NEVER SELL ON EBAY!
Why you say? You've sold on ebay before and had no problem? Well, because if ONE LITTLE THING goes wrong, Ebay will not to anything to back you up. And the U.S. Postal Service will not do anything to help you find lost packages. Selling on Ebay is not worth the trouble.
As you all may know, I posted my 3Wheeling Magazines on ebay. I am a novice seller on ebay. I have bought before but never sold. Selling on ebay is not for the little guy or novice. There are so many things that could go wrong if you click on the wrong button or don't know what you are doing.
I made the mistake of not blocking international bids. I had a guy in the UK make three orders of magazines. I mailed him four USPS Flat Rate envelopes and only two of them made it. Because I used Priority Mail, they are not trackable. The US Customs Bar Code MEANS NOTHING. So, two envelopes are lost somewhere between San Diego and the UK.
The USPS will do nothing to help me because they do not recognize the US Customs Bar Code. I have called various USPS offices, including Consumer Affairs, their International Shipping Desk and their lost mail department. NOTHING. They can't help. I have called US Customs and they do not inspect outgoing mail; only incoming. So the US Customs Bar Code that Ebay and USPS supply on their printed label DON'T MEAN A THING!
So, with Ebay Resolution cases pending against me because USPS or Customs or UK Royal Mail has lost those envelopes, I have to refund the buyer his money. $500 worth of magazines that I don't have to resell and he does not have because those Priority Mail Flat Rate envelopes are sitting in Tim Buck Two somewhere and someone is reading those magazines.
Ebay is hard to contact, hard to get to understand that I don't have them. Pretty much it is "Did they get delivered?" If not then refund the money. They do not have a department to help little sellers figure out where the packages went.
I trusted Ebay. I made a mistake in doing so. I trusted the USPS and I made a mistake in doign so. I should have never shipped international to begin with. I made a mistake of trusting that the USPS would track the package, which it did not.
I am a little seller; the little guy trying to sell a few things on ebay. What I found out that is Ebay is not for the little guy. It's for the "stores". If you don't know what you are doing, you can get chewed up and spit out fast. That's what happened to me.
My recommendation is to sell on the message boards here with Pay Pal. I did that with a few magazines and the sales turned out just fine. Don't waste your money on Ebay.
I was lucky that I posted my ads when I get a free listing and free buy it now. Otherwise it would have cost me a fortune. There are listing fees, buy it now fees, duration fees (for the # of days you want it posted for), final value fees and pay pal fees. By the time you sell something you could see most of your profit eaten up in fees. On a $55 sale(magazine and postage), I probably saw $35 of it.
I would never recommend selling on Ebay. What a nightmare. I'm more stressed out from this than anything I can think of.