass laser tubes for label cutting, they are even more fragile than computers, nobody has ever complained about UPS's cost, neither for wood box used to ship the equipment: it's eBay that is too mentally ill with the bad attitude of promoting junk for free.
See what ANS replied to my email when I contacted them via eBayQuoteI have a 90S which is a RD matted to the 7732. This unit is new however the metal case does have some small scratches on it. I will let you have it for $600.00 USD + $100 USD S/H, under these conditions and terms:
Sold As Is
No returns
Your responsible for custom / import fees
Insurance is mandatory if the payment not via bank money transfer
Let me know if you want this unit, if so then I will fully QA Test this unit? -
I said before, I think you should put your skills into something else that is more profitable and doesn't require you to ship large fragile computers around the world
(SGI Indigo2/Impact Workstation, professionally repainted, maxed out
loaded with tons of software, fully restored, offered with DOA warranty
and shipped inside a by a wood enforced box)
like this? or do you want to see a bigger and heavier one?
I have a 50Kg IBM S/360's hard drive shipped to Brazil into a wood box
anyway, I am no more putting new stuff, I am just selling what is still in the warehouse
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You know you have to pay eBay even when you don't sell anything?
So if you don't make a profit, Ebay can take back the electricity and data services you've already consumed, the wages from the web monkeys and dev teams, the data center rentals, etc?
Maybe I am misunderstanding and you're actually running your own tat bazaar so not really using anything Ebay provides. Somehow, I don't think so.
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but would I make a profit if I ever tried to sell it?
it sounds like you haven't yet understood I need to do it for a living.
We all need to do something for a living, but not everything is a viable means of support. I couldn't reasonably support myself by selling vintage hardware, so I do something else for a living. Your needs have no relation to what the customers want/expect. If the customer is not willing to pay for shipping insurance then you should not sell to them, simple as that. No sense in complaining about it around here. Things like lowball offers and customers who want ridiculously cheap shipping are simple facts of life when one is trying to sell things. If you can't deal with such things then find some other way to make a buck because those are things you are going to encounter.
When I put in an offer on something that has a "Best Offer" link, I don't care what the seller thinks the item is worth, I don't care how much profit they need to make, I don't care what they have invested in it, my offer is just that, an offer, it's what I'm willing to pay. If it's less than what they feel they need to get for the item then they can counter-offer, or they can decline, either one is fine with me. If it were an item that I absolutely had to have I would have just paid full price. -
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You know you have to pay eBay even when you don't sell anything?
So if you don't make a profit, eBay can take back the electricity and data services you've already consumed, the wages from the web monkeys and dev teams, the data center rentals, etc?
eBay already takes a lot of money from adverting
and since eBay has a responsibility at persuading your customers to refuse professional shipping services, then they shouldn't force you to pay the commissions when the parcel got damaged/lost since in this case, your gain is already negative
what I complain is that commissions must be paid ONLY when your gain is positive, so commissions make sense. -
I don't care what the seller thinks the item is worth, I don't care how much profit they need to make, I don't care what they have invested in it, my offer is just that
Precisely. You don't care.
and individuals like you have ruined eBay
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Precisely. You don't care.
Individuals like you have ruined eBay
Please explain why I should care, and why people like me have ruined ebay? I'm curious to know what great hardships it has caused you to get lowball offers, and what extreme and exhausting measures you must take to decline these offers. I'm having a hard time understanding this because I sell stuff on ebay now and then, and I occasionally get lowball offers and it has never even occurred to me to get my knickers in a twist about it, if their offer is less than I'm willing to accept I simply decline, it's very, very easy. In fact I can even set it up so that ebay auto-declines and I never even see these offers. Perhaps you should consider seeking psychological help? You seem to take it very personally whenever someone else doesn't value your possessions as greatly as you do.
You know what would stop me from making lowball offers on items? If all sellers stopped accepting them, but on the contrary I find they are accepted surprisingly often, so please give me a compelling reason why I should stop or even feel the slightest bit bad about doing so? -
Please explain why I should care, and why people like me have ruined ebay? I'm curious to know what great hardships it has caused you to get lowball offers
you are very irritating by insisting on what you believe it's your right without the minimal cognitive perception to others
I have a "buy-it-now", followed by a "make an offer", eBay wants more money if you add a trigger to the minimal value you can automatically accept, thus I am not using the trigger, and if the wanted price is 100 USD, people like you are prone to offer less than 10 USD (or less than 10% of the value) simply because they don't care.
They insist, they insist, they insist, ..... and that is so irritating and offensive, and you don't care, and you assume it's right
And the sad line is that with jerks like those it's always a pole in the ass for honest people like me; you are not prone to listen to us, because you don't care, thus it ends you make us stop our services on eBay since they are not worth the effort.
You are the kind who first makes a ridiculous offer, then wants shitty service, and then claims to Paypal to have the money back, and eBay, to encourage people like you, that has become the most of the new users, has offered its negative contribute by modifying the policy into ... a set of a crazy ruleset that doesn't protect the seller, and promotes low-cost shipping service
as consequence eBay has already become a dump full of junk and garbage, for those who only want to ruins the scene and doesn't want to pay any more than a penny.
And for what? People like you only want to stack tons of low-cost stuff in their garage, like if stacking stones was a new status symbol to express your value as a human being.
What have you ever done with retro computers? Nothing? I believe you have only stacked stones to show your value on Facebook by taking pics of what you own by offering less than 1 penny to who does it for a living.
If you don't recognize the value of who works behind the artwork, you are worth exactly what you offer
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Guys, stop this discussion, it's just futile.
Back the topic, I won't follow this topic, it has become obnoxious, thus feel free to contact me by PM if you have a CDROM writer with the caddy for sale.
Thanks.