Lot 4 is finished!!!!!

Today I finally (FINALLY!) got the last of the Lot 4 cards up into the Store. I am so incredibly excited! Can you tell? Of course you can.

Of course I still have some cards from Lot 3 and some from my friend Josh to get up, but I'm not letting that get me down right now. The fact remains that all of Alan's cards are finally, finally (and, did I mention, FINALLY) up. Woo-hoo!

Two other bizarre points to share:

1. for a brief period of time today I actually had $0.00 in sales for the past 24 hours. VERY depressing. Friday nights and Saturday days are usually my best sales times. I don't know what's gone wrong!
2. I believe I may have a copy-cat (or it's one of those cases of synergy that happen in life and it's just one big coincidence). There's another Store on eBay now which seems to have been opened back at the end of August (at the earliest) called "Mary's Magic and Miscellany." Seems VERY similar to my Store's name, don't you think? I will have to admit, though - hers had great alliteration.

Anywho, time to get back to my Happy Dance.

Very odd experience - eBay = Big Brother?

Okay, so I'm prepping the last batch of cards from Lot 3 that I wanted to get up tonight, some cards from the Eighth (8th) Edition. I had the one uncommon card (Hibernation) and several Rare cards typed up, in the upload queue in Turbolister (which, by the way, I HIGHLY recommend for anyone who sells a lot on eBay, Store or no Store).

When I clicked on "Upload All", they all went up fine, except for Hibernation. When I clicked on the alert icon for this item, it said that it appeared I was offering a method of payment not acceptable to eBay.

WTF?

I didn't change the payment options on this file at all! It was identical to the others. This made no sense. I tried clicking a few things off then back on to see if that fixed it. Nope. I deleted that file and made a new one for Hibernation. Still no luck. Finally I tried to list the thing directly at the eBay web site, instead of through Turbolister. When I got to the final page, I got the same message.

Okay - think, Don. Where are the two places that payment options are listed? In the Payment Options section (which was the same for all of these items tonight) or in the Item Description. What was different in the Description? The first two paragraphs - where I list the card's name (with my sometimes snarky adjective) in the first paragraph and the card's text in the second.

Okay, so one of those two paragraphs is probably causing the issue. I delete the second paragraph. Same message.

I return the second paragraph and delete the first. Message goes away.

OKAY - this means that the snarky adjective must be the culprit (since the card's title shows up in the second paragraph as well - plus I have a version of Hibernation from Urza's Saga already up with no problem).

The adjective? "Green-zapping". I now know (thanks to Google) that GreenZap is another web-based money-transfer something-or-other. In other words, competition of PayPal. Since PayPal is an eBay company - well, of course they don't want you using GreenZap! And my snarky adjective was just close enough that their alarms went off.

I'm not sure what bothers me the most about this - that it took me so blasted long to figure out and fix the problem (the listing now says "Green-hosing" instead), or that eBay is so Big Brotherish that they actually can analyze the text of my item description and find objectionable material that quickly. Rather frightening, really!

Son of a &^$%#

It's been a pretty crappy day, all told.

Okay, I already documented my problems with the audiobooks this morning. Here's what else has gone wrong:

1. The "cursed" Collector's Edition only went for $588, significantly less than either of the two times when the winning bidder failed to pay. At least this time the buyer has actually paid for the item.
2. Only 24 of the 51 audiobooks up for auction sold, for less than $30 total by the time fees are taken out. Not such a great week there. And I still have to go through and edit the remaining 27 audiobooks to add the number of cassettes and run times.
3. The absolute worst, though needs a few paragraphs for itself:

I'm the victim of an apparent scam artist in the Philippines. I got really excited when a buyer purchased the Alpha Mox Pearl for $550, and even more excited when they immediately paid with PayPal - with $50 for shipping for some reason. WOW! I left positive feedback, printed my packing slip...then another order from the Philippines - this time for the Library of Alexandria (one of the commission items for Alan) for $250. I sent an invoice, saying that there would be no additional shipping, as I could include the two cards together. Only later, after there was no forthcoming payment, did it occur to me that maybe the two Philippine purchases weren't actually the same buyer! D'oh! I checked, and sure enough, it was a new user, with 0 feedback. Now I started to get nervous. Large purchases from new users smell fishy.

Later my fears were shown to be founded. PayPal emails me saying that the $600 was apparently fraudulent. It was taken back from my account. Then I double checked and discovered that although the two items were purchased by different user names, they both showed the same shipping address.

I then noticed the "first" buyer (the one who "paid" $600) had other feedback as well. It looks like s/he "bought" two high-priced cards from another seller. I quickly emailed that seller to let him know what had happened to me, in case PayPal somehow missed his payment. Hopefully he hasn't already sent the cards.

Which brings up a point that scares me - if this hadn't happened on a Sunday, there's a very real possibility that I would have packaged up and mailed off that $550 card before PayPal got back to me about the fraudulent funds. And I would have been out a lot of money! Oh, so sorry!

And there doesn't seem to be a way to get my Final Value Fee back on these items until the requisite amount of time has passed for them to be listed as unpaid. Hopefully since PayPal is an eBay company, the two talk with each other and this user will get their accounts shut down and that will expedite matters.

Ugh.

I'm off to get the Boys to bed, then return to my dungeon to edit 27 audiobook listings and package up a dozen or so shipments to take to the post office tomorrow.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day?!

Audiobook problems

Well, today I received an email from a potential customer commenting that with all of the audiobooks I have for sale, I should really have the number of cassettes (or CDs presumably) listed in the description. This was actually the second person in a month to say this - and as a result of the first one, I have added that information, as well as the approximate run time, to any additional audiobooks my Dad's sent along to be listed.

The problem is that as a non-audiobook listener, I just didn't really know what all information would be useful. I included title, author, reader, and whether or not it was abridged. It never occurred to me to add number of cassettes/CDs and run time.

Well, anyway, since this was the second person to actually say anything, chances are good there are a larger number of people who have been irked by the lack of this info and have NOT commented, and in fact maybe not even bought because of it.

SO, this morning I have been going through all 81 listings, adding that information. And in so doing, I came across some problems:

1. There were actually 12 audiobooks I thought were up in the Store, but weren't. I did a little digging (not too difficult with the meticulous notes I'm keeping on audiobooks to make sure I get the right amount of money to my Dad) and discovered that these were put up for auction one week, didn't sell, and I forgot to relist them in the Store. This happened back at the end of May. So for 4 months now no-one could have bought them even if they wanted to! Anyway, they are up now. One of them I discovered had the wrong title/author/reader info even, so even if it had been up, it wouldn't have been correct!
2. Many of the listings hadn't yet been edited to include international shipping options, so I was able to fix that at the same time.
3. I couldn't edit any item up for auction which has a bid on it. I knew I wouldn't be able to change the description, but I thought I'd be able to add to it. No dice. So, those 14 items (out of the 51 I have up for auction this week) remain unchanged - but, hey, they're selling - so maybe it's not that big a problem there.
4. Any of the ones up for auction that DON'T sell will have to be edited AGAIN when I relist them in the Store. Massive pain in the buttocks.

I have developed a new policy on audiobooks in the Store due to the increased Store Listing Fees at eBay. My new policy with the audiobooks is simple - any listing that would end during the week and automatically relist gets put up for auction instead. All auctions now start at $0.99. My Dad told me when I started this that he'd be happy if he got $5 apiece for these. I've sold so many now at well above that price that I think he (and I) can afford to let a few go for less. Besides, just because the bidding starts at $0.99 doesn't mean that it won't go up from there!

Anywho, I now have to go make flashcards to memorize the structures of adenine and his siblings so I can memorize them in time for my Nucleic Acid Methods test Tuesday night. Ugh!