Considering using eBid instead of failBay

[shalak1989]

I started doing dropshipping on FailBay a few years ago and then quit do to not making profits, choosing bad suppliers etc, I made several mistakes with my selling in the past and now feel a lot more confident in my ability to do things correctly. Namely, whenever I look for someone offering dropshipping to actually make sure they are a legitimate company, are the manufacturer or have close relations with the manufacturer, and that they give good information.

Anyway, I was going to start back up on FailBay until I heard about this new( new to me anyway) FailPal funds holding policy. With a dropshipping business model that would completely de-rail everything and make it so I was essentially having to buy the item outright and have to wait until confirmed delivery +3 days if FailPal didn't pull any of their "security policies" and hold my funds for even longer.

With that in mind I caught wind of this site ironically, off of a FailBay forum post.

I have a lot of questions listed below so I understand if they aren't all answered quickly but I would appreciate any information I could be given.

So with that in mind does eBid have any policies directly relating to dropshippers? I didn't see anything really but I would like to know if I missed something on that.

Also, based on FailPal's holding policies and also their random action of somethings holding stuff for up to 6 months I would prefer to not offer that as a payment option. There is a forum post on google checkout here that I found a link to so I can check that out but I was wondering how badly my sales will suffer here for not offering FailPal as an option of payment?

I also would be starting off by using an eBid store, the fees are so much better here so it doesn't seem like a big deal to me to pay in a little from the start. However, I was wondering if you are limited to one product category per store? It is fine if you are, I just wanted to make sure and I know you get 5 stores with a SELLER+ account and after that its an additional $1.99 per store I think.

Besides google checkout, is there any other payment method besides FailPal you can use on this site that is popular? I would prefer not to do money orders and checks so I don't have to wait for bank clearing's etc.

Also, coming from FailBay most of my experiences with selling online relate to them. Is there any policies that should definitely be aware of before listing?

I already read a post that listed things such as forbidden item categories etc, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything else.

In the About Me page, from what I understand, I am allowed to post information such as business name, business location, etc but not any email address is that correct? Also, would it be a good idea to state that I am a business that solely uses drop-shipping in the about me and the individual auction pages?

Relating to google checkout is there an easy way to issue refunds to customers? Due to going on backorder sometimes, I feel that the customer should have the option to be refunded ASAP if they do not want to wait for something to come back in stock, I just wanted to make sure that option was available on google checkout.

The last question I have for now is about re-listing sold items. On FailBay, for example, you could save a product in a template as store inventory and have it automatically relist or be able to manually just launch the same option so you didn't have to re-type information, is there a similar option here?

[Juliebabe25]

You have lots of good questions, that I am not qualified to answer.

Drop shipping has a bad reputation on feebay, I do not see it mentioned much here. I don't know why drop shipping has such a bad reputation, but I know that lots of people do it with no problems.

I general I am sure you will like ebid compared to the otherside, its a much friendlier place. but still business like.

[oldhillbilly]

With drop shipping it is extremely important to know who to deal with. You have no control over the products and when they are shipped and that can get you into a lot of trouble with buyers. I have read many horror stories about this and in fact my PayPal acct was shut down and my money frozen just because I received some money from someone else who had been doing the drop ship thing and got into trouble because they were scammed by the supplier with 'knock offs'. I wasnt even involved in it and my account was shut down!

[TiasTreasures]

We offer both Google Checkout and PayPal, and have never had a problem with either. I do think you may lose some sales if you don't offer PayPal, it's by far the most popular with buyers. I will say PayPal has never held any of our funds, and I'm starting to wonder if that's only a problem for #$%Bay sellers.

If you pay for a lifetime membership up front (as we did), you get five free stores. Each store can have 30 categories, each category can have 15 subcategories. You can also have five free pictures (if you need them) for each listing.

A warning: Do not list an item more than once. If you're listing similar items, make sure each has a different picture and put something in the title to describe the difference (size, color, even a sequential number) or both duplicate listings may disappear. Having different descriptions doesn't help, it's the title and picture that are important.

Fill out the All About the Seller in detail. I've found buyers do read it, and a blank one is a warning flag. Tell them you're a business, list all your policies re return policy, shipping, payment methods, everything that will make a buyer feel comfortable about sending money out into the wild blue internet. You can mention that you're drop-shipping if you wish, I don't know why that would be a problem.

I'm not sure if you can list your business address. Someone who knows will probably come along and answer that question.

I've never issued a refund via Google Checkout, so can't answer except to say that to me it works exactly like PooPal except the money goes right into my bank account, presumably refunds would come out of the same account.

You can set up your items to automatically relist ten times. You can set the duration for anything from three to 90 days. Most people recommend at least ten days, but it's your choice. After the tenth relist, the items go into your "Unsold" bucket and you can start the whole process again.

I really hope you do join eBid. We need more sellers here, and you'll be surprised at how helpful your "competitors" are. Much different environment from the other place.

[happyhammers2010]

Im concerned about not offering payfee as a method of payment but am really loathe to do this I have experienced problems with them witholding funds and also had my account limited because i received a large payment from Australia (well I say large it was about £100) It was all above board a registered ebay purchase and i provided shipping information the buyer also left me feedback but payfee said that they were concerned about the security of the transaction (they wouldnt go into details though of course) as an honest seller of over 5 years on greedbay i was at a lost to understand why all this happened and no one would tell me, consequently i have lost faith in the whole system who is to say that it wont happen again I dont want to take the risk.

So i would be grateful to know if the other payment facilities are a better alternative

[oldhillbilly]

None of the other payment processors are necessarily a 'better' alternative but I think that Google checkout and Amazon's Simple Pay will become more widely used as time goes by. Both Google and Amazon are big players and they are now in direct competition with PayPal, time will tell.

[FirstGreenIsGold]

At present Google checkout is only available in the UK, the US, and Germany. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. I tried to sign up for Google checkout recently and it was still not available to Canada.

[oldhillbilly]

Check this out:

We understand you'd like to know in which countries Google Checkout is
available.

If the country in which your business is located doesn't appear in the
list of available locations, you won't be able to sign up for a merchant
account at this time. Unfortunately, we're not able to make any
exceptions.

At this time, merchants with a U.S. or U.K. business address and bank
account can use Google Checkout and choose to ship to buyers located
across the world. Please visit the sign up page at
http://checkout.google.com/sell in the future to check for updates on
availability.

Furthermore, Android Developers located in a number of additional
countries can also use Google Checkout to sell paid applications on the
Android Market. Visit
http://www.google.com/support/androi...?answer=138294
for an up-to-date list of supported Android Developer locations.

We appreciate your interest in Google Checkout and encourage you to visit
the sign up page at http://checkout.google.com/sell in the future to check
for updates. We look forward to making the service more widely available,
however, we're unable to comment on the timing of Google Checkout's
availability in specific countries.

You may also be interested to know that Google Checkout will enable you to
transact with customers from many countries. To see if Google Checkout is
available to buyers in a specific location, check the 'Location' drop-down
menu on the buyer sign-up page at
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewA...service=sierra

Sincerely,

The Google Checkout Team

Source with much more content - http://www.google.com/support/forum/...b3a562e2&hl=en

[shalak1989]

Well, I haven't done business with paypal in years so I haven't experienced them holding funds, however after reading their new policy I am concerned that they will do this repeatedly. As a dropshipper this could be quite a problem considering you use the money from the sale to pay your supplier who will then ship it out to the customer.

I understand the implications with dropshipping, basically your suppliers policies have to be your policies as far as shipping/returns go and it does limit you. However, it does allow someone with very little capital to get started in something.

I guess I will try to call paypal to get more clarification on this but I've also heard I may hear different things after calling different times... conflicting information from the same company.

Any other advice?

[oldhillbilly]

I was reading somewhere that one of their purposes for doing this (holding funds) was specifically so sellers could not "use the money from the sale to pay your supplier" because if something went wrong the funds wouldnt be there to refund back to buyer.

I have to say that I agree with that. If the seller cannot go ahead and pay for the dropshipped item without using the buyers money then the seller would not be able to afford to refund if needed. Very dangerous ground there and if you research a bit you will find a lot of stories where sellers wound up with some negative feedback because of a dropshipper. Of course if you know of or are dealing with a trusted reputable company some of this may not apply exactly. Overall I do not think drop shipping is a good method to use for online auctions. Just a few times where an item is unexpectedly out of stock and you will likely end up with negative feedback. And there are many other things that can go wrong.

If anyone wants to pursue drop shipping I saw go very carefully