We Are Not Amazon and Living Up To Unreasonable Expectations

I have a lot of collectibles. A garage full, in fact, which is something I've mentioned in the past. In an effort to divest myself of said collectibles, I've been selling things on eBay. This is mostly fine other than the part where it's really slow.
And the part where I sometimes have to actually deal with people.
People who are mostly trying to convince me that my prices are too high.

For instance, because this is a fun one:
I've been selling some cards from the Harry Potter tcg recently. I listed this card:

The Ginny holofoil card is very hard to find and expensive. Expensive to the point that I haven't seen any sell for less than $100, so I had it listed at, anyone?, $100. I had a string of people message me that they would offer me something less than that. Like the guy who offered me $30 and, then, argued with me about it when I said "no thanks," finally went all the way up to $40, then argued with me some more when I said "no thanks" to that one, too. The card sold for $120.

Don't get all excited for me about all the money I'm making, because those kinds of things are few and far between. Mostly, I'm selling things at about the $3-10.00 level.

The other thing I have to deal with a lot is people complaining about the cost of shipping, which is the actual thing I want to talk about.
And before I go on, sure, shipping and shipping charges suck. I get it. I do everything I can, personally, to order from places that offer free shipping or to order enough to meet the minimums for free shipping. The big companies that can offer that kind of thing are just that: big companies, big enough to make deals with the USPS to cut their shipping costs so that they can afford it. Even eBay has a deal with USPS to cut their sellers' shipping costs if we run our shipping through eBay, and that has to be good for eBay because I'm sure their discount is greater than what they pass on to us, which means they're making money from both ends of that deal.

Even with that, eBay pushes (and pushes and pushes) its sellers to offer free shipping. I'm sure that's something that totally works for some sellers, but it doesn't work for someone like me who, say, sells a trading card for $2.99 (or, even, a comic book, for $4.99) and, then, has to pay $2.80 to ship it. That's with the eBay discount and is just the cost of the actual shipping. The envelopes cost another $1.00, so I'm spending close to $4.00 for each item I ship, but I only charge $3.50 for shipping. Don't worry, I may be losing money on every sale, but I make it up in volume.

Which brings me back to my previous statement about how shipping sucks, because the buyer is paying $3.50 in shipping for a $3.00 card, something which I personally wouldn't do.

And it gets even worse when you have to deal with international shipping. I just went through a huge ordeal over the cost of shipping with a guy in France. Seriously, huge ordeal. The guy took all kinds of penalties from eBay for not paying for his auction wins on time because he was haggling with me over the cost of shipping. For a week.

On the one hand, I get it but, on the other hand...
Look, on the other hand, only so much of the shipping is under my control, and part of the problem this guy ran into is that I use eBay's Global Shipping Program for international orders so that I only have to mail the items to eBay and eBay takes care of the shipping charges with the buyer. And I guess that service isn't cheap? I don't really know, because I can't see what eBay charges, but the guy in France flipped out over what eBay was going to charge him, all of which could have been avoided if he'd listened to me before the auctions closed when I tried to tell him about how eBay would handle it. (He told me I didn't know what I was talking about, that shipping should be no more than x amount and he was sure eBay would handle it just fine. eBay wanted to charge him 30x, as I tried to warn him, and, well, I already said the rest. I spent a week of going around and around with the guy so that he could finally get what he paid for shipping down to only 2x.)

All of which goes to the point I want to make: I am not Amazon. Or Wal-Mart. Or... whatever big chain store you want to say. I can't get amazing shipping discounts from USPS, and I can't afford to pay for your shipping, especially when the shipping costs more than the item you're buying. Stop expecting that from me, other eBay sellers, or from any small, independent business trying to make some kind of profit. If you want free shipping, please, feel free to order what you need/want from Amazon or Wal-Mart or... oh! Amazon doesn't have this card that you want? They don't sell those kinds of things? Neither does Wal-Mart? oh... well, then, I see. Of course, of course, it should be up to me to provide you with the same service as Amazon... Amazon who doesn't have the product you want.

So there's your tradeoff. Pay the shipping or don't get the whatever it is that you want that Amazon doesn't carry or have in stock. Pay the shipping and don't fucking complain about it or try to convince me that I'm charging too much for it. You know how I know that I'm not charging too much for shipping? Because I take a loss on it from every order I ship. If you don't want to pay the shipping, don't buy it. To paraphrase the internet, "I am not the asshole here."

"It's a dead game, Jim."

Not that I've mentioned it in a while, but I have this garage cleaning project going on. Possibly, "cleaning" isn't the correct word for it, since you can hardly tell anything has happened in it so far. I mean, I can tell, because I know what stuff I've sold, but I'm kind of making a bigger mess out of things as I go along. None of which has anything to do with what I'm about to get into other than reminding everyone that I'm in the process of selling off my old collectibles and, mostly, using eBay to do that.

Which tempts me to expound on all of the things that are wrong with eBay, but I'm not going to do that. After all, I'm making the choice to use them. Not that there are other feasible options, but, since there are other things that are like options (you know, in the way that people say carob is another option for chocolate or that tofu is an option for... anything), it's on me that I'm choosing eBay, so let's forget about the issue, for the moment, with eBay itself.

No, instead, let's talk about the users. Not all of them, of course, or, even, most of them. It has been, after all, quite a while since I've had... issues... with other eBay users. Then, of course, after going a year or so with no issues at all, I get three in the same month, the first of which we're going to skip due to it being typical opportunistic greed based on a late delivery by the USPS (which I've also had problems with just in the last month after having zero problems with them since I started using eBay again), which eBay, actually, took care of, amazingly enough, without me having to call them or anything. [Maybe there's some problem with June. The heat wave? Who knows.]

However, the other two are a different story and cut from the same cloth, so let's talk about them. I'm sure there's a metaphor in here somewhere. [Actually, I know that there is; I'm just not sure, yet, whether I'm going to point it out or not.]

A lot of my collectible stuff is pretty, I'll call it, mainstream. The greatest bulk, by volume, is comic books, and most of those are Marvel. By piece count, I have more Magic: The Gathering than anything else. Some of my stuff, though, is a little less... usual. Generally, because it's gone out of production so younger collectors, unless they fall into the niche, don't know about the stuff.

Some people, evidently, refer to these as "dead games." Well, the things that are games, anyway.
I also have stuff like this:

(Who would know he would "win" in 2016? Actually, I'd rather have Cthulhu than the current #fakepresident.))

Within the last week or so, I began listing some "dead games": L5R (Legend of the Five Rings) and Neopets, both ccgs (that's collectible card game for those of you haven't lived any in the last couple of decades), though Neopets calls itself a tcg (trading card game). It didn't take very long before I was contacted by buyers interested in the two games (one for each game) if only I would lower my price to next to nothing so that they could buy my stuff. You know, to garage sale prices.
You know about garage sale prices, right? Everything for a $0.25.

Let me be a little more clear about that. Both buyers wanted to "buy" all of what I currently have available on both games at prices that clearly didn't represent the value of the items. Now, I don't have a problem with people trying to get a good deal; heck, I like good deals! So I don't have an issue with people asking me if I would consider lowering my price on something. What made these two stand out is that when I turned down their offers as being too low, they both got mad at me and began arguing with me, both using the "dead game" argument and telling me how I would never find a buyer willing to pay more than they were offering.

And that can be a compelling argument. Sometimes, it's one we even tell ourselves:
"You'll never find someone else who will 'love' you."
"You'll never find another publisher/agent/whatever."
"I'll never..."
Fill it in yourself.

That is the reason my mom married my stepdad, just by the way. According to her, no one else would ever have taken us.

To make matters more interesting, the guy who wanted the L5R stuff kept going on about all of the places he knew of where he could get what I was selling at even lowere prices than what he was offering! And, so, why was he trying to talk me down rather than just buying the stuff for the EVEN CHEAPER PRICES?!? I guess he was doing me a special favor or something by offering me more than what he would have to spend elsewhere. Riiight...

And the guy who wanted the Neopets stuff? Well, somewhere in arguing with me over the price, he let slip that he was interested in re-selling it. Hmm... Re-selling the "dead game" for a profit, which I shouldn't expect because it's a dead game. Later in the conversation, he tried to recant that and tell me he was just offering an example of why someone might want to get something for no money. It made me want to LOL in his face. Which is difficult to do online.

At any rate, to make a long story short, before I even got the L5R auctions posted, a different buyer, one who had purchased some other L5R stuff from me many weeks ago, made me an offer he was worried I wouldn't take (he thought I would think it was too low (but it was what he could afford)) that was for only about half of what I was going to put on auction but at more than double the price the other guy wanted to offer me for all of what I had. The new offer was actually a bit lower than what I wanted, but it was a reasonable offer for a good chunk of stuff that I would no longer have to list on eBay. I took it.

And the Neopets stuff? I did post all of that and, within 12 hours of posting it, had already made more on just a tiny fraction of it (less than 10%) than the "dead game" guy was offering for all of it.

Do I have a lesson in here for you? You decide.
What I will say, though, is don't listen to anyone who is trying to get you to do something with the "dead game" argument.

Blahgfest Humbug!

So... today is the day of the infamous

being hosted by the Grumpy Bulldog himself.

Today being Thursday, December 15. At least it is as I write this; although, I can't say with any certainty that this will get posted on Thursday. I suppose we'll see. It's just been one of those weeks where I haven't had time to get everything accomplished, so this may well bleed over into Friday.

Anyway...

I really love Christmas. It was a magical time when I was a kid and one of only two times in the year when I was pretty certain that I would get to see all of my cousins and family. That being as it is, the task of coming up with 12 things I don't like about the holidays seemed a pretty daunting task. If my wife hadn't started throwing out ideas, I may not have been able to do it. By the way, she says that she gets credit for at least half of this post.
heh

12. The United States Postal Service: I had to go to the post office this morning on business unrelated to shipping anything. But I had to wait in line anyway. There were about two dozen people in line when I got there. One postal worker. Yes, one postal worker. I was there early (not by choice), and they are always busiest right after they open, so you'd think they'd plan ahead about things like that, but, no, it's the post office. People can wait in line. We should be glad to wait  in line, in fact. This is why the post office isn't going to make it. It's not just the internet; it's because no one, and I mean no one, wants to go to the post office. The only place that might by worse is the DMV. Oh, gee, both government agencies...
Anyway... about halfway through the line, a woman got to the window with a big bag of parcels she needed to mail. At that point, they finally brought out a second postal worker. Not that that sped anything up, because the second person almost immediately got bogged down with some issue with a customer and was still with that same customer when I finally left. The post office is no one's idea of fun, but at Christmas, it's a very special kind of Hell. In fact, I think that is one of the levels of Hell.
The only reason that the Post Office is not higher on the list is that I pretty much avoid it. Today was one of those rare exceptions.

11. Wrapping: I do... I hate wrapping presents. Ever. Christmas just compounds the issue. The main reason is the waste. I understand that children love to open presents (it's part of the Magic), which is why I'm willing to do it. But I wish that presents for adults could just go unwrapped. They can be in the shopping bags. It serves sort of the same purpose. My wife tells me I'm just wrong.
Then there's the part of it where I'm spending a lot of time and effort on something that's just going to get ripped off in a matter of seconds. It's like making the bed. Why even bother? My wife tells me I'm just wrong about that, too.
Plus, I suck at wrapping.

10. Making room for the Christmas tree: I hate rearranging furniture. Part of that goes back to my childhood when my mom would decide every couple of months that the furniture needed to be rearranged for no good reason. This included moving the piano upstairs once. And another time moving the washer and dryer upstairs (so that they would be closer to my parents' bedroom). And all sorts of other things. At any rate, I hate the whole process of making room to bring the tree in which is just going to be undone when the tree goes back out.

9. Food: Not that I hate food, it's just that there's so much more of all the stuff you shouldn't eat being provided pretty much everywhere. It's like everyone becomes secret food agents: XX7 -- license to eat.

8. Time: This one is related to the food in concept. Time is finite. Stop trying to cram so many activities into the few weeks leading up to Christmas. It's not like time gets fatter at Christmas, unlike people (who gain up to 10 lbs the last 6 weeks of the year); there's not any extra to go around, so stop trying to cram so much into it. The events are just an excuse to offer up more food that no one needs, anyway.

7. Music: I hate to list this one, because so many other people did, but there's way too much bad Christmas music. And why do they play the same stupid songs over and over again. Does anyone over the age of eight like "Run, Run Rudolph"? Seriously. Stop playing all this crap. And, with a few exceptions, you can skip any artist's Christmas album. Mostly, these don't have anything to do with the artist; it's just the music industry moguls squeezing more bucks out of people while someone (>cough< Bieber) is popular. Compilations tend to be a bit better, because the artist picks a song s/he/they really like, and do just the one. You may get a few bad songs on a compilation, but you tend to get a few real jewels, too.

6. Money: There's not enough of it, and it becomes really apparent in the month of December. Let me give you an example of what December is like:
Back in the early 90s, the (then) owner of Marvel Comics tried to bankrupt the company. And he almost succeeded. It went like this:
Ghost Rider was an incredibly popular series, so he thought he could make more money if Marvel produced another six series just like it.
The Punisher was an incredibly popular series, so he thought he could make more money if Marvel produced another three or four Punisher titles.
The Uncanny X-Men was immensely popular, so he thought he could make more money by throwing an X into the title of anything and everything that wasn't Ghost Rider, The Punisher, or Spider-Man.
The problem was (and is) that the pie was only so big. Increasing the number of titles Marvel produced, especially all at once, didn't increase the size of the pie, it just meant that people had to start buying different pieces. It didn't make people happy, and Marvel imploded, along with the rest of the comic market, in the mid-90s.
Christmas is like that. The pie, like time, doesn't get fatter just because it's Christmas. We budget for presents all year to make sure we have those covered, so it's not  the presents I'm talking about. It's all those other things that people want to convince you to spend your money on just because it's Christmas. Just stop. I don't want jingle bell earrings nor do I know anyone I want to buy them for. Maybe once my daughter has her ears pierced that will change, but, then, we'll have that budgeted into presents.

5. Telemarketers and charities: Stop calling my house! See the previous entry. Not only do I not have extra Christmas money laying around; in fact, I have less. Because of all the other extra expenses that pop up this time of year. Like the heating bill.

4. Controversy: I'm not coming down on one side or the other on the whole "is Christmas a religious or a pagan holiday" thing. The truth is it doesn't matter. I'm just tired of people arguing over it. This is supposed to be the season of goodwill toward men no matter from what angle you come at it, so everyone should just act like that and let other people celebrate the way they want to. Personally, I don't put an X in my mas (I wouldn't want Marvel coming after me), but if other people want to, for whatever reason, go ahead. This country is supposed to be about freedom and freedom of expression, but, most of the time, everyone spends their time acting worse than my kids. (Yes, I'm looking at you democrats and republicans.)

3. People: They're everywhere. Here's the thing about people, and this has been proven, meaning there have been actual studies done around this phenomenon, and it has been shown to be real, is that the more of them you put together in one place, the lower the collective IQ goes. People are stupid enough as it is; we don't really need large gatherings to bring down the intelligence even more. And this includes the roads. I hate driving anywhere during December, because driving also does something to intelligence. Or entitlement. Or something.

2. Commercialization: Really, it's getting to the point where the only way my family can celebrate the holiday the way we want to celebrate it is to avoid it. Or, at least, the way it's presented out there in the world. Whatever happened to the season of giving? Oh, yeah, that's right; we've turned it into the season of buying. That's all it's about anymore. Buy BUY BUY! And then go out and but some more. And take your family out to eat a few times while you're busy buying. See how all of this stuff flows together. But the pie still isn't any bigger.

1. Length: When I was a kid, Christmas started the day after Thanksgiving. It was like a law. Like the blue law. It restricted when Christmas stuff could be sold. Not the blue law, that just meant you couldn't buy stuff on Sunday, but the Thanksgiving/Christmas law was like that. You could go into a store the day before Thanksgiving, and it would be just like any other day of the year. The day after Thanksgiving, it was transformed into a Christmas wonderland. Like Magic. It was wonderful.
Now? I hate (HATE) seeing Christmas decorations out on the shelf with all the Halloween stuff. It's just wrong. And there's no magical transformation of, well, anything anymore. It's all just this long process from the beginning of October through the end of November until it's all there in December. No magic for the kids. No anticipation. No waiting to go look at all the wondrous Christmas displays. It makes me sad.
The thing is, it's really just this one thing that I hate about the holidays. Except that this has happened because of the whole commercialization thing. I could drop numbers 3-12 completely off the list, in all reality, because, although annoyances, I can deal with them. But these last two... they kill my spirit. Christmas should be a time of joy and generosity and MAGIC. And we've taken that all away.

So... there's my list. I haven't made it through all of the others, yet, but I will try to get to them all over the next couple of days.

Merry Christmas!

The Problem of People

I'm not a huge fan of people. In fact, you wouldn't be wrong if you called me a misanthrope. Don't get me wrong, I like individuals just fine. Well, at least, I can like individuals just fine, but the mass of humanity... not a fan. I don't believe in the inherent goodness of humanity or anything close to it. I think people are pretty not-good, and it's closer to the truth to say I believe that humans are inherently selfish morons. This is not to say that I don't believe that people have the capacity for good. I do. I believe that (most) people have great potential for goodness. But that's all it is. Unused (or rarely used) potential.

I'm not saying any of this to imply that I'm any better, either. I'm sure that I'm not, but, at least, I'm aware of it, which is more than you can say for most people. It's like that whole thing about wisdom beginning when you realize how much you don't know.

Yes, I have examples:

1. I was driving the kids to school yesterday morning. Driving to school is not something I'm really enjoying having to do, at the moment, although I'm sure my kids are. But the dog isn't crate trained, yet, so she has to go with us, and I haven't been able to have the work done to my bike that will allow her to ride on it with me, so we've been in the car since the dog acquisition. (I'm hoping to get that changed after the new year.) Anyway... We were running a bit later than normal (yes, it was my fault, but I'm blaming the dog :), so I was feeling rushed. However, let me just be clear: I don't speed. (There's a long story about that and being late to a final during college (NOT my fault).) We're coming up the street to where we need to make a right onto the street their school is on. The light is green, and the crosswalk had the big red hand up barring pedestrians from entering the intersection. However, I see on the sidewalk on old woman with a bundle of sticks on her back (yes, I'm totally serious) making for the intersection with no signs of stopping. She didn't look around, she didn't slow down, she didn't act as if she realized she wasn't out in the middle of the woods gathering said sticks on her back. She also didn't stop at the corner. She walked straight out into the intersection and proceeded on her way. This is the kind of behavior that can kill you (you may now refer back to the "selfish morons" comment). Let's pretend that I was driving the same way that she was walking, especially since I was in a hurry. What we would have had was a dead pedestrian, a wrecked car, injured children (and dog), and sticks all over the street. But, as it was, I gritted my teeth and mumbled something about stupid people as I came to stop at a green light so that someone could cross against their own light.

2. Some of you may have picked up on the fact that we're big Star Wars fans in this house. Some of you may also know that Star Wars was recently (I use that term loosely) released on blu-ray. This was a cause for much debate and angst in our household. On the one hand, we own way more copies of Star Wars than anyone needs. I have a very special limited edition collectors set of the movies on VHS that have a leather case, a holographic cover, a book that only came with this edition of the movies and a 4th tape that was also limited to this edition. These are quite old at this point. I also have the last release of the original trilogy on VHS before Special Edition came out along with the Special Edition release of the movies on VHS. And we have them on dvd (it was the dvd release that actually prompted our first dvd player purchase). The original trilogy and the prequels (and The Clone Wars movie and the first two seasons of the show and a bunch of spoofs and parodies (Thumb Wars, R2-D2: Beneath the Dome, Hardware Wars, etc)). As my wife put it, "we don't need another set of those movies. Which is, objectively, true. But there's supposed to be all of this special, never before released stuff on the blu-ray edition, so "I wants it, my precious." (to mix a metaphor (except not)) My kids also wanted it. Hence, debate and angst. Not to mention the complication of the 3D versions which begin coming out next year, and I know I will want to buy those, even if I can't watch them in 3D, at the moment. So... do I buy the blu-rays knowing full well that I'll be repeating that purchase in the near future when the newer versions begin coming out on blu-ray 3D?

I began doing some research into the reaction of people about the blu-ray collection. I also mentioned to a friend of mine the dilemma we were facing, and his response was, "Oh, we pre-ordered them. You can borrow them when we get them." This was awesome. So we're in the midst of "borrowing," right now. But I was still doing research.

When the blu-ray collection came out, people began to immediately complain about Lucas tinkering with the movies again and all of these scenes that got added back in and how they all sucked and how Lucas has just continued to ruin everyone's childhood by messing up a good thing. There were even references to specific scenes in some of the reviews and how they sucked and made the movies suck. Because the implication of every review that I read was that all of these scenes had been edited back into the movies.

IT'S ALL HOGWASH!!!

The collection is 9 discs (which could  have been reduced to 7, thus reducing the price by $20): 1-6 are each of the movies, 7 is special features (including deleted scenes) for the prequels, 8 is special features (including deleted scenes for the originals), and 9 is documentaries and featurettes. There are no new scenes in the movies themselves. The only tinkering is with the sound in a few places, the removal of the scream as Luke falls down the shaft in Empire (which was the only thing added in the Special Edition that I really couldn't stand, so I'm glad they took that back out), some bits of dialogue between holo-Emperor and Vader in Empire (which is the only thing that's a significant change), and a cleaning up of the blaster exchange between Greedo and Han so that it's less clear who shot first (that change having already been made, this new version is better than the first). None of the deleted scenes are added into the movies. They're on completely different discs. In fact, they are no different than deleted scenes from every other movie, and it's just stupid to get all upset that Lucas is letting us see them. Personally, I find it interesting to look at what was cut from a movie, especially if there's an explanation as to why it was cut. (And some of those scenes I've been waiting since I was 7 to see, so I think it's awesome that Lucas finally put them where we can see them if we want to do that. There's nothing to force anyone to put that other disc in or to watch the deleted scenes if you think it will shatter your delusions.)

In the end, the uproar over the deleted scenes is another example of the stupidity of people.

And, although I'd really love to own the blu-ray edition (mostly because of the Luke/Biggs scenes that are FINALLY included in the deleted scenes), I've decided to save my $90 and wait for the 3D releases.

3. Have you seen the news about the post office? In an effort to become more competitive in these troubled economic times, they will be lowering the quality of their service. Not that it will become cheaper.

It's no secret that the post office has been struggling due to loss of business to the internet. Why send a letter when you can send an email. It's both faster and cheaper. Physical letters are on the verge of extinction. Even cards are becoming endangered. Starting next year, in an effort to save money, the post office will be doing away with 1st class, next day delivery. Even if it means holding the mail because it's within the same city. In fact, they're kind of saying that delivery times will be sporadic and unpredictable. This whole move strikes me as something more along the lines of punishing us for not sending enough mail. A move of smite.

See, the smart thing to do here would be to figure out how to become more competitive. But of the three main shippers in the US: USPS, UPS, and FedEx; USPS is the worst. They cost more and offer less already for any kind of service that allows you to track your package. And for anything of any real weight, they cost quite a bit more than UPS, and UPS offers FREE insurance. However, instead of looking at ways that they could, you know, become viable, they decide to stick their tongues out at us and take their ball and go home.

It's a good example of the power of the dark side. Reacting in fear is quicker, easier, and this shows every sign of a fear reaction, which is the general way that people react to these types of situations. I'm not going to start making a list of historical examples of people reacting out of fear due to economic upheaval, but, if you want to do the research, you should quickly find enough on your own.

4. Which brings us to the publishing industry. I only mention them specifically, because their way of reacting in fear to the decline in traditional publishing affects many of you guys out there. They're being the same as the post office in many ways. People are buying less books, so, instead of figuring out how to be competitive, they hike prices and squeeze their authors. This, of course, prompts people to buy less books and the authors to start looking for alternatives.

Fear is the path to the dark side, people! Go back and watch Star Wars again!

>sigh<

I could go on with this stuff all day, I'm sure. As you can see, I'm not overly impressed with people.

Let's just call this post practice for Grumpy Bulldog's upcoming BlahgFest

You know, in the spirit of the holidays.

Merry Bah! Humbug!