STEPHIE'S BEADS AND BAUBLES

I will not lie. I am really struggling with all the selling platforms right now. I have not personally had too many issues but I do not like how they are all set up.

My biggest issue is the seller vs buyer . All the platforms seem to favor buyers over sellers even if the seller is well established with a great feedback and the seller has never bought anything before. I have heard a lot of bad stories but never have dealt with that personally. I just find it rather odd. Without good sellers, no buyers .

So, I figured I would talk a bit about the different platforms I use and the issues with them.

Mercari. This is my newest platform and I am doing well selling there. Never sold this much on Ebay and cannot sell modern jewelry on Etsy so Ebay was my only other option until Mercari.

My main issue with Mercari is their no contact at all rule. On Etsy and Ebay I can share my YouTube Channel and this site. On Mercari, no way. I sent a bracelet, dropped it in the outside blue mailbox well before the last pick up at four, that was never scanned by the post office and after over a week I had to cancel the order. I know she would get it and figured she would pay me at that time. But she couldn’t. I guess she did not think to keep my packaging, she could have mailed me a check, but I think she thought, like I did, she could get on the site and pay me. NOPE.I went looking on the site for answers . Well, when you read Mercari;s policies, it states if you cancel an order and they receive it later , you do not get paid. I was stunned. She wanted to pay me, I wanted my money, but nope. I was out the cost of shipping and my item , and no payment. That kind of stinks if you ask me. If she sold something I wanted she would have taken the money off of that item, but she had nothing in her shop I was even remotely interested in. I will keep checking and when she has something I want, she will give me the discount.

So, now I make sure to take every single package in , even though they are prepaid labels and have them scanned and keep that receipt. Had I done that, it might have been different as I could have proven I shipped it. When I spoke to the lady at the post office customer service, she said never , ever put anything in the outside box. Not even a letter. And really , do not put anything in the rolling drum inside either. Go when they are open and hand them to an employee and have them scanned into the system. One postal worker I have worked with for almost 20 years told me that nothing in the boxes gets scanned, it goes right into the truck. She pointed to the very full box in the lobby and said, most of that goes right in the truck as well. We try to scan when it is slow, but almost all of it goes out unscanned. Wow. That never used to be the case.

As for Etsy ,I know I did not accept returns, and when I had something come back because the customer gave the wrong address,so I contacted Etsy to let them know and I got a call back from Etsy and the guy even says, yeah I see you do not take returns, but yet today when I was listing I went to check something on the last listing and saw it says I take returns. I was shocked. Finally found where it said I put that as my option in something like 2017. Why would I do that ? Why would the guy say I see you do not take returns if I did ? Weird. Can not change it back. I followed all the instructions to go to where I need to go to change it, but the tabs I am looking for, are not there. So, after looping around customer service for a while , somehow I was able to send a message to Etsy and explain the situation. I suppose I will get an email back at some point.

I think that is my biggest issue with all the platforms is the amount of trouble it is to talk to someone. Very frustrating. They make it all but impossible in most cases to talk to them. Lots of steps and answering questions that have nothing to do most of the time with your issue.

I also have an issue with Etsy taking a fee on the shipping I pay. I have to charge 18 cents more than it actually costs me because Etsy takes a fee on the shipping label you print out through them. Not sure if Ebay does this, but it is not right if you ask me. Why should my customers or I have to pay them a fee for shipping ? Weird.

Etsy charges 20 cents per listing for four months. If it does not sell you have to list it again. It is low for people with higher priced items, but 20 cents on a bag of sequins I sell for 1.28 there is a lot of money. You can also list how many you have and sell multiples of that item, happens all the time with my sequins on Esty.

On Mercari , I can only list one at a time and no automatic listing if you have more than one, you have to go in and personally relist that item. So if I have ten of the same bag of red sequins, on Etsy and Ebay, I can put I have ten, if they only buy one, it relists automatically or they can buy up to the full ten . I wish they had that option on Mercari.

Mercari charges nothing to list, and a reasonable fee when something sells. I still have to deal with their policy that the buyer has three days after the item gets there to say they accept it and give me a rating, at which time I get paid. If they do not rate me after the three days, I get paid but lose that feed back. The other platforms you do not have your money held up by the buyer like that. So, that is something I do not like. It can take up to two weeks with the current postal situation to get paid. With the new changes coming at the post office, it could take even longer as they are taking first class off of the planes and putting it on trucks. They will be raising the rate, and slowing the service way down. I am not sure how long it will take to get paid at that point. Sometimes it is faster, but the average is anywhere from 7 to 14 days days currently, how long that will extend it, I have no idea.

Ebay so far has been fine for me. However , They keep changing policies and that concerns me. They too often take the buyers side over the seller no matter how much you protect yourself. The buyer just has to use the term, not as described and they immediately get their money back. It does not matter that your pictures and description all match what they got, you have to fight with Ebay to get that money back. Again, I have not personally had that happen, but just look on YouTube, and most of the big resellers there have had some really bad experiences with people using that or sending back a different item than they sent them. Since I do not sell the type of thing that typically has those issues I have been fine, but it is still hard to understand how someone who has sold maybe even millions of dollars is not believed over an obvious scammer until you fight it. From what they say, it is automated, so humans are not even making those decisions. Crazy.

So, I suppose we have to take the good with the bad. Starting your own website is expensive and you do not have all the traffic you get on a seller platform like Mercari, Etsy and Ebay. I am not going anywhere and will continue to use all three platforms and do what I need to do to protect myself.

I would love to hear in the comments what you think , have you sold online, where, good or bad experience, and if you haven’t, have you considered it and if so , which platform are you interested in trying ?

Thanks for stopping by,

Stephie