Friday, June 20, 2014

Series Book Questions Spring 2014

All questions are in my words and are not direct quotes from private messages.

Is the book really hard cover and does it have a dust jacket?

I had someone ask me this and a similar question about two different books.  I guess they don't trust sellers to tell the truth.  The first book was a paperback, and the question asked whether the book might be a hardcover instead.  No, I was telling the truth in the listing, believe it or not.  The second question was phrased more like the one above and was about a hardcover book with dust jacket.  Yes, the book really was a hardcover with dust jacket which should have been apparent from the photo provided.  As expected, this person never made a purchase.  They never do.

Do you provide tracking numbers for your items?

I do.  Here's the deal:  In some cases, all you have to do is look at a listing page to know when a seller definitely provides tracking numbers.  Right after my user ID on eBay is the "top-rated seller plus" logo.  Sellers who have that rating must provide tracking numbers for at least 90% of their transactions.  I can assure you that most any seller with that rating provides the tracking numbers for close to 100% of their transactions, not just 90%.

I want to sell my childhood Nancy Drew books.  I don't want to use eBay.  Would a library want them? 

I decided to respond as follows, since this person had already eliminated eBay as an option.
Libraries probably would not loan them out, but most libraries do take donations that they then sell at their library book sales. So that would be one possibility.

Another one is if you have any used book stores in your area. If so, they might be interested in purchasing the books.
I really wanted to suggest that she consider using eBay.  That's what I usually tell people, but around 50% of the people who contact me about what to do with their books say that they don't want to use eBay.  Oh, well.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm confused by the ebay money order policy. It does say sellers can accept money orders but says it is restricted to certain categories. When I looked at the categories books are not listed. Looks like mainly motors and business type items. Is there someone I am not looking to see this? Sometimes ebay can be difficult to understand their help section.

Jennifer White said...

You mentioned the business category, so I checked it out. I started the process of listing an item in the business category. I went to payment options where PayPal is my default and only method. I clicked on the link to add options, and sure enough, money order was listed. I went back and tried the books category, and as usual, money order was not listed as an option.

After reading the help section and looking at a few recent message threads in eBay's community pages, it appears that buyers are no longer permitted to ask. However, buyers are fine asking a seller so long as they know that the seller won't have a problem with the request (meaning that the seller won't end up reporting the buyer to eBay). I'm telling people that I don't have a problem with it.

Also, I am only fine with it if the buyer completes the Buy It Now on eBay, which means that eBay gets its fees. I'm not trying to circumvent eBay's fees.

Last, money orders are not recommended for obvious reasons. Buyers do not have PayPal's buyer protection. Personally, I wouldn't pay a seller by money order these days, but there are some buyers who do not have credit/debit cards and wish to pay by money order. I'm willing to help those people out if they wish to use money orders.

A Candle to Read By said...

I have noticed a sad trend in libraries--they are downsizing their monograph collections considerably. My fear is that they will one day be more or less internet cafes. I see more and more library "discard" books at book sales, etc. Our own College library downsized and purged academic titles without consulting the various professors within the field Bad trend all the way around.