UPDATED June 15, I now consider my major issues with the Inkfrog changes RESOLVED.  Greg from Inkfrog chimed in below that they were working on a fix to the problems with user friendliness that I detail throughout the second half of the post and sure enough, within hours, a fix was implemented.

The listing screen now looks like this:

The red X’s at the bottom are mine, poorly pointing out the new functionality.  What we have are buttons at the right for previewing, saving, etc., and links at the left to return to your listing library and taking other actions—they remain at the bottom of the listing pane as you scroll up or down the page making for easy creation and editing.

In fact possibly easier than it used to be!  I listed 40 items today.  Prior to Inkfrog restoring the stationary buttons I listed items at about 40-50% of expectations as outlined below.  Today I started an hour late and still finished all 40 with time to spare.  Thank you Inkfrog for implementing such a quick fix!

Bottom line: I will continue using Inkfrog for listing my eBay Items.

The original unedited post follows:

First things first, I love(d) Inkfrog.  I have ever since the day eBay’s Turbo Lister told me I couldn’t play with them on my Windows ‘98 computer anymore (so I bought a Vista and TurboLister wasn’t ready for me then, but that’s another story!).  When I first signed up for Inkfrog I found it had an easy learning curve, an intuitive interface, and what’s more not only was it cheap, it paid for itself through it’s scheduled listings.  I was in love.

When Inkfrog 1.0 gave way to Inkfrog 2.0 I was even more blown away.  I wrote about it at the time.  Sure, we lost bulk editing capabilities—the button is there, but clicking on it any time since 2.0’s release in 2008 only calls up the same message: “Bulk edit feature coming soon. Please checkmark only ONE item for now.”—and it still does today.  We also lost the ability to preview individual listings from right inside our library, another favored feature by yours truly which has yet to return.  But again, I loved Inkfrog 2.0!  So much more and for the same price, couldn’t beat it.

And so when I logged into Inkfrog, as I’ve done daily for the past several years now, about 12, 14 days ago, my body seized with a slight pang of terror when I was greeted by the banner ticking down major changes in just ten days.  When something is pretty much perfect, change usually isn’t good. 

And now we know what that change was, SmartLister.  Look, I don’t have any problem whatsoever with Inkfrog incorporating this feature.  It’s not a mandatory upgrade even if I get the feeling they wanted it to be.  I choose not to use it as I’m sure many to most vintage dealers also choose.  I’m well aware of Terapeak, the engine behind the SmartLister feature, I’ve tried it before and it’s not for me.  If I was selling commodity items and not vintage collectibles, well, I’d probably live by it.  As it is I haven’t used it enough to offer a recommendation for or against the service.

But I don’t have to use Inkfrog’s SmartLister and I don’t have to pay the extra $5 per month that an Inkfrog subscription upgraded to include SmartLister would cost a seller like me (yet).  I do have a little problem with logging in to see that “Inkfrog is now free” only to discover in the smallest print on the page that the service is only a freebie to those listing 25 items or fewer per month.  I’m betting they probably scored that wording from the free auctions* headlining eBay’s latest round of changes.

*For items with a 99 cent or lower minimum bid, no reserve.  Whoopee?

But hey, I’m currently subscribed to Inkfrog at $9.95/month.  I’m good with that.  Smart Lister is no bother, even if Inkfrog does plaster it’s upgrade option in just about every place you could go along the way while using the once user-friendly site.

My problem is this: Rather than simply add SmartLister to the Inkfrog suite of tools they went and made a subtle change to the lister which in one fell swoop took it from being the most intuitive eBay listing tool I’ve ever used and instead leaves me scrolling all the way up, and all the way down each and every listing I create, looking for confirmation, looking for escape, practically looking for a Dramamine.

Time for details, and I apologize if you don’t use the tool because this is going to be a little dry, but if you are a current Inkfrog user I think you’ll be nodding your head in the affirmative in just a few moments.

Here’s the skinny: Just a mere few days ago you’d log into your listings, be greeted by your library, a nice long list of your items nestled in folders, very organized.  That hasn’t changed. 

But when you clicked on an item to create a new listing what you used to get was a pop-up framed over the library background that allowed you to work on your item in the foreground with the options of saving, previewing, or even launching your listing to eBay from outside the main frame.  At any time you could escape your listing and return to your library simply by clicking off at the top right corner.  With the pop-up there was no scrolling involved other than inside the listing frame itself.  Everything else was always within reach.

Above is a screenshot of the old Inkfrog which is a little blurry because I grabbed it off a YouTube video.  (Click on any of the included screenshots to enlarge).  But you can see my shaky red arrow pointing to the bank of buttons at the bottom of the pop-up, and I circled the “X” at the top right of the screen where you used to be able to close out your listing to return to your library.  At the right edge inside the listing pop-up you see a scroll bar which allowed you to scroll through your entire listing, but you’ll note that the buttons aren’t inside the bar—they were always where they are in this shot, easily accessible.  At the edges you may be able to see the library directly under the pop-up, but the pop-up listing filled most of the screen.

Perhaps I can explain the past pleasure with a better picture of the current hell.  Typically I’ll duplicate an existing item to create a new item because much of my listing information item to item is the same.  I do this and a new screen now opens (as opposed to the pop-up).  I go in and make my changes, my edits, etc.  I want to preview the item so I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, and it’s by no means a short page, to click the preview button.  If I made an error or forgot to price the item, etc., I now have to scroll all the way back up to the body of the listing to make my change.  Then all the way back down to preview again.  Seasick yet?  Satisfied I click the save button, which is mercifully located in the same bank of buttons as the preview button.  Now to exit I have to scroll all the way up, past the middle, right to the top, to click the “Listings” category, close my listing screen, and return to the library.  Meanwhile if I’ve previously sorted my library listings, as I obviously do since I’m mentioning it, the sort is lost.  The sort has been rendered meaningless in fact.

Here’s the top of the new page:

Instead of the little “X” at the top right you click on the “Listings” tab to return to the library.  Many, many inches below you’ll find the buttons from the bottom right of the old pop-up at the bottom right of the new:

Compare all that to making my changes and just clicking a button that’s constant at the bottom right of my screen or at the top up above the listing to exit.  Shorter paragraph, much quicker action.

Here’s the bottom line, I’ve listed two days with the new Inkfrog as of now.  I’ve been selling online for ten years now and when I pull out items to be listed that day I tend to finish them.  In other words, if I pull 12 items I create 12 listings.  I don’t run out of time, if anything I have extra time.  The number of items varies daily depending upon the type of item I list.  Well, Friday I pulled 12 items and managed to list exactly 6.  Monday I pulled 50 and managed to list 30.  In an email sent to Inkfrog users this past Saturday morning, Inkfrog President and CEO Greg Sisung wrote:

We are combining our own technology with up to date research to empower our sellers and help increase sales. Yes, using inkFrog and our new Smart Lister may help increase your sales!

Well, I’m seeing production slip mightily, 40-50% in my, granted very small, sample.

Unless I’m totally missing something, and please, tell me below if I am, I have to think this version of the product was launched without any actual users testing it whatsoever.  It’s a snazzy design, sure, but while oohing and aahing over how pretty it is did anybody bother creating a few listings to see how the thing worked?  I’m sure the new features were tested, but did anybody bother to take the listing flow all the way through to the bottom of the page … and then the middle … and then the bottom … and maybe up to the top of the page by then?

So I’ll say it again, as long as I don’t have to use it I have no problem with SmartLister.  I have a huge problem with the changes made to Inkfrog’s lister, the core feature of the site.  If the rest of the site could be returned to normal I’d even happily pay for the SmartLister and blissfully ignore it’s obnxious tabs.  But if I can’t return production to 100% I won’t be able to continue paying for or using the service at all.

My plan.  Give it a week.  I want to continue using this product.  See if my problems are as big as I think they are or if they’re just a matter of learning the tool over again.  Re-install TurboLister in the mean time and have it all set to go in case I’m caught in a pinch, ie: have work that must be done.  I think it’s obvious that the Inkfrog lister is not nearly as user friendly as it was last week, but by the same token I’ve found the service so much better than others in the past that I’m willing to give a huge benefit of the doubt.

How ‘bout you?

If you’re an Inkfrog user please do be sure to visit their forums, specifically this area set up for SmartLister topics. 

?I’m writing this immediately after spending about 2 hours playing around with wibiya, so please excuse my excitement—but greatest thing since sliced bread definitely comes to mind!

I’d seen the bar around on other websites (including this one, look down) but wasn’t sold on it because I was convinced it’d slow down my site.  Well, the other night I watched to my buddy John Lawson (that ColderICE dude) do his Social Media for Business SUCKS presentation at the eCommerce Summit conference in Las Vegas, and his praise planted wibiya back in my mind.  I figured I’d give a look when I had some down time.

Down time came earlier tonight when around 11 pm EST I created an account at wibiya to fully check out the service.  Now my site, things-and-other-stuff.com, is a bit of a monster–shoot there are pages where dinosaur might be more accurate–with 8-plus years of pages created first through FrontPage, then hand coded html, then I figured out CSS and retinkered many key pages, then I added a WordPress blog, etc., etc.  Okay, I knew wibiya would work with WordPress, but what about those html pages?

I created a dummy page, grabbed a one-line snippet of javascript, and just like that I sat back and said, “Ahhh…” I matched the color scheme to my site and the effect was even stronger.  SOLD!!!* Time to customize.

* Actually, it’s free … for now at least.

I’d been dying to spruce up all those old html pages and since I was able to eventually insert the code in a separate file I created containing just my footer it was as simple as paste once and publish, presto chango, all my key old-school pages are social media ready—share me on Twitter, Like me on Facebook, it takes an extra click but you can Stumble me, e-mail me, all that fun stuff now; basically all the things I had moved towards WordPress in order to gain easy access.

But there’s a lot more behind my wibiya love affair than simple social media tools. I already have a monetized Google Search Bar throughout my site at the top right of the page, so my initial thought was to eliminate the wibiya Search Bar as redundant.  But my favicon disappeared when I did that, and I really liked having that show up in the bottom left corner.  Just when I was about to settle for the double-search I had what I’m pretty sure was an awesome idea: you could add multiple searches to the wibiya toolbar, so what if I eliminated my default site search and instead—yes, it works; I now have a search bar for my eBay Store at the bottom left of all my pages!  If you know my site, you’ll know that’s extremely relevant.

Now that older portion of my site has been called things-and-other-stuff.com forever.  Well, at least since 2002 when the site launched.  Why so general?  That’s my original eBay handle created back in 2000 when I was much more of a generalist than I am today.  I’ve stuck by that name, it’s been good to me despite its lack of flash or keywords.  When I relaunched the even more despicably boringly named things-and-other-stuff.com Blog late in 2009 I knew I’d wind up calling it something different and sure enough it’s now labeled Immortal Ephemera.

Why the big personal history lesson?  Having things-and-other-stuff.com and Immortal Ephemera so intimately tied together, even sharing search, strikes me as potentially confusing and it’s really bugged me.  But the wibiya bar has a little space where you can imput some text and so I chose to use it to exploit the double branding, thus:

things-and-other-stuff.com | Immortal Ephemera

Why?  The same exact snippet of code put into the footer of my html pages is also tucked snugly inside the footer of my WordPress template.  More than any other feature, save Google Search, wibiya has drawn the two parts of my site together.

There’s other cool stuff too.  These features show up everywhere I have the bar, but I felt they’d help pull things together even more.  The Latest Posts app for example allows an RSS feed of my latest Immortal Ephemera posts to appear on any page of the main things-and-other-stuff.com site with the wibiya bar installed.  Likewise the Navigation Links app displays key menu items found on the old html section of the site to you even if you’re on the flashy newer WordPress part of the site.

I’m really loving this and frankly unless my overall traffic drops like a stone it’s staying.  My pages still load quick (I did shut down the Add to Any WordPress plugin, feeling it duplicated wibiya’s features, but that’s the only change I made to the existing sites) and I think even if it throws some users for an initial loop, well, I’m very sorry but my expectation is that the end result will be even more visitors.

wibiya has a lot of cool features I didn’t even activate: Photo Galleries, Live Chat, YouTube Galleries, Donation Boxes, even Games.  I might add some in the future, I might just stick with what I have, but the key is that you do all of your changes on the wibiya back-end and don’t need to touch the little piece of code inside your site.  Starting out I tried not to go overboard though, just wanted the basic utility I’d been looking for.

Tell you what, I’m just as happy now as I was when I started writing this post, I’m loving wibiya!

In John’s recent eBay Price Change Challenge Mythbusters post he remarked in the comments section:

I believe eBay knows that some of those 62 million (Note: Refers to the number of current eBay Store Inventory format listings) will NOT move to core, cause it was the low .03 cents that allowed many to keep them on the site. I think eBay is charging MORE to actually "de-clutter" the system. Raising the price will action make people either SELL the stuff or get it OFF the platform.

Currently I have a Basic eBay Store with about 4,500 items listed on the site. Many hundreds of my items are listed for as little as $5 or less—they’re niche long-tail items you’d be correct in assuming they don’t turn-over very fast.

Will I be de-cluttering?

John’s extracted quote above seems to apply directly to me, however the morning the announcements came down from eBay I ran my numbers through their magic calculator and the results were surprising.

By upgrading my $15.95/month Basic Store to a $49.95/month Premium store and qualifying for the nickel per item insertion fees on Fixed Price listings the calculator claimed I’d knock about $125-$150 per month off of my bill.  That’s without changing any of my listing practices.

As with any changes the differences to each of our individual bottom lines are going to vary seller to seller.  Extremely so in many cases.  The morning I first read of the coming changes I looked them over and was first relieved that they weren’t going to have any obvious negative impact on my business.  By the time I ran my numbers through their fee illustrator I went from relieved and non-committal to happy over the changes.

I absolutely understand that just because eBay says it’s a fee decrease and I say my fees are going down that this isn’t necessarily going to save you one red cent.  In fact it might be costing you money, I get it.  It’s the wide range of businesses and styles of business across eBay which actually makes these changes both so controversial and interesting to discuss.

But bottom line, in my world my bill just went down.  In your world the reverse may be true.  The key is understanding what just happened and what changes you can apply to continue being profitable, even if that means discontinuing use of eBay altogether.

Towards that end I want to lay out the circumstances of my own eBay business which again, are going to differ greatly from seller to seller.  I think these few factors add up to show why these changes work for me:

1) I’ve been listing 800-1,200 Fixed Price items per month under the current fee structure.  Those listings, formerly 15 (media) and 35 cents now cost just a nickel, far off-setting the other 3,500 or so items that will cost me just an extra 2 pennies per pop.

2a) Low ASP. 

2b) Auctions as usual, which pretty much always start over 99 cents.

With auctions I’ll be paying 10 cents less per listing with most of my Final Value Fees only climbing from the existing 8.75% to the new flat 9% remaining the same because of my store subscription (thanks Karen!).

3) Overall quantity.  Having maintained an eBay Store in the past I’ve stocked it over time.  If I only listed auctions, the store upgrade would be an expense but necessary in some form to avoid 50c Fixed Price fees.  Already having a store I get to upgrade it and actually save by laying out more.

4) Top Rated Seller discounts.  I hate to put this one here because nothing’s guaranteed, but I’ve yet to see a negative impact.  I understand that this often varies category to category and I seem to be in a good place to benefit from it.

So back to John’s original quote, will I be helping eBay to de-clutter?  The obvious answer is no, since I can do what I’m doing and save doing it, however that indicates time standing still.  I add listings to the site on a daily basis, they sell much slower, so my current number of items in stock is going to continue to grow over time. 

How many nickels can I spend to list a $3 item that might take forever to sell?  The answer looks like 60 to break even, but it’s really not.  That $3 item listing is an ad, a portal to my other 4,500 listings, so the actual answer is I can afford to pay that nickel until the end of time as long as everything else is moving.

eBay aside, I’ve been working on my own off-eBay shop for some time, and so my plan coming into these changes had been to begin selectively retiring listings from eBay to farm them off to my new store.  I consider my vintage goods long-tail items, well, my off-eBay store is going to be the very tip of the tail! 

I’ll be pressing forward with this plan, but here’s the best part for me—I don’t have to if I don’t want to … and I can if I want.  eBay isn’t dictating this move to me, in other words, I’m facing no pressure from their changes.  Believe me, I can recall one eBay fee hike which clamped around my wallet so hard I was forced to immediately cut what were at the time 7,500 store items down to 600—that was several years ago and I’ve been working to up my inventory number ever since!

In the end my own hope for this round of changes is not to save that $125-$150 per month, but to keep my bill right around where it’s always been and use that extra money to list more and sell more.  If moving my store items to core works towards that goal then I’d happily pay eBay even more than my current bill in order to increase what I take home in the end.

So John, yes, I am going to de-clutter, but at the same time I’m going to re-clutter my eBay listings.

by Cliff Aliperti

Note: I originally posted this very early Saturday morning on my own The Collectors Site blog—it’s now 36 hours later and I’m still having this problem with items I’ve relisted today.

Mine is, is yours? No? Better check then because I’d be shocked if it’s just me.

I started noticing this in the past 4-5 days when international buyers would buy and then request the shipping amount–I include international shipping on all of my listings so this seemed strange. At first I thought the problem was being caused by my listing tool (Inkfrog), but tonight I can confirm that it’s not–it’s all eBay.

When a buyer would request the shipping amount I’d go in afterwards and do a bulk edit on eBay to correct all similar items that I’d listed at the same time, assuming that I was adding the proper international shipping amounts back in through eBay’s bulk edit, but now I’m not too sure if I was actually doing anything.

That doubt arose tonight when a batch of Wizard of Oz movie cards ended after their 30 days listed and I relisted them–I noticed that there was no International Shipping quoted. More of the same I thought until I realized that the Wizard of Oz cards were one of the batches I had already corrected earlier this week.

Here’s the kicker, when I went in to bulk edit these Wizard of Oz cards tonight, to add the International Shipping fees to them through eBay’s own bulk lister, I found it wasn’t possible to do so. Here’s what happened all four times I tried:

The bulk edit screen on eBay’s back end–I’m choosing to edit just the Flat Rate International Shipping:

Here you can see I’ve input all of my International Shipping rates for both Store Items and Fixed Price:

Every time I did this just ONE of the 29 selected items showed the proper edits on the verification page–the other 28 look like this, the shipping edits aren’t even shown on this page despite being selected on the previous page:

The eBay Confirmation Page claims all edits have been done, but–

–but as you can see here on the edited item page the ONLY shipping option showing up is for the United States:

So the only option I see right now is to edit the items one by one–not bad for these 29 items, but what about my other 4,000?

Much to my surprise international sales have been pretty good this week, but still, this can’t be good, right? Again, for me, this has only hit the International Rates on Fixed Price items.

How ’bout you, seeing anything strange on your end?

By Cliff Aliperti

Within the past 24 hours I wrote:

I just can’t help having a nagging feeling that I got my money back all too easily."

And Recycled Thoughts from a Retro Gamer wrote:

This frightens me more than any other potential eBay selling pitfall.

While a day or two earlier Chef Ralph wrote:

E-Bay I see why you are a success. this type of service is far and few between…Thank you

Chef Ralph was a buyer, Retro Gamer wrote about a seller, and I’m primarily a seller who in this case was a buyer. Three different perspectives on the same policy, eBay’s new Resolution process.

The buyer, Chef Ralph, had the same experience I had as a buyer wherein contact with the seller was lost and "A week later E-Bay sent a follow up, and If you clicked ‘Still no resolution’, it gave you a phone number to call." You can see the details of his transaction inside his post, but the heart of the matter for us is that Chef Ralph presents himself as a long time eBayer, but one who just buys and sells a little bit here and there. He admitted to seeing some red flags along the way, but he trusted eBay and PayPal’s claims along the way and in the end that trust was verified to him by them righting his wrong and refunding his money.

Our friend Dan, perhaps better known by you as @magisterrex on Twitter, tells a different tale on his Retro Gamer site. First this was an older transaction, one handled under the old system in which a sometimes seller sold goods to a pro who resells goods from his own eBay account. In this story the buyer claimed items were not as described, and despite photos proving otherwise PayPal took his side and not only debited the seller’s account $770.10 to refund the buyer, but let the buyer keep the goods!

My perspective fell somewhere in between. I’m quite active as a buyer and a seller with multiple eBay accounts having 5 and 4-digit figure feedback counts. I know what I’m doing as a buyer and I have a pretty keen sensitivity towards sellers as in the past 10 years I’ve likely encountered most of their problems.

My story centered around about 50 bucks involved in an international transaction ended back in June, but which fell under the new resolution process by the time I took action. I had the same experience as Chef Ralph: I called the number when prompted, had about a 6 or 7 minute conversation in my case, though that was largely me extending the process, was told I’d have a refund and my money was back in my PayPal account in 24 hours.

Now I’ve pasted the exact nuts and bolts of the process below, or you can read my entire story about the transaction in my original post on The Collectors Site, but I’d like to dwell for a moment on these different perspectives and how this process is going to effect us, and eBay, going forward.

First, the cynics among us my disqualify the story from Retro Gamer because it fell under the old process. But the point is, the new process is a lot easier for buyers to get their money back. This leads us back to Chef Ralph’s post where a satisfied buyer goes so far as to pat eBay on the back and thank them–this, as we know, is exactly what eBay wants, happy buyers.

I want happy buyers too, but has the scale slid too far over? Has eBay guaranteed not only happy buyers but damn happy scammers as well?

If eBay assumed the risk on the two more current transactions–and by "assumed the risk" I mean paid the buyers back out of their own pockets and not the seller’s–then that’s great. That’s how they should be involved with transactions occurring on their own platform. But the question remains, what happens to the seller? I honestly lack the stones to write my seller and find out what, if anything, happened during the process to him (though if it went the way of the rest of the transaction he’d likely ignore my email anyway). As you’ll see below in my conversation with the eBay customer service rep, what happens on the other side of the transaction, the seller’s side, was made very unclear.

From that conversation it’s very clear that sellers can’t have too many of these strikes against their record and remain on the site, but it’s a mystery as to how many is too many. It is easy to see though that once word gets out too many is going to come all too fast. Is eBay willing to bend or revise their process not if, but when this proves true?

Awhile back John Lawson, owner of this colderICE blog, had mentioned (somewhere) the idea of the pre-approved buyer. That may actually be what’s necessary under this system, but seller–and eBay–trust me, we don’t want this. In this day and age we should be finding ways to lower barriers to purchase, not erecting new barriers, but this policy makes that impossible. (Though one simple suggestion along this line would be to force buyers to have their registered names and addresses be their actual names and addresses, a problem I ran into myself recently).

The threat to eBay itself here is that it becomes some kind of online 5-and-dime, where sellers of high ticket items disappear and sellers of lower value items like myself put a cap on purchases to avoid sending too much to one buyer. A fear of selling too much? How counter-intuitive is that?

Update #1: Potentially good news over on Retro Gamer, eBay’s Griff has stepped in with a comment and request for more information.  eBay might fix this one!

Update #2: Between the time of my first and final drafts Chris Dawson of Tamebay has posted on this topic as well, a great read, especially for the eBay.uk perspective.

Through an excerpt of my original post on The Collectors Site, here’s the process:

Here are all of the questions on the new Resolution Request form:

Did you not receive the item or is there a problem with it?

Do you have the package tracking number?

Have you tried contacting the seller?

How did you contact the seller?

Did the seller respond?

Is the seller willing to resolve the issue or did they give you options? (enter details in next question)

Tell us what happened in your communication with the seller. Please be as detailed as possible since we will use this information to resolve your case.

How can eBay help you?

After submitting I was informed that they’d copy the seller on the request and work with me to get me my item or my money back.

eBay sent 2 follow-up emails asking how it was going. The second such email had a couple of big buttons asking whether or not things had been worked out. I clicked no, and was sent to a page showing this:

What the hell I figured, I called and was connected pretty quickly (under 5 minutes) to a very polite and well-spoken gentleman who asked for my eBay ID, the transaction number and some personal information. He asked if I’d paid through PayPal, which I did. He asked for my story, and I gave him the nuts and bolts of the above, to which he replied, “Oh, you’ve waited more than enough time, you should have your item,” and then something to the effect of “let’s get to work on getting your money back.”

Explaining the situation in further detail I told him that I still preferred the item to the refund and noting the seller’s high feedback number I explained that I really didn’t think he’d set out to rip me off, I just hadn’t received anything for my money yet. The customer service rep repeated that I’d waited long enough and asked for some info on my PayPal account.

We got right to the point of the refund when I interrupted: “Just a second. Again, I think this is a good seller on the whole, I’ve just had a bad experience. My doing this isn’t going to get him kicked off eBay or anything, is it?” The rep told me probably not. I explained that I was a seller myself and so I had some empathy in this situation. So I pushed a little more and asked, “It takes more than one of these to get you tossed off the site, doesn’t it?” He hemmed and hawed some giving me the general impression that while he either didn’t know for sure or wasn’t at liberty to say chances were that it’d take more than one of these black marks to ban the seller.

I had more questions, but honestly I felt A) I wasn’t going to receive this item and B) the seller dropped the ball not replying to my later email request, so rather than press forward with more and somehow talk myself out of this refund I gave permission for the rep to proceed. He told me it would take something like 5-7 business days for payment to arrive, but actually the money was in my PayPal account by the next morning.

By Cliff Aliperti

Set it and forget it, right?  That’s the kind of simplicity we all want these days, and Storytlr.com has definitely filled that need for me in pulling together everything I do online.

Founded in 2008 Storytlr comes to us from two person team based out of Belgium and the Netherlands.  From the Storytlr Presskit:

Storytlr is reinventing the personal page by bringing together life-streaming, blogging, and social interactions. It lets you create, aggregate and mashup web content into a highly personalized page. Link it to your own domain, style it, share it. This becomes the place where you define your online identity.

Prior to finding Storytlr I’d been pointing people to my Google Profile to show off all I do online.  Now I definitely believe you should still have a Google Profile because, well, it’s Google, and no matter what you do online your Google Profile is always going to show up on page 1 when someone Googles you.

But that’s just a portal to what you’re doing.  I’d also tried mashing together my online presence with a Tumblr site.  While I like what Tumblr does I prefer the way Storytlr does it:

Beyond pulling in multiple blog posts, Tweets from multiple Twitter identities, my Stumbles, Google favorites, videos, and even eBay listings, what I love about Storytlr is that it allows me to arrange the page exactly how I want to present it to you.

It’s fast and it’s easy to set up.  I think I mention I did mine in one night and it took me about an hour and a half.  It imports all of your old info from the selected sites, allows you to organize it, archive it, and even back it up (worried about lost Tweets?  no more). 

Besides pulling in info from everywhere you are online you can also post links, videos, audio, blog posts direct to your Storytlr site.  There’s simple Disqus integration for commenting and making your site itself more social.

You can even set it up with your own domain name, which gave me the excuse to break out the oh-so-vain cliffaliperti.com.

The most amazing part of Storytlr…it’s free!  Actually, I even prefer the tabbing and organization to the price because (shh, don’t tell them) I’d definitely pay for this service. 

The following video is just under 5 minutes, but it’s enough time to give you a quick walk through both the front and back ends of my Storytlr site.  Have a look:

Sign-up here: Storytlr.com

By Cliff Aliperti
I’d held off writing this over the weekend in anticipation of the big eBay changes this morning, but since my first impression of the changes are that they’re harmless I figured I’d return to the topic I’d originally wanted to cover. eBay’s Best Offer and its use on vintage and/or unique items.

Best Offer is probably my favorite eBay feature, though I’ve still found myself questioning the way I use it sometimes. The main thing I’ve asked myself, and often others out loud, is should I automate the process to save time:

Add Best Offer to your listings and turn shoppers into buyers
Add auto-decline / auto-accept – Save time with auto-decline and auto-accept. This feature will automatically turn down offers that are below your minimum price or accept offers are within your preferred price range. You’ll still need to manually reply to offers outside of these limits. Remember, you can adjust these settings at any time.

I’ve finally decided my answer to that question is no, which conveniently leaves me without a listing to edit, but at the same time is, I believe, the correct answer.

If you’ve been involved in the world of antiques and collectibles before coming to eBay, or other online venues, you’ll find that Best Offer brings a bit of old real world practice to your ecommerce presence. I can recall many a Sunday where a buyer would stroll past my table at a baseball card show with an offer well below my marked price, to which I’d respond with a number close enough to retail to cause him to walk away without a word. But perhaps I’d see this customer two or three more times throughout the day, the dance continuing with the numbers coming closer to one another until finally, with the clock creeping in on closing time, we’d close the deal.

On eBay, of course, this can be strung out over several days, and in the end the seller has to realize that there is less of a chance of your potential customer returning to the online dance simply because it is so much easier to walk away–so if you’re going to counter the original offer with hopes of actually turning the sale you’re going to want to make it a strong counter. But that strategy is another story, one I’ve actually told before, this time around I’d like to get down to the much more basic topic of, why offer Best Offer, and why it’s good for sellers such as myself to monitor the process manually.

1) Best Offer can make a slow day turn strong – if your buyer wheels and deals you and you accept their offer, chances are they’re going to be happy about it, feel common ground with you or at least feel you’re reasonable, and so more offers may come rolling in after that initial acceptance.

Hint: If you happen to be online when the initial offer comes in, don’t answer it immediately. What stands as an unreasonable offer on a single item might look pretty good if the buyer intends to make a dozen similar offers. Shooting them down before you see a potential second offer come in is very likely going to kill the second offer (and beyond) before it even happens. I’d wait ten minutes or so just to make sure nothing else is coming in.

2) Best Offer can turn dead stock. I don’t know about you, but the nature of my niches means that some items sit, sometimes for months, some for years. I’ve pulled out items to list that I used to have on my table at those card shows I’d mentioned earlier … which I haven’t done since 1993. This past week alone I’ve sold multiple similar items to customers which had been in stock each of four months, one year, and 3 years or more. There’s a curve of sorts to my pricing–you might get an item cheap from me right after I list it, but if I have to list it again I tend to get stubborn. After a couple of more months however I’m willing to deal, and the more time that goes by the more I’m willing to deal.

Always remember, the true value of any item is only as much as someone is willing to pay. My vintage widget might start at $10, be relisted at $15, be happily sold for $10 a couple of months after, perhaps $8 a couple months beyond that, or maybe even just $5 if it sits around long enough. You want it? Best Offer is your chance to tell me what you think it’s worth.

Which is why in the end I’ve decided the wheeling and dealing fluctuates too much per item on any given day to set my low price in stone. Now if I have 1,000 brand new identical widgets I’m selling for $10, I may very well need to set that minimum at $7 and never accept a penny under it in order to profit. Vintage and uniques don’t typically work that way. They key part of any transaction remains in your original purchase of the stock, however the nature of vintage and unique goods is that the seller has to rely quite a bit more on instinct because they are the sole judge of value at the time of purchase just as their unique customer becomes that sole judge of value at the time of resale.

Keep your options open with Best Offer.

By Cliff Aliperti

Here’s my step-by-step lesson about how to properly suck it up when you make a mistake on an eBay order and still have a chance at receiving positive feedback in the end.  Or at least a tale of how I screwed up big-time, expected poor feedback but tried really hard to avoid it and succeeded!

This happened about a month ago and my DSR’s have remained constant as well, so I’m pretty sure these buyers didn’t hammer me at all.

In fact, John had just posted Don’t Be a JERK! “Well I Shipped It”… WTH? That Is NOT An Answer on April 5, and while I don’t think I would have handled this problem any differently, this video that he originally embedded in that post did at least validate my methods.

From my first reply to Buyer #1, who we’ll meet below, I imagined myself fixing the problem and creating this post, complete with John’s more succinct video embedded to further drive my point home.

Now, we all make mistakes from time to time.  I’ve always said I love my 100% eBay feedback, but I know that in reality I’m far from perfect.  I’m strong on describing items and excel in communication, which this little write-up should serve to prove, but about once I year I’ll pull a switcheroo with my shipping labels and buyers will receive the wrong goods.

Once a year, not terrible, but besides being a royal pain to correct because of having other people (the buyers) involved in the process, it’s really embarrassing.  Whenever I’m forced to apologize for this goof I always feel like I’m telling the buyer, “Hey, I screw up once per year and you won the prize!”

This is an area where we, the sole proprietor, small-seller, hobby-seller, hands-on seller, or whatever you think of yourself as, have the advantage over the big boys.  Customer service, don’t screw it up and always be a person –

Here’s how this one got started**:
April 4, received from buyer #1:

”You did not send the Tom Mix card instead you sent "BAJO TU HECHIZO" Movie Card. What ever that is. So now you have to figure out what you did wrong and get me my Tom Mix card and how do I get this WRONG CARD back to you. Please advise a.s.a.p.”

**Obviously all buyers names, addresses, e-mail addresses have been removed.  I’ve also removed some of the identifying details about the movie star trading cards, but I tried to leave enough info for you to distinguish one card from another.

Okay, I know I goofed, but Bajo tu Hechzio?  What the hell does that mean?  I go through all my shipping receipts from that day and I’m clueless.

My reply to buyer #1:

Hi, I’m very sorry if there’s been any mix-up. Can you send an image of what you received to (email address here)  — I’ve got to be honest, I have no idea what you’ve got there, I’ve never heard of it, so I can’t imagine it’s from me. If I mixed something up I definitely want to fix it for you, but I really don’t know what the "BAJO TU HECHIZO" card is, is it a Tom Mix card even? Definitely want to get this figured out. Thanks, Cliff

Okay, I might have goofed a little with that response, but I’ve really got no idea of what I sent this buyer at this point.  Even so, did I deserve this:

April 5, received from buyer #1:

”What kind of a operation are you running anyway? The card you sent me was NOT the Tom Mix card I paid you for which was supposed to be (detailed description removed). Instead I get a (detailed description removed) "BAJO TU HECHIZO’ Lawrence Tibbett  … card. Now please tell me were my card is and how soon I will get it. Thank you (name removed).

Well, at least he said thank you.  I’ve got to be honest, this one got under my skin some.  I had to step away before I answered this.  On the bright side I now have enough information to identify Buyer #2. 

I came back with this carefully crafted reply, which I think finally cooled Buyer #1 off some:

“Hi (Name deleted),

I’m a one-man operation and I made a mistake which I apologize for profusely.  The card you received was intended for another buyer which leads me to believe they have received your Tom Mix card.

I’m going to contact them right after I send this email to you– could you please return the card you received to (address removed)

I’ll get your Tom Mix card out to you as soon as it is returned to me (estimated time: 1-2 weeks depending upon how quick the other buyer returns the Mix card to me) and will refund you both for the shipping fee for getting the Lawrence Tibbett card back to me as well as your original shipping charge on the Tom Mix card.

I’m so sorry, if the order is time sensitive just return the other card and I can refund you in full if that’s what you wish.  Otherwise I will do my best to right this order for both you and the other customer who received the wrong card.

As a one-man operation I do my best to make sure everyone gets what they want and are happy, but I handle several orders daily so no matter how hard I try I will make a mistake from time to time.

Thank you for your consideration, will do my best to right this –

A little long maybe, but it’s all there-every possible solution to the problem.  If Buyer #1 wants their money back that’s fine too, as they bought something good and I could easily sell it again.  If they are willing to see this out I’ve enhanced my offer with a little bribe—besides taking care of all of the shipping fees getting everything to its proper place (which the buyers should not be expected to pay anyway) I’m greasing palms a little by offering the original shipping fee back as well. 

I don’t have my original email to Buyer #2, but I do have their reply:

April 7, received from Buyer #2:

”yes, you did send me the wrong item. I received a June Marlowe card – rather than the Lawrence Tibbett card. I will send it back to you this week so that you can sort this out and send me the Lawrence Tibbett item.”

Uh oh.  June Marlowe card?  Buyer #2 doesn’t have the Tom Mix card.  Buyer #2 has indicated that a Buyer #3 is also involved here in my first ever 3-way error.  I send customers the wrong stuff once a year, okay, I apparently commit the dreaded 3-way error once per decade.  Prize, these buyers have hit jackpot!

April 7, Buyer #1 replies:

“I noticed under the mailing label a name written on the envelope (name removed) if that is any help to you. It almost looks like that was written on the envelope to the person it was going to be mailed to. In any event I’ll send the other card back a.s.a.p. Let me know when you have a answer to this problem”

Hmm, Buyer #1 still refers to the problem, okay, but the attitude seems to have gone away and a piece of helpful information is even offered.  If the entire transaction hadn’t been complicated by a Buyer #3 entering the picture I’d be gaining confidence.  Instead my fingers are still tightly crossed.

I do still have the original email I sent to Buyer #3 (and I assume I sent something similar to Buyer #2 above as well).

Hello, as you probably know by now it appears I’ve sent you the wrong card. I am so sorry about this, as it appears I accidentally put your shipping label on one order and somebody else’s on yours.

I’ve been in contact with the person who received your June Marlowe card and they are returning it to me tomorrow, then, of course I’ll get it off to you ASAP.

I believe you received a Tom Mix card. Could you please return it to me at (address removed)

Of course I’ll reimburse you for shipping it back and send out the Marlowe card at no charge ASAP. I’m very embarrassed about this and so sorry it had to happen with your order.

April 8, Buyer #3 replies:

Card will be mailed tomorrow morning!  No problem, we’ve all been there!!

Wow, I’d be a lot less stressed over all this if Buyer #3 had been Buyer #1.  At least I would have been prepared for any outbursts later, but in retrospect I’m just happy 2 out of the 3 buyers were so kind and that the first one calmed down some during the process.

Immediately upon receipt of that email from Buyer #3, I wrote this to Buyer #1:

Just wanted to let you know that I heard back from the person with your card today and that they let me know they shipped it out to me today.

I think we’re back on track here, hopefully I can have this all righted very soon.  Thanks –

April 8, Buyer #1 replies:

Great. Your card was shipped out yesterday via USPS so you should receive it in a couple of days. Thanks

I’m doing pretty good now.  Though this could have led to a slight set-back:

April 11, I write Buyer #1:

Received the card back from you today, thanks so much.  I haven’t received your Tom Mix card from the other party yet, but hopefully it’s just a lag in mail delivery.  If by some chance that doesn’t arrive Monday I’ll write him again just to make sure it’s been sent.  I really expect it Monday though, they were pretty receptive when I wrote.

Buyer #1 replies:

Thanks for the update.

Brief, but not nasty.  I don’t think I’ve lost him.  And thankfully the card did arrive Monday.

April 18, Buyer #1 leaves me positive feedback:

Very Professional. Good results…………….Thanks

April 29, Buyer #3 leaves me positive feedback:

fantastic item,well described, well packaged and promptly delivered! Thanks!

Buyer #2 never did leave feedback, but I have the tracking info and know their card was delivered, and believe me, I’m sure I didn’t screw it up!  Especially with the other two receiving the correct items—you want to talk about paranoid, I can’t tell you how many times I checked and double-checked those packages!

As I mentioned earlier my DSR’s have also remained at the exact same levels since this all began, and I’d assume the rating I was most worried about (Buyer #1) would have registered by now since he left feedback 3 weeks ago today.

So, what did I do?

1. I killed them with kindness.  “What kind of operation are you running?” is fighting words, but I didn’t take the bait.  In fact, I told the buyer exactly what kind of operation I was running with as much of the sarcasm trimmed from the response as possible!
2. I communicated as often as possible and provided any relevant information I had.  I did leave one thing out—I never mentioned to any of the buyers that there was a third buyer involved.  I didn’t lie, but I didn’t think this info was necessary and would have probably just worried the buyers more.  I didn’t include it here, but I even wrote Buyer #1 after they left my feedback just to make sure everything went as well as the feedback indicated.
3. I bribed them.  Look, these are trading cards.  I charge $2 to ship and it costs a little less to actually send them.  So with 3 buyers I had to lay out an extra $6 total refunding them for getting the cards back to me, another $6 (actually less) to print their new shipping labels and get the packages into the right hands, and then another $6 in the form of $2 for each Buyer to reimburse them for the original shipping fee they paid me. 

That last $6 is really a bribe of sorts, yes, but really more of an effort at an honest apology.  I’m already out $12, what’s another $6 to try to insure all three buyers leave the transaction happy?

The key to communication though remains walking away from that first email, no matter how rude it may appear.  I think most of us realize by now that ALL CAPS doesn’t always indicate screaming, it may just indicate nearsightedness, but beyond that, if your customer doesn’t receive what they ordered they’re absolutely right to take it out on you.

Frankly, if buyer #1 outright called me a S.O.B. I would have still come back kind.  If he persisted, well, he’s still right about the main issue, I just would have reeled in some of the chit-chat and kept my emails all-business and brief.

Speaking of brief, I think we’ll end this one here.  Hope some of this helps you at some point, but for now just keep double-checking those packages before you send them out!

by Cliff Aliperti

I apologize for not having posted to the ColderICE blog for a bit, but if we’re Twitter buds you probably understand I keep pretty busy.  I feel like I have a million little tasks to do all with alternating priorities and every time I think I’m done I remember another which had to take a back seat for awhile.

Besides all the usual clutter I have Post-It notes all over the place, on my desk, around the edges of my monitor, and beyond that if my note runs long then it goes on a blank envelope and suddenly I have those propped up on every corner of my desk too! 

Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do, I just wish I could remember what’s supposed to come next.  And I think I finally found something that can help!

Joe’s Goals has been around awhile, since at least 2006, so excuse me for this interruption if you’re already aware of it (but, hey, how come you didn’t tell me about it?).

I’ve just started using this simple little tool last night, and I already love it.  Part of the reason is it is exactly what I was imagining when I set out to find something close to what was in my head.  I’d thought to myself, I’d love to have a daily sheet, listing all of my little tasks, from the daily to the weekly and monthly, and just put a little mark next to each one every day I work on it.  That way I could see where I’m consistent and more importantly see where I need to pick up the pace some.

This is exactly what Joe’s Goals does.  And it does it for free.  No bells and whistles here, just sign-up for your free account, log-in, and click “goal” to add a goal.  In my case it’s posting on various blogs or listing on various venues.  When I complete a task for the day you just click the proper area in the Joe’s Goals grid, aligning the date with the task, and bang, a little green check mark fills the cell.

Your entire week sits before your eyes, but at the right of the column you can also see how long it’s been since you’ve last completed a task.  For example, I can see it’s been 14 days since I last made a video—better get on it!

A similar site I tried just prior to finding Joe’s Goals was Rough Underbelly, which appears to do the same thing but has the added bonus of a timer, so I assume you can also record how long you spent working on each task.  Truth be told, Rough Underbelly is a lot prettier than Joe’s Goals, but I couldn’t find directions, nor could I figure it out in two seconds, so I split and found the next solution. 

There’s also a paid version of Joe’s Goals, which from what I can tell does little more than remove the Google ads from the page, but for $12/year it’s more of a payment out of appreciation for the tool.

The Joe’s Goals founder, Ian Smith (no, not Joe), has a blog attached to the site as well which besides including updates on what he’s up to announces bug fixes and even suggests some uses for the Joe’s Goals tool.

Now it’s easy to say I’m going to sit down each day and make a habit out of opening up my Joe’s Goals page, but of course I can’t promise that.  I’ve got it on my main toolbar, so hopefully I remember to open up.  If I do I have a feeling this simple little tool may set me forth on an entirely new run of productivity.

By Cliff Aliperti
I couldn’t get through John’s recent video post about eBay’s DSR’s and International trade without having an old bug bite me.  This one has bothered me for some time now and I decided I needed to try to lay it out.  When I mentioned it to John he pointed me to a video he made back in December.  After talking it over we decided the issue was worth another look from my perspective.

The misconception referred to in this post’s title stems from this statement on the eBay Seller Performance Policy page:

To ensure a minimum performance standard from all sellers, eBay requires sellers to maintain at least a 4.3 average for each DSR (Item as described, Communication, Shipping time, and Shipping and handling charges).

And then a 4-star rating for each of those respective detailed ratings being labeled as thus on the Leave Feedback page:

• Accurate
• Satisfied
• Quickly
• Reasonable

All positive terms.

So the common thought I see expressed is if 4 stars on a single transaction are good, then how could an overall rating of 4.0 possibly be bad?

Isn’t the answer right there?  It’s two different things.

I don’t know why eBay hasn’t tried to lay this out in plain English, maybe it’d look like they were trying too hard?  I have seen the issue addressed, the question answered, but the MBA talking heads over there are pretty obviously incapable of breaking anything down in plain English for the layman.

Newbie eBay seller, there was a pre-DSR time in eBay’s history, a seemingly happier time where customer satisfaction was rated simply as positive, neutral, and negative.  I bought on such an eBay for 7 or 8 years myself with the personal criteria of using care if a seller’s positive feedback rating was under 99.0%, restraining myself from all but the absolutely gotta have it items if under 98.5%, and running away if the positives came in at under 98%.  I didn’t run all too often.

In other words, in this pre-DSR world of eBay this buyer thought you were a risk if you had 97.9% satisfaction or below.  Of course there are exceptions here, I mean if you had a 90% rating with 10 total feedbacks I’d probably give you a try, but I’m talking about experienced sellers with the feedback tally racked up a bit higher.

Look at this chart I pulled from SellerDome today:

I had to crop it some to make it legible in this space, but the labels on this, top column to bottom, are the Top 10, Top 100, Top 1,000, Top 10,000, and Top 100,000 eBay sellers, ranked according to their total feedback number.  I left the DSR’s visible for you as well.

As you can see, a 99% positive feedback rating is today’s standard.  Doesn’t that more or less render the statistic useless?  I’ve said it before, I have a 100% rating myself and I know I’m not perfect, so what does this number mean, if anything?

The DSR system is eBay’s way to better identify the good seller.  By it’s very name, and I think everyone will agree with this, it is more detailed.

So if a 4.0 brings connotations such as Accurate or Satisfied to the the table, then why in the hell does eBay’s Performance Policy call for a 4.3?

This is the same question John asked back in December.  Here’s what he had to say then:

Armed with some similar screenshots in addition to a baseball metaphor, it’s my turn to lay it out for you.

I’ll start by using a seller of my volume as the example.  I get about 1,000 DSR ratings per year:

What this assumes is that I’m starting with a 4.3 DSR rating after 1,000 DSR ratings.  What it shows is what it would take to fall to a 4.2.  I would have to get 1,000 consecutive 4 ratings, in other words at this volume, every single rating I get for the entire year would have to be a 4.  Much more likely to get in trouble for the 48 consecutive 1 rating’s, no?

This one’s even better:

It’s basically the same calculation starting me out from a 4.8.

One more for the smaller scale seller:

This one assumes you’re wondering what it takes to fall below the 4.3 you’ve earned after 100 DSR ratings.  Basically the math is going to show that whatever your DSR number is, you’re going to have to receive that number of 4 ratings, again consecutively, in order to drop from a 4.3 to a 4.2.

This is bad?

The greatest perception problem here is a misconception formed around the terminology, in other words, satisfied and accurate are positive terms, so then how come an overall rating that is greater than satisfied can get you into trouble?

Because every single 4 DSR rating you get is good in eBay’s eyes (unless of course it’s your first one), they are well aware your 4 rating means your customer was satisfied, just not very satisfied (a 5.0).

What eBay is saying is if every single customer feels satisfied rather than very satisfied you are in fact only performing at 80% efficiency.

Go back to earlier in this article, back to when we were talking about only positives and negatives before DSR’s came on the scene.  What’s 80% get you there?  Not any sales, that’s for sure.

Truth be told, if I’m the buyer and you’re squeaking along at the 4.3 standard I’m already thinking twice because that’s really only an 86% efficiency rating, isn’t it?

Here’s my final point, and why no matter how much people talk and squawk about DSR’s it’s not going to matter.  We have to assume eBay has established their Seller Performance threshold based on statistics.  We have to assume their honesty in this regard, but to the cynical I’ll say this—throw out all of the DSR ratings of Diamond Powersellers and there’s still such a high volume of total feedback remaining that I’d be very surprised if their removal tilts the statistics whatsoever.

So assuming even just a modicum of honestly, if buyer’s ratings were to adjust to more accurately reflect seller’s opinion on this subject—and I’m going to operate under the belief that the seller thinking the single 4 rating equates to an overall 4 rating would view a 3.9 as a below acceptable overall rating—then the moment eBay’s statistics reflected this, they would slide the scale for Seller Performance anyway.

More plainly speaking, if buyers were suddenly reflecting a 4.0 as their overall point of satisfaction, eBay would slide the acceptable minimal performance from a 4.3 down to a 3.9.

It comes down to this:

The single 4.0 rating I give you on an individual sale is not the same as your overall 4.0 rating.  Single instances of imperfection are not defined in the same way as your overall level of performance.

Put another way, take a .300 hitter in baseball.  .300 is excellent, it’s an All-Star’s batting average.  If our .300 hitter goes 1-for-4 one night he’s not suddenly a .250 hitter.

Now in the late 60’s when baseball raised the pitcher’s mound a .300 hitter became quite rare.  The standard for excellence slid as batting averages across baseball dropped.  Suddenly a .280 hitter was among the best in the game.

While the baseball example was based upon a perception, that perception was backed up by the overall sample of available numbers.  eBay would take the same approach if there was a sudden and drastic downward trend in their DSR numbers.

Is the DSR system perfect?  No, of course not.  It weighs apples and oranges as all apples, in other words Domestic vs. International sales and with few exceptions weighs the highest volume sellers in the same manner as smaller sellers.

But I think one place where time is wasted is over wondering why a single 4 is good, but an overall 4 is bad.  I’m really of the mind that if you can’t see why this is, you just don’t want to see it.