About To Start Selling On Ebay. Any Tips?

I have been selling on ebay for 8 years and this was true a few years ago. However, ebay changed its policies.
As biokemist6 stated: "Sellers are most definitely responsible for items arriving safely to buyers, stating otherwise is against ebay rules".

This creates a problem for sellers because most coins are shipped by first class lettermail without tracking or insurance to keep postage costs down. Out of the last 500 packages that I shipped by lettermail, I only had 2 buyers report that they did not receive their coins. I ask the buyer to wait 30 days from the date that I mailed the coins. If after 30 days, the buyer still claims that he has not received his coins, I give a full refund including shipping & handling charges. I have only had to give 2 refunds (one for $30+ and one for $50+

It is most important to price your items realistically. I check current market prices such as online dealers' prices, ebay prices and "Current Trends" from Canadian Coin News for the coin that I am listing. Also, when you decide on an amount for shipping & handling charges, remember the following costs: ebay listing fees, ebay seller fees, Paypal fees, packaging materials (2x2 coin flips, padded envelops, etc.) and actual postage costs. I find it better to include these expenses in the shipping & handling charges. Remember, if a Canadian seller sells a BU one dollar coin to another Canadian on ebay for $1.99 and charges $1.99 for shipping & handling, his total income is $3.98 and from that, he has the following expenses: ebay listing fee $0.20, ebay seller fee $0.48, Paypal fee $0.54, 2x2 flip $0.04, padded envelope $0.46, postage stamp $0.69 with taxes ($1.20 to U.S.) plus the $1.00 for the coin ($1.58 per coin if he bought from dealer @ $34.95 per roll plus 13% taxes). Also remember, the postal service may lose 1% of your packages and you may have to refund the buyer. Many of the BU coins that I sell are from rolls that I buy from dealers as mentioned above. My actual cost to sell that coin and mail it to the buyer in Canada is $3.99 (see breakdown above). If I sold the coin for $1.99 and if I charged 1.99 for shipping & handling, I would have an income of $3.98 and only lost 1 cent on the deal. If I had got the coin for face value, I would have made 57 cents on the deal. I am disabled and sell on ebay to keep busy and sane. If I do better than break even, I am happy. The guys who make real money (from my selling on ebay) are ebay, Paypal and Canada Post (not me).

Using the postage label printing facility through Paypal is a great help, the best advice is start small and with lower value items and build up. You will find the pitfalls and learn from them.

I would also suggest just selling in the US for a bit - its easier to offer affordable tracked postage in your own country, when your confident you can include the rest of the world. Your choice but if you stick to US only you could be missing out on millions of bidders, depends what your selling really, US coinage is hugely popular in the US but as can be expected not that popular elsewhere.

Certain countries are a 'no-go' to post to, Italy is awful, much of eastern Europe, Africa and Indonesia/Asia can also be problematic. Western Europe, Aus, NZ, Japan, South Africa are all usually fine. Don't know much about South America.



The above means nothing if people pay you through Paypal. You need 'signed for' (not sure what the US term is) if you want to avoid refunds and even then is not a certainty. You have no choice with refunds if you don't protect yourself. Paypal will just take the money out of your account and return it to the buyer if you cant prove it was delivered, no matter what blurb you put in the description.

First, that statement in a listing never meant anything. FTC Federal mail order law spells it out clearly and always trumped anything a seller put in their listing and claimed it "binding."

Second, ebay didn't change it's policy on it, there never was one. They created it to stop the petty complaining from sellers that thought they were above the law just because they stated it in the listing.

As I said, it's Federal law, not just ebay policy. It's not out of your hands once you ship it. You need to take steps prior to shipping to ensure the buyer is covered if it doesn't get there. Now how you do that, is up to you. Low dollar items you can choose to roll the dice, high dollar items you can insure, it's completely up to you. You most certainly can't let the buyer be on the hook, it's definitely not their fault. The seller being responsible is perfectly logical and correct in my opinion.

About 80% of the packages that I ship are by Canada Post first class lettermail (no insurance). The value of the contents in each envelop is usually under $20 and often under $5
I ship at least 500 of those "letters" per year. Allowing $200 for lost packages per year, I think we could add 25 cents to 40 cents to the shipping and handling (as insurance) ... just do not mention it, because "lost" packages may increas if some buyers knew.