Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Ebaby



Mark has really slowed down his shopping on Ebay lately. Fewer and fewer packages have been arriving. In fact he asked me to help him get rid of some of the crap that he has bought. So I decided that it came from Ebay, it should go away through Ebay. The only problem is that I have never bought or sold anything on Ebay and had no idea how it worked. So there were some old parts from my 1950 Studebaker sitting around gathering dust, and I thought I'd get my feet wet by selling those on Ebay. I'm not sure what Ebay stands for, but I'll tell you, after signing up, giving them some very detailed information about my banking, and putting my first item up, I learned that the E in Ebay does not stand for easy. I found it very complicated and confusing. First there is the setting up of a PayPal account. That's where you give them access to your bank account, and you give yourself some acid in your stomach. Finally I was ready so I took some photos and put my first item up, but not before I had to figure out shipping costs. This turned out to be another confusing mess because now you had to deal with the United States Post Office, not known for efficiency. I went to the USPS web site to figure out packaging, and price of shipping. What a circle jerk that was. So I kind of figured I needed a flat rate box, but wasn't quite sure how priority shipping was different from priority express. In the end I posted a shipping fee of just over five dollars for the item. It turns out I was wrong, very wrong. After shipping and paying Ebay their cut, the 1950 Studebaker tail light bezels that I had put on Ebay for $40, ended up netting me less than $22. But I guess that was the point of my first sale, to learn how to do it. I fucking learned alright. I quickly raised the shipping cost of my next item by more than a hundred percent, and it won't be shipped by 'Priority Mail'. Screw the post office, it's going low class.

3 comments:

  1. Once you figure it out tell me. I've been wanting to sell all my girlfriend's crap there, but can't figure out how.

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  2. Last night I searched for the second item I had put up, and it was nowhere to be found on Ebay. This morning I was going to call and bitch, but it showed up. Ebay is a mystery.

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  3. Did you sell a used corduroy fedora, because I bought it and put it in the freezer for a week to kill "bugs" just in case. My girlfriend found it last night looking for fish filets...it was supposed to be a "Tom Landry" surprise once football season starts.

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