TOPIC:

HI!... I've been having a hard time finding a original black Wild One chassis. Every time I find one the seller wants a outrageous amount for it. Took me 2 years to find Grasshopper II front/rear wheels. Now I'm trying to find a NIB body for it.

Non-existant user wrote:

HI!... I've been having a hard time finding a original black Wild One chassis. Every time I find one the seller wants a outrageous amount for it. Took me 2 years to find Grasshopper II front/rear wheels. Now I'm trying to find a NIB body for it.

There is one Grasshopper II bodyset on ebay now


For others looking for Grasshopper II wheels, keep in mind that they also came with the much more common Striker, so remember to search for Striker as well.

HI!... Thanks LARBUT!!!!!!!!! That's the cheapest one I have seen. Most guys want over $110 for it. So double that for Canadian funds! OUCH! I jumped on it right away and bought it. Then I realized that the seller won't ship out of the U.K........ I sent him a PM hoping he will change his mind. If not mabey someone here can buy it and ship it to me with my funds?

I really don't understand it when people say they won't ship outside of their home country.

Not only does it require barely any extra effort on their part to ship worldwide, they are also reducing their potential auction earnings from the sale by around 20-30% (and often much more) by limiting their audience to just one corner of the globe. It makes no sense.

Hibernaculum wrote:

I really don't understand it when people say they won't ship outside of their home country.

Not only does it require barely any extra effort on their part to ship worldwide, they are also reducing their potential auction earnings from the sale by around 20-30% (and often much more) by limiting their audience to just one corner of the globe. It makes no sense.

The reason I won't ship overseas on eBay is down to limiting myself to damage from what I'd call "Unrealistic Buyer Expectations" (that shipping anywhere should be of negligable cost, almost instantaneous, and never subject to any import duty) - and fraud.

These unrealistic sentiments (or "sense of entitlement" - I blame Oprah ), and/or fraud, are _encouraged_ by eBay by three principle means:

1- "Detailed Seller Ratings" - where anything less than 4.8 out of 5 average is deemed to be failing - and is subject to seller items appearing lower in the listings, and higher fees.

Any buyer that didn't read the description properly, feels a little put out because their item didn't immediately teleport in right in front of them, is regretting bidding higher than they really wanted to, etc, etc, can relatively anonymously harm a seller by dinging them on all 4 categories.

2- Feedback. Buyers can't leave anything but positive feedback for sellers - leaving a negative or even neutral comment under the guise of positive feedback is not permitted. No such problem for buyers though - they can do what they like, as long as it doesn't contain any profanities the chances of unfair negative feedback being removed is practically nil.

3- Automatically siding with buyers in claims. This means a seller pretty much has to use a fully tracked & insured service to limit their exposure to fraudsters ... and even then, a buyer can claim they got a box full of junk rather than an NIB Scorcher


At the risk of making this sound like a big conspiracy theory, two other agencies come in to play:

The legal system in your own country. Not that there's any real practical difference between an officer "taking down your particulars" (fnarr fnarr ) but doing nothing about it, and declining jurisdiction in case of fraud

The postal/courier system(s) you've entrusted your parcel to - more precisely the speed at which they deliver. I sent a small package to South Africa recently - I paid for 5 day airmail, but after 3 weeks it hadn't arrived - if that had been an eBay transaction I probably would have to refund in that case, probably dodging negative feedback but almost certainly not a neutral - & definately not those DSRs.



That shell sold for 35 GBP, the cost of shipping it within the UK untracked/uninsured (but at least subject to possible refund for loss & the legal protection of a transaction being conducted entirely in the same country) would be on the order of 5 GBP, tracked & insured within the UK would be about 9 GBP, but to Canada fully tracked & insured would be on the order of 65 GBP - tell me your average buyer would give 5 stars for the cost of shipping in that case


I don't sell a huge amount on eBay, but I'd still say that 1 in 10 are "problem" transactions - well, "problem buyers" anyway - and if international transactions are involved, the chances of an issue more than double, and the chance of resolving it halve

It's sad to hear of such problems. Would they be alleviated somewhat by limiting the countries to which you'll ship items?

I've sold around 200 items on ebay over the years, and I don't mean to sound smug by any means when I say I've never really had a problem with any buyers. I've never had items go missing. I've compensated a few people here or there to keep them happy, and overall earned about $5-6000 selling stuff on eBay. Not every buyer has given me perfect feedback of course, but there's never been anything drastic.

Perhaps I've just been lucky.

Likewise, the Australian postal system is pretty good I think. And I've certainly never had an issue buying something from the UK, in the past 12-13 years.

cheers,
H.

I'd agree with Jonny on this. Maybe it's just the Brits that expect more than is reasonable, but I've noticed I'm being slated for postage costs recently & I always take a loss on it, so I don't really know what they're comparing my costs to, to say I'm charging too much. The other one that makes me laugh is the buyer's inability to recognise the difference between dispatch time & delivery time, & although I haven't been caught with this (Yet) I always giggle when reading NFB saying "Delivery too slow, took nearly 4 days" (Usually from people who take 6 to pay)