Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses from the ground up.
We also have a weekly Zoom call and private Discord for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash used book guy to join the channel
and gain access to the full length podcast, Zoom call and private Discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up, everybody?
Welcome in another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike here next to Johnny, as always today is going to be a fun one.
We are going to talk about eBay and how I think they should have clear
cut seller standards across the board.
I'm not really sure what Johnny's opinion is on this,
so I'm going to throw it over to him first.
And when it comes to standards, I'm just talking about like, you know,
we have an expectation that you ship things in a package,
you know, that isn't a cereal box, right?
Things like that, you know, we we have a program where if maybe, you know,
maybe you have to respond to a customer's question within 48 hours.
Those are the kind of standards I have in my head.
And I do think eBay needs something like this, but I'm curious what the
what the full time eBay says, right?
You all know I'm just a peon in the eBay world.
So, Johnny, take it away.
I agree 100 percent you're going to run into the issue of
what about the part time or the college kid or the grandma
who just wants to sling up a couple of items?
Are they really beholden to the same standard as a full time eBay person like myself?
I don't really have a good answer for that, but I believe the.
Entry requirements maybe to sell on eBay should be raised a little bit.
I mean, Amazon has more stringent
ways to get in to sign up for the whole company these days
than eBay does or most other platforms.
I mean, should eBay be the platform where anybody can sell anything?
Yes, no. If it's yes, well, then we have to allow the grandmas
and the college kids to do their one time thing, right?
But should they ship them in cereal and hot pocket boxes? No.
Maybe if you're just a part time or you're selling,
I don't know, below 100 items,
maybe you actually have to ship it to a prep center to make sure it's done
properly by eBay customer staff.
But does eBay really want to pay for that? Probably not.
So it's an interesting thing.
But if you're full time, though, let's focus on full time slash
part time that takes it seriously.
I think you should have absolutely standards to, well, play the eBay game.
I think it should be across the board, whether you're hokey pokey
or whether you're a professional dancer here.
I mean, if we just throw this into a real world comparison.
All right. So you got your full time people that show up to work every day
in uniform. Well, you got Johnny, who works for you once,
maybe a week once every two weeks.
And when he shows up to work, he's basically, you know, he's got a fake
tuxedo shirt on. He's not following any uniform policy.
He doesn't do any work when he's there or the work he does is completely wrong.
I think especially with this new eBay,
you know, the seller rating buyer experience that they're, you know, talking about.
I think this is so crucial.
And all the people out there that cry about it like, oh, my God,
why is eBay doing this? It's becoming more like Amazon every single time.
Somebody goes on eBay, buy something, especially if it's their first experience.
And this item shows up in a pizza box or a cereal box.
They are not shopping on eBay ever again.
And that's one customer that could be maybe maybe the next thing they bought
would have been from you or from me.
I don't think people realize the compounding factor that comes into play
when it comes to just letting people do whatever they want.
There has to be rules with any business, with any kind of platform.
There's got to be rules and regulations.
Personally, for me, I think eBay should make everybody offer returns.
I mean, that's a hot take, but I stay by it because guess what?
At the end of the day, if there's no customers on the platform,
there ain't no platform.
And if you have bad sellers that create terrible customer experience.
And sure, I'm not sitting here saying every person listening to this,
probably everybody listening to this actually runs their eBay store professionally.
But there's only one way to weed them out.
And you have to go across the board with rules and regulations.
Now, here's the damning part of the statement, which in principle,
I do agree with, is you have the customers that know the eBay rules
and break them constantly.
And that's why there's a big outcry in the community right now.
And I feel for those people.
But the issues that you can get dinged for, I looked at my account
and it does not apply to me as of yet.
Now, the clothing guys, they got a little harder because they're
dealing with returns on a daily basis.
I didn't deal with a return once every three months.
And that's just because of media.
And I've talked to other media sellers that deal on eBay.
They have very little returns up close to the clothing guys
or the more any kind of shoes.
It doesn't fit because customers don't know their own size.
It changes from brand to brand.
And that's a big complaint in the clothing industry is customers
don't know any better.
And so they issue a return.
They leave negative feedback.
They don't acknowledge they put on a little weight over Christmas.
I'm a size two.
Well, you jumped up to a size four, lady.
I'm sorry. You ate too much.
But I agree.
Where's the line on customer to eBay seller not doing their job
or customer taking advantage of it?
I don't think they have a clear cut answer for that,
but that just takes time.
They'll develop it over time.
They should identify the issue and make a correction.
That's how a customer can make a change.
They should make a correction.
That's how a company evolves, essentially.
I think what you said about the clothing and the shoes,
it's kind of, I don't know, it irritates me because at the end of the day,
Johnny, nobody's making you sell clothing, making you sell shoes, right?
I don't play in the markets that that impacts me.
That's what I'm saying.
So at any single point in your reselling business,
if for some reason you decide I'm going to sell clothing
because the returns are 30%,
what's stopping you from instead of crying about the returns,
either a, figuring out a way to deal with it where it doesn't make you go crazy.
And it is what it is. Returns are part of your business.
You either have to accept it or you got to move on to the next thing.
You can't be in the middle with just wishy washy like, well, I sell clothes,
but I hate the returns and I hate this and sell something else
or figure out a process where returns come in.
You click the button. Sorry for that.
You know, full refunds gets back to you.
Read list it. You're done with it.
But people can't choose one path or the other.
It's like everybody's got to hover in the middle.
And that's what happens on eBay.
That's why eBay is having the problems they're having.
It's because everything is just one day where this one day were that one day were this one day were that.
And there's really, I mean, that that I know of like eBay doesn't even have like packaging standards, right?
Like, I think there should be something that says you should be able to ship stuff in and food boxes.
Right. Immediately.
Right. Do not use these to ship or it could go to.
I hate to say this, but you could only ship stuff in eBay official packaging.
They have an eBay store that sells shipping supplies.
If it's not in that, well, you can't use it.
Look at Amazon, dude.
They want you to ship FBM orders in plain packaging.
You can't even use a Lowe's labeled box, a U-Haul box.
They want it in a plain box.
And if you don't think this is real, I'm here to tell you it is because people have gotten into trouble where they the customer has an issue.
They take pictures of it, send it to Amazon and say, hey, this item doesn't work.
Amazon sees that. Oh, why is this in a Home Depot box?
Is this person drop shipping? What's going on here?
This actually happens.
There needs to be some standards out there in the eBay world.
I don't care if you're part time and you do this once a week or you're full time and you do this 80 hours a day, regardless of where you fall.
When you sign up for this business, you should have expectations and standards for yourself.
And I think a lot of people are just like, well, we don't want to really be held accountable to get in boxes that don't have packaging on it.
And it's only a few bad sellers.
And no, that's not the case.
There's so many corners being cut out there on eBay and it ruins the customer experience.
And if there ain't no customers, there ain't no eBay.
Would you rather suck it up and eBay come out with a clear set of rules and say, here is exactly what we expect.
Right. Because another thing eBay sellers do, Johnny, is like, well, one day eBay tells me I can get my feedback removed and I can't get it removed.
And it's like they're back and forth on different things.
If eBay would just come out with a clear standard, here is exactly what we expect from every seller on this platform.
You're going to be held accountable to all of these, whether you do this one hour a week or 80 hours a week.
All of a sudden, we have a playing field where we know exactly what eBay wants from us as sellers.
Right. And beyond the packaging, ship on time.
Why is this hard? Why is this a hard concept for sellers?
You sold it. Your job, yes, your job is now to mail it when you said you'd mail it.
If you can't mail it when same day, next day, put three days on there or four days, whatever works.
But ship it within that window. This isn't a mind blowing concept here.
Come on. You made the money. You give them the item. That's how a transaction should work.
I hate to tell all the eBay people I think they're going to come over to Amazon and sell FBM.
Amazon's only giving you two days. No hanky panky.
And guess what? If you fall behind those two days, it ain't no little thing that's going to happen to you.
Amazon, Amazon doesn't play around with these sellers.
And I honestly think like I know starting out, a lot of people get discouraged because all these rules and regulations.
But holy smokes, it is to the benefit of everybody on the platform, the sellers and the customers.
Because what happens here, Johnny, is when you only can have two days for processing to get an order ship, you start thinking yourself.
What can I do in my business so that I can always ship items within two days?
You set the bar for yourself. You have this standard for yourself.
And you know, if you don't meet it, all right, all of a sudden your late shipment rate goes up.
You lose the buy box. You know, you're not selling anything anymore.
And honestly, I think eBay needs to adapt something, man. It's crazy to me.
And it's funny, right before we started this podcast, I paused, Mike, because I had an FBM order that I had to go pull.
So I can mail it as soon as this ends, because, yeah, I'm beholden to two days.
But you know what? Is an order comes in, I'm going to pack it so I personally don't mess up the same day it gets ordered.
And that's the thing I do on eBay. I have I have same day as well or next day.
And I just pack it when it comes in or the certain hour I've assigned to the day that it gets packaged for my cutoff time.
I make sure I am accountable and don't mess up. So there's a little buffer window there for me in case, I don't know, an unforeseeable happens.
Sure. I don't know. Little Billy broke his arm at school. Oh, no, I need to go take care of that. I can't ship the package.
OK, fine. You can ship it.
If you had processes in place where you package once a day,
you could have maybe wait to the next day after you've dealt with Billy or before Billy broke his dumb arm.
Stupid Billy. It's the same with customer service, too, right?
Amazon says you have 24 hours to respond to this message from a customer, right?
Like, it's not just, well, I seen I got I got a message today on eBay and then you wait three, four, five days later and then you respond like
there has to be standards for these types of things. And I don't think you can go crazy with the standards, Johnny.
I don't think you can allow somebody like you can respond to a message as long as it's within a week or you can.
I think about it, too, like because Deb sells on Etsy, right?
Like, if you buy something off Etsy, the expectation is you're going to get a nice little handcrafted item, maybe with a nice little handwritten note inside.
And I think eBay is almost it's working in the opposite direction, right?
Because it's so you have so many professional sellers that do it on such a professional level.
But you also have people that are just like, well, like you said, the ease of entrance, anybody can create an eBay account today and list their item and sell it and then look around and say, I'm going to throw it in whatever box I have.
I don't I don't think they can allow that going forward.
I mean, it's just the customers are the reason we our businesses exist.
And I know a lot of people will be like, well, I don't have money to to buy plain boxes or plain Polly Mallards.
Well, you're a reseller. You have the highest ROI business in the history of business.
So you have money. You're just not spending it right.
So that argument, I don't want to hear nothing about it down in the comments section because we have so much ROI coming into our business on a daily basis.
We should have something, a line item set out for supplies.
I mean, I know I do. I know you do. It's part of doing business.
And we like to provide a customer service experience because maybe this person comes back and buys another item from us or maybe they follow the store, even on Amazon.
Right. You never get repeat buyers on Amazon. But guess what? I still have plain boxes and plain bubble mailers to ship item in.
You got to play by the rules here.
Now, I'm going to say something very controversial that maybe some of our listeners, this applies to on eBay because it's eBay.
I want people to upload photos of the actual item, at least one actual photo, not a stock photo.
You know how many businesses that would affect on eBay?
I mean, look at the bigger companies. They ship an item in the same condition that the photo is listed at or it's a different condition.
That happens so much. It's really unacceptable. But they're selling it as very good. And it's a ripped down stock photo that looks brand spanking new.
That's not that item. That item has flaws. You failed to note. That's the other part of that thing is condition things properly.
But they just they were there. They're listed, go, listed, go, listed, go, listed, go, or it's automated or it's just scan and the software takes care of it.
But the software is not doing a good enough job. I'm sorry. It's not. It can't catch all the condition flaws with it.
Photos help with that. But it'd be nice for customer peace of mind that they see what they're buying. They know what they're buying.
It's not a surprise in the mail. Now, you could make the argument the stock photo guys, they're going to take less money than the guy with actual photos because the guy doing photos should be charging more than stock photo guy.
But they a lot of times they don't do that just to stay competitive. And now you got stock photo guy versus the guy who makes a quality listing. They're charging the same price.
So, in my mind, just photograph, at least one photo an actual photo of the damn item.
I think this is super important that you brought this up it's you, you got it, you got to choose a side you bet you can't be stock foot because this is personally happened to me, I had to buy one single book to complete a set to sell it.
And it was from thrift books, and it's a stock photo and it says, acceptable condition. Dude, I was waiting for it to show up. Who knows what condition and it was actually in better than acceptable condition.
But yet again we hit that point where if it's a bad customer experience.
It's not coming back, returning something on eBay can be a headache compared to return to something on Amazon right. Everybody knows where you where to go to return stuff on Amazon everybody knows you can return it for any single reason.
So it is kind of cool to think about it like eBay, we either want to see there has to be an actual photo of the item being sold, or everybody has to offer free returns.
You can't just fall yet again, here we are. We fall in the middle, where Johnny can do what he wants and I can do what I want. And there's really no rights no wrong I think I do it right.
He thinks he does it right eBay doesn't care who's doing it right or who's doing it wrong. It's, that's pretty, that would be very interesting if they required an actual photo of the actual item being sold.
And yet again how can you even monitor that right you would have to have some kind of AI or, you know, some kind of photograph bot that could detect that it you know it's not a stock image photo being pulled from and like you said it would probably.
I mean it would benefit all the smaller guys and in terms of smaller guys I'm talking us not mega sellers that just list, hundreds and thousands of items every single day.
That would be a huge benefit and I actually think that would work out in the favor of eBay right because all of a sudden. Now we can run a promotion campaign that's like hey, see what you buy before you get it right, see everything you buy before you buy it right that
would be huge I think in the eyes of just platforms overall that would be any platform I think could do that, and would see a better customer service experience. What's your take on returns you think they should have a blanket return policy, I think they should
I think it should be free returns at the end of the day, sooner or later you're going to get to that point as Amazon continues to grow and other platforms continue to do a little way.
I think sooner or later you're going to get there anyway so why not start now.
Okay before I get to that I mean, yeah, it's saying can be said for Amazon here where, yeah, you can still have one listing, sure, but when when you're up to bat on the buy box, it's showing your photo of your item that would that would help Amazon returns
drastically, it would put more workload on the Amazon seller emphasis on work, sure.
The better customer experience is to be had. Now segueing back to Mr eBay here on returns yes I think return should be required across the board. I offer 60 day returns, you can do as little as 30 I believe.
So at least having a 30 day standard return policy I think should be just a default in the system it's not even a policy anymore by my choice is just an eBay policy it's going to happen, you're in the return game.
And for, for anybody out there that sells new items and get some return is used. You can have an option in there where you can charge a restocking fee Amazon has this, you sell an item, new FBM, the customer opens it wants to return, you can charge a restocking
fee. So there are ways around this before everybody gets all crazy well, I sent them this and then it got stained up or they did something to the item. Yes, there are restocking fees yes it's implemented on other platforms.
I think the overall gist of this is you got it eBay has to choose who they want to be as a platform. And guess what sellers, we play on their platform if you don't like it, you can go somewhere else and maybe that's why, you know, a lot of people
love eBay is because at the end of the day, Johnny, you can run your eBay business, you probably could have an eBay business selling only out of, you know, use food container boxes right all of a sudden you're the DiGiorno box guy, and everything that you
sell in your, your store is shipped in an empty DiGiorno box because maybe you live next to the DiGiorno factory and you can get the boxes for free, right, it's, I think it is pretty crazy that you can just do what you want and really like what are the consequences
of like, think about how hard it is to get banned on eBay versus like Amazon, like, it's, it is night and day to me the stuff you can get away with on eBay, compared to Amazon like it's just it's crazy to me and I think it.
It hurts the platform so when this buyer experience thing rolls out and, you know, because eventually it probably will to the US. I think it's only good. I think we need to start weeding out the bad players and for those of us that treat it like a reselling
business. It's only going to benefit us, everybody that's doing it right. It's only going to benefit you there's going to be no harm if eBay decides to start doing all these things and holding sellers accountable.
Yeah, and it was interesting because tech was talking about it, you got so many things you ghosted, you were no longer invited to sell on that platform.
Now, where there's some people that probably got ousted out of eBay that shouldn't have sure, but I'm going to say the vast majority deserved it they had it coming because they didn't do their job to the guys that got treated unfairly.
Sorry.
I'm sorry that's all I can really say to that. It happens man on any platform right you can. It's any job, any job. You're at will employ full termination all these things happen and you move on you adjust for it life does go on reselling does go on.
Okay, you got kicked out of eBay guess you're an Amazon seller, welcome to the club. Hey, you fired from CBS walk down the street the right I didn't get a job there.
It's, it's the equivalent and I think a lot of people get so offended by eBay, making these changes. I don't know like maybe maybe it's because people have been selling on eBay for so long and they see the platform you know 10 years ago look like this and now it looks like
this, but wouldn't we all want a better seller and buying experience right I think everybody here can attest to that especially the sellers that are doing it the right way. We want standards we want things to be clear across the board so we get more customers on the platform,
more of our items are selling because they know hey, every time I buy a t shirt is going to come in a poly bag that you know isn't going to have any branding on it isn't going to come in any kind of you know box and if eBay would come out with these rules
and standards. All of a sudden all the bad players get held accountable, and poof they go away. Sure, a few good soldiers, you know sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the platform, this is always going to happen.
But I do think it would be just so beneficial man, and it's ever since you know tech put out that video and I was thinking about it like eBay needs seller standards, I don't care when nobody says and it needs to be across the board, not this, oh well I'm part
time so I don't want to be held to the same standard as somebody that's full time. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in any job whether you're part time or full time. You're required to sign the same papers when you're hired that you can lift 50 pounds, you can do
x you can do y and you can do z, just because you're part time you don't get all these, you know, benefits I guess are like things you can just slack off on.
Right, and I had an interesting conversation with a couple people about this very fact like how Amazon has their return team, they deal with returns right. So, I was like well what if eBay had something similar, like we have an international
shipping hub right. So what if all of our packages that were mailing to the customer got shipped to the shipping hub, and consequently any returns went back to the shipping hub for inspection now where we got held up in this cool idea is
what makes the eBay employee an expert versus you, they're not, they can't be an expert in everything that gets returned, unless you have certain departments that handle certain returns.
Because that would prevent you getting rocks mailed back and that's always a big talk. I mean I've never really had this happen personally but I've known people that had, well, I bought a Sombro and I got a box of Skittles returned back to me, it's not the same thing
right. So, I don't know I mean that would that would give eBay a lot more control however we pay all these fees we pay Amazon all these fees right. What are our fees really go to I mean, eBay has so much, so many phone support and that costs money.
But I'm sure there's some extra money floating around that something could be put into play that helps customers and sellers. I like my shipping hub idea and return hub idea but there's a lot of hurdles to overcome there so well, I'll keep on noodling
and eBay will never do it.
Listen, you're like a politician right you're like, I want to do all these things but taxes need to go up to you're not getting, you're not getting nobody's vote to be the best thing, but it would cost money but it would be the best experience, but people, especially
sellers, we get bent out of shape, there's a point 5% increase in fees, like, and I tell all these eBay people like, oh my god I got to promote it 2% I'm like, come on over to Amazon where you're lucky. If you get 50% of this overall sale price right like, but I do think
maybe you know, maybe I mean it's another hot take if eBay, maybe justify their fee races and better ways like hey, we're going to do this right maybe maybe Johnny gets what are you taking my money for what where's the money going.
Just to sell a book 15% yeah yeah yeah so like, I guess we justified as Amazon sellers is like hey, we can ship our stuff, it's super easy to list. They scan it at the warehouse they put it on their shelves they pack and pick it right there's really not much
customer service you have to do. They inspect the returns. So maybe we justify that in our mind as well, if we pay all these fees, at least are taking care of us on this this this and this we're on eBay it's like, where does the fee money actually go right so maybe if
there's a more transparency, and even if say, hey, here's exactly how we're spending the fees, we're going to up fees 5% across the board but we're going to give sellers, x, y and z right, you're going to get better support, and it's proven that hey we hired
these people local to the country you selling you're going to speak with somebody every single time you call from the country, your account is you know showing you know in the United States UK wherever in the world.
I think that would be beneficial and I don't think, like many resellers would really get that pissed off if they were just transparent and said hey here's what you're getting, and not just taken.
So for those, those are aware, the international shipping program I think is a beautiful thing that I wish applied domestically. So when a customer makes an order.
You pay whatever you charge them right. Well eBay charges a premium to the customer that we never really see. And their shipping is astronomical. Fine, whatever, people still do this.
However, we ship it to the shipping hub, and they inspect the package and repackage it for us and if it gets lost in between the hub and the customer.
I don't know the many money. I'm okay with the customers paying up for support like that, where they're inspecting the package make sure it is what it is. It's packaged properly and then mailed out and then the courier screw it up.
But eBay did its job I did my job customer gets their money back, I get to keep my money because I did my job. If we apply this to domestic.
I think the customer's paying up and sure eBay is employing more people, well that's not a bad thing I guess. But there's some security and peace of mind there.
And then eBay knows if you shipped it out on time because he arrived at the hub or not, they got the little guy at the dock just waiting for your package to come in. I think it'd be a beautiful thing they'll never do this, however they did it with international,
if they did it for domestic, man, what a company change that would be for the better. Yeah, there's a lot of things and I don't think this has happened is like, what happens here eBay just drops like these bombshell updates right it's like, we're all waiting for the
eBay and then it comes and it's like, boom, boom, the sky is falling the comments are coming it's like, I think this can be almost like a one year two year maybe three year plan right where eBay comes out and says hey to increase customer satisfaction on our platform,
but then the next year here is exactly what we're going to expect from you sellers. And these will be these updates will be rolled out maybe in a quarterly basis so it's not like I'm expecting Johnny to get rid of all the journo boxes tomorrow,
but maybe three months six months nine months, a year to start implementing changes, and these changes are only going to be better for you right, you're going to get better feedback, you're going to have better, better business processes overall I think that's
the biggest thing that people kind of miss out on is when there's a clear standard from a company right whether it's at work, whether it's your resale business.
If we have x y z standards. All of a sudden you become more efficient at these things right I try to think about this too like when I'm helping Deb, and I do certain parts of her business. She has standards.
And if I send her something that doesn't meet standard she says what are you doing dude like you got to fix this and I think what happens here. I get my mind okay well I can't just sneak one buyer right like there's no sneak and I'm by your boss so it's all of a sudden
okay, I have that same standard now, and I become more efficient because now okay I know what to expect. Know what my boss expects and here's exactly how I'm going to do it in a more efficient way.
Right, I mean, once upon a time I think even Amazon was considering its own mail service thing if eBay did something similar.
I mean, I think that would also with my fancy shipping hub idea I keep going back to see eBay trucks on the street or Amazon trucks on the street. I think that would well post office would lose a lot of money, maybe go bankrupt, but if the companies
had a little flag there and had a logistics and transportation game. I think that would be an improvement across the board, because now the company is reliable not be. And I hate to say it but a lot of sellers blame usps for late shipments and this that
is a complete lies to the customer. I think that would take a lot things out of it like I gotta I gotta ding on my metric because the post office lady didn't scan one of my many packages, just one.
It didn't affect my metrics that much but I see it and it annoys me doesn't say 100% anymore it says like 99.85 which annoys me. I did my job usps worker did not do her job.
And it'll go back up it's not like it's on my permanent record it's just on my temporary permanent record for six months but still. These are anomalies right you can't that's a good point to bring up here, as we get towards the end of this is everybody makes it seem
like the post office is out to get them right or like the customers are out to get them. Everybody's going to scam you and send their pet rock they bought back in 1991 pet rocks are cool.
Back to you instead of the item you sold them. That is not the case we were talking a percent of a percent. If you want that experience, come on over to Amazon. That's all I'm saying, eBay, eBay sellers cannot complain about returns to me as a full time Amazon
seller. I don't want to hear nothing about it because I know for a fact, my return percentage is way higher than it would be if I was on eBay, and I know for a fact, eBay would have my back. More of the times if I got scammed by a buyer than Amazon would so that argument
it's so it's so stupid because if you didn't know better Don, you would think every person that shops on eBay is out to scam you.
Very much. Oh, stop putting chocolate in your packages Mike. Yeah, I know it's you.
Like, these are things we're talking about. It blows my mind that we're even having this conversation today, where we were talking about standards. We're business owners right no matter how rag tag we look right now right you know like look at this guy's beard
he's in shades and in years. I'm wearing a Michael Myers hoodie like I'm a 10 year old that you know in the movie just came out and 78 right.
But we have standards in our business. That's how we've gotten to this point. When we were part time we still had standards. When we're full time we even have higher standards, and I think it's just beneficial to the platform and every single seller that eBay put
in their products.
Now, here's one for you, and I've done this before just because if I'm tired and I'm shipping sometimes I messed up. Sometimes I'm not as gentle with the book and if I damage the book, or here's my favorite I pull off the adhesive on my, my mailers before I put the
sticker on it and I've gotten the item stuck on the adhesive and damaged it before I'm owning up to that. You know what I do. I messaged the customer, I may own the item anyway but I messaged the customer I issued them a refund right away I messed up, this isn't the item,
you were promised you would get that you paid me money for. And you're going to get the item anyway because I don't really need it.
You know, and that's just because customer service, I mean, there's standards and then there's just good right things to do kind of thing.
Other people just put it in don't message him and just cross their fingers and hope for the best because I'll admit it customers are lazy. The odds of them actually responding back or complaining or issuing return or doing feedback.
That's a lot of effort for customers so they're playing the odds game there but you don't need to customers are okay as long as you're honest and upfront with them. That's why my condition notes are pretty detailed because they know what they're getting then
they're just photos to back it up. However, if I mess up during shipping because I've done this before because I'm in a rush or tired. I just let them know.
I just let them know. It's a fit that is this, like I'm gonna I'm gonna blow it I'm gonna blow this up right here because you ever have somebody buy something Johnny and they say, hey, make sure you please package this correctly.
And then the customer reaction just randomly came up with a statement. No, it's because what it in a box. I've gotten that so many times. Can you please put it in a box. And I do. It's because they had Joe blow send them something in a DiGiorno box or a ziploc bag.
These are not just random encounters. These people have had bad experience thankfully they still continue to shop on eBay, because let's face it, if most people were something off any site, and it comes shipped in a ziploc bag, or like the label slapped right on the
actual item or like the action figure, like, you're not going to shop there ever again and thankfully these people stay around and continue to shop on eBay but every single reseller has had this person, the second day order it you're like, Oh, I got a sale, and then we new message from
and then you look and they're like, Can you please pack this properly. And this is because they've had a bad experience on eBay and eBay cannot afford bad experiences.
Yeah, because most eBay shoppers are once you're done or once a season they aren't on. There's not like Amazon where they're constantly shopping there, it's a, well, this item is too expensive over here, let me go check the internet Oh, here's an eBay link and then
they buy that's usually how eBay transactions work. That's not to say there aren't dedicated eBay shoppers there are by abundance.
eBay is can treat it as the yard sale of the internet when somebody wants a deal, or they can't find it elsewhere. That's what eBay is for. Yeah, well the problem is when you're the yard sale of the internet, then people pack their stuff like it's a yard sale and
unfortunately, now we've been all of us have been to yard sales were hey, they know what they're doing this is set up nicely I like those yard sales and then I've been everything's in a pile may or may not be on a blanket on the front lawn there's not even tables I've
got to, you know what I leave. Yet again you have to, you got to take a stance one way or another and I think that's kind of the overall gist of this is the platform has to decide who they want to be what expectations they need to have, and just roll with it
I mean yeah, listen people are always going to be upset, regardless right we live in a culture where every, everybody's offended by everything that goes on one way or another whether it's a good or bad, it might benefit Johnny but it doesn't benefit me so I'm
going to yell about it and vice versa that's the reality of it. But you got to you got to make a stance eBay honestly I think, and I think standards as much as all the sellers out there, don't want to hear it.
All these metrics oh well shipping late and this and that listen, these are conversations you can have right you can call eBay say hey here's exactly what happened. Well Mike to support socks I can't get feedback removed anymore.
That's the reality of what eBay needs to decide on who they want to be. I think they should focus on the customers. Honestly, here's a set of rules for sellers. This is what you got to do. We want our customers have good experiences at the end of the day, and these
five things are going to increase the customer experience. And if you don't want to do it.
That's fine we appreciate you selling on eBay over the past 65 years you've been selling on eBay, but this is who we are now.
And fun quick story for in this up so day one of my current employee. I've been up. I don't know I got like three hours of sleep. Anyway, shows up to work, and I'm going to train her how to package in this in the scenario I just mentioned occurred
I'd rip the adhesive off before I put the item in there and try to put the item in there got stuck and pull it back rip the whole like bottom cover off.
Maybe not package I told her. Now we have to go now I'm going to take this opportunity to show you how to do customer service. Walk over here to the computer with me and then we proceeded on, but I couldn't believe it first day I'm trying to show her
how to do this thing and I, I screw up. It happens. I think a lot of it boils down to people like, well, Johnny I don't want to have to be obligated to respond to a customer in 24 hours well then listen maybe reselling for you honestly I think
what it boils down to is we weed out all the bad players, all of a sudden the customer experience goes through the roof more people are shopping on eBay, we're all getting more sales.
And I think it's only beneficial at the end of the tunnel that we have standards and I would expect that on any platform right like Etsy has a thing where you can be a star seller, you know, if you respond to messages within 24 hours you're shipping on time.
And then you have something like that where, hey, maybe they have like a, you know, top rated plus but there's also something else where this person you know be honest with you that bar is really low anybody.
I know dude it's, but that's the thing. That's why eBay needs to change the bar and come out with clear cut.
I think it's the GOP's of what they expect from sellers because I don't think this path forward is sustainable, I don't think it can be the wild west anymore I don't think it can afford to be the flea market of the internet because you can't customers, you know, they're
diamond dust anymore they're so just think about how many more platforms there are for people to shop on right. I mean, everybody has their own websites anymore.
If you go to the shop and tab, you're going to see 50 different sites selling that same exact thing, everybody's vying to get customers. And the way you do that is you provide a good customer experience.
Now what would be cool. You know how to have employee of the month at places, but if you had eBay seller of the month and I'm not just talking dollars just had good metrics and eBay pulls good metric people's name out of hat.
I was on the front page of eBay that day. You know how much that would change that stores career, just for doing their job. And eBay is like, you did a good job front page today and they just do 365 sellers a year, it rotates, beautiful thing.
It's not just your thrift books it's not just your big bad can't compete sellers it's everybody.
All right, we're going to wrap it up here my, my final thought like Jerry Springer is we as resellers, we are business owners, we should have high standards eBay as a selling platform should also have high standards and stick to what they say they're going to do.
And this isn't just an us problem it's a it's us and them problem. But if we can't decide what's right and what's wrong in every situation, you know every time we roll the dice, it's a different number. That's the problem that we have here so standards and eBay following
these standards across the board whether you're a multimillion dollar seller, or whether you list one item a week would be huge difference on the platform and at the end of the day, we need customers for our business, if we don't have customers and other people are ruined customer like
if Johnny shipped all his books and pizza boxes right I'd be pissed off because people aren't going to shop no more because he's ruining their experience nobody wants to receive an item and something like that.
So we had clear set of rules that said hey, you can't do this well, guess what, Johnny ships that customer complains they see the photo of the dijournal box. Johnny's out the game. That's just the way the world there has to be rules there has to be consequences
so we appreciate you listening. We'll talk to you next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast. Today's full episode and all previous episodes are available to all YouTube members, along with the weekly zoom call and private discord, head on over to youtube.com backslash to use book
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