u/KnoxCrumudgeon

I sell retro video games and vintage toys. Most of my listed inventory is BIN with offers turned off. If you’re a seller, you know that means people will just message you with offers . Usually I ignore offers. I consider lowball but this morning, I was feeling in a charitable mood.

I received a message asking if I would sell a game for less thannhalf the listing price. Instead of ignoring the offer, I replied, hoping maybe that the person who made the message could understand why I said no, and maybe in the future think a little bit more before making lowball offers?

Item Nintendo game, PriceCharting at 17, me selling for $18.95 with free shipping.
Random eBayer: Would you do 10?

Me: Hi! i’m going to have to say no to that. But I want to explain why as maybe my explanation could help you make offers to other sellers in the future.

This game is $18.95 with free shipping.

First, when you see free shipping, it means the seller has bundled the cost of shipping into the price. USPS ground advantage costs an average of $5.50, sometimes a little bit more depending on how far away you are from me. That means I’m asking a little over $14 for the game itself.

Video game sellers rely on a website called PriceCharting, which tracks the sales price of video games. On PriceCharting this game (loose cartridge) version is $17.05. So I'm already selling the game below PriceCharting value.

You’re offering me $10. With $5.50 for shipping, that means you’re really asking if I would sell you a $17 game for $4.50 (or even less if you’re really far away from me).

Welp, it is the weekend so that means the eBay app (Android) is glitching out again. Started yesterday afternoon and is continuing today. Every time I try to list an item, the app times out or gives me a screen that "we've encountered an error." And the app claims that no one has viewed any of my items since Wednesday. But I've had a dozen sales in the last 2 days of items listed in the last 2 days that people somehow bought without seeing them... Am I alone in this?

Okay, the mods told me that I can only ask these kinds of questions on a sunday. I hope this is appropriate today.

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I have a small eBay store selling retro video games and vintage toys. Most of my eBay sales are items that are less than $500. I also have items in inventory that are much more valuable (I write this while staring at a CIB Killer Instinct Edition SNES and a CIB Rule of Rose) that I have been hesitant to sell on eBay. I've been a long time buyer on Whatnot. I'm wondering is Whatnot is any safer to sell those high-end items or just as wild west as eBay (or worse)? What has been your experience dealing with scammy buyers on the platform? Has Whatnot support been helpful?

So this is weird. I received yet another cancellation request (like some of y'all, I've had a lot of these lately). Except this time I never received an item sold notification. In fact, the item is still listed in my active inventory (I checked via the app on my phone and then via the eBay website on my laptop). When I clicked on the cancellation request notification it seems that eBay is already processing the cancellation. Huh??

Hey sellers! If you're like me and ship USPS, I'm wondering how you've handled the recent increase in shipping rates. I'm eating the cost on higher margin items but have had to increase my price to cover most of the cost on lower margin items. I've also stopped sourcing lower margin items until I can come up with more creative ideas or other platforms for those items. I'm asking also because in my most frequent category of retro video games, I'm seeing more and more low end games that have sold in the last month since the rate increase selling with free shipping for basically at or less then a typical USPS Ground Advantage label. So I'm wondering how many sellers didn't update their prices or just thought "screw it" and started sending video games improperly via Media Mail).

So I'm looking for advice.

I have a whatnot seller of retro video games that I regularly buy from and have usually been pretty pleased with my transactions. However, twice in the past year the seller has shipped items with little to no packing material. In February I received a console in a box that literally was falling apart on my doorstep - fortunately the console was bubble wrapped so it was okay. Recently, I received an order of new inbox controllers. The shipping box looks like USPS played kickball with it and two of the new in box controller boxes are smashed (the controllers look okay). As these are items I was planning to resell (sorry, unload your reseller hate now I'm ready for it) I'm going to take a loss on both of them. I messaged the seller with photos and the seller expressed their sympathies - I'm pretty sure the response to my message should have been at least a partial refund.

What would y'all do? I don't want to request a refund from whatnot as I'm worried that would burn a bridge to seller I've been mostly happy with, but the same time I think basic customer service is packing your items well and then owning it when your poorly packed items are damaged in shipping.

As the title says, I was driving past what should have been the Petty coffee shop and noticed it was empty. That was not open very long even by Knoxville coffee shop standards. Anyone know the backstory?