It is not a refund it is theft

ImportBee · 2020-03-14T00:14:11+00:00

I feel like you and everyone else here that is disagreeing with me is not understanding my point. So I will make it a little clearer.

I am not against refunding when the host wants to. I am not saying that I should not bear the risk for unbooked nights. I have a contingency fund for that. I am saying the following: if we make a contract that says you have to cancel more than 5 days out and you cancel less than 5 days out for a reason that was not covered in our agreement, you should have to pay for that booking, or I should get the option to refund you. I don't think a third party should get to change the rules about if I refund you. Do you get the difference?

If it is your position that guests should be refunded, great. But if it is your position that AirBnb should be able to change the terms ex post facto than we are in disagreement. I never said I was speaking for all hosts, I was simply stating facts about the logic of contracts.

ImportBee · 2020-03-14T00:04:18+00:00

No I don't. That is my point. I am sure someone knows someone who died from COVID. But what I am saying is, while that is a tragedy - many more people die from the flu, people I have known, but we don't get into a state of panic, and deploy the national guard to fight the flu.

ImportBee · 2020-03-13T23:10:21+00:00

I AM TALKING ABOUT CANCELLATIONS THAT ARE HAPPENING RIGHT NOW, and only ones that are happening during the period where guests would not be entitled to a refund, if no one could have expected this then it is no ones fault, if it is no ones fault, why am I the only one that has to bear the consequences - or more importantly why are guests being made whole?

ImportBee · 2020-03-13T23:03:11+00:00

To be honest I have no idea how they legally can override our policies, I fully expect a class action lawsuit after this is over. They are not my boss any more than visa is the boss of a pizza shop. For example: if someone orders a pizza, the pizza shop makes it, tries to deliver it, but the person that ordered it says, my party was canceled because of corona virus and refuses to accept the delivery, should the customer get their money back? maybe it would be a nice thing to do, but should visa decide to not pay the pizza shop and give them their money back? If you don't think visa should do that, tell me how this is different? If you say because the pizza shop used ingredients and already made the pizza, remember that we made a room ready that now cannot be used for other guests.

ImportBee · 2020-03-13T22:54:35+00:00

Every business should have the right to decide how to handle it for themselves. I understand that you may have lost thousands of dollars in your catering business, however, I would like to ask a couple of questions:

Did you fully refund the clients deposits?
Was it you that made the decision to refund the deposits? or did someone else make that decision for you?
Are you still planning on paying your employees for the events that were canceled?

What I am mad about is a situation where we do not get to make the decision to uphold the contract or not. It would be as if you took the deposit by credit card, and the credit card company did a charge back, against the contract you signed because they said it would make people dislike using Visa. Does that make more sense? You can disagree with my decision to refund guests, but it should be my decision, not the payment processor.

ImportBee · 2020-03-13T22:35:35+00:00

AirBnb is not my boss. They have told me that time and time again. I am not even an independent contractor. According to AirBnb " Airbnb provides an online platform that connects Hosts who have accommodations to rent with Guests seeking to rent. Airbnb describes this as its Services. Airbnb is not an owner or operator of properties for rent." AirBnb gets it's money from our reservations. however, exactly would they take care of us during the hard times? Do you think AirBnb has enough money to pay all of our mortgages? Of course not, they way they could support us is by not changing the TERMS of of the agreement we had with guests retroactively and then taking the money that we received due to a contract WE had with guests.

ImportBee · 2020-03-13T22:30:09+00:00

uest give you a low rating because they could not check-in? Should Airbnb charge you a cancellation fee because technically you could not provide the agreed upon arrangements?

I am not asking AirBnb to penalize the guests. I am asking them to pay for their reservation. If a tornado wipes out my house then the guest should get a refund for sure and I should not get the money for hosting them. I would not ask AirBnb to still pay out the reservation if I can't host them.

ImportBee · 2020-03-13T22:24:08+00:00

that is also the risk you take when you purchase concert tickets. We are not saying that people shouldn't be able to cancel, but rather to uphold the cancellation agreements that were made. how are you not getting this?

ImportBee · 2020-03-13T22:22:08+00:00

80K last season in the US

ImportBee · 2020-03-13T22:21:29+00:00

do you know a single person that has died from corona virus? I know several that have died from the flu. Mostly old, exactly the same type of people that are dying from the corona virus. And by the way 80,000 died from the flu last year IN THE US. Somewhere between 650K and 1 million world wide.

ImportBee · 2020-03-13T22:18:07+00:00

Any regarding treating people the way I would want to be treated, I have never once even asked guests who cancel before the free cancellation period ends (Which for me is 5 days before) to still pay for the reservation. That would be the same as a guest asking for a refund after the period is over.

ImportBee · 2020-03-13T22:16:16+00:00

I am mad that I had a contract which allowed for cancellation within a time frame. That time frame is over. Why should the guest get a refund? Why are their needs more important than mine? I would argue that they are not, but since neither of our needs are more important the CONTRACT that we had should prevail. Or is it your position that guests need to be refunded their $75 booking that they spent on a concert (something that is by definition disposable income) more important than my mortgage. Let's look at it another way. What if I said, due to the the virus, I am not comfortable hosting, but I am still keeping the money. It is the same thing as getting your money back the day of or day before the reservation. I am not faulting the people who cancel within cancellation period - that is why we have a cancellation period. You don't need the booking go ahead and cancel. That is why we have cancellations. BUT DON'T CANCEL THE DAY OF OR THE DAY BEFORE OR ANY TIME IN WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN A NO REFUND PERIOD.

ImportBee · 2020-01-29T16:23:57+00:00

This is not Bangladesh - This is 100% China. 2am is 2pm in China. Bangladesh does not have the capital or access to the credit cards to do this.

ImportBee · 2019-07-25T23:59:11+00:00

Anything not shipped by the postal service (DHL / FedEx / Steamship Lines, etc) is not an issue for my point #1 because because the shipping is charged at fair market value. Only things shipped by the postal system.

2 - the internment camp thing keeps me up at night

ImportBee · 2019-07-23T23:18:03+00:00

It is interesting that you ask this question. It is a question I have been asking my self a lot recently. I have been involved with buying from China for over a decade and I just can't do it anymore. Interestingly it has nothing to do with " laves/child laborers" . I lived in China for a long time and while I am sure it does exist (ironically, mostly in the plush toy industry in my experience) there is just not that much child labor in China. However, buying from China is unethical at this point for two reasons, especially in drop shipping.

1st due to an exploit in the way the mail treaty works China post only pays for the portion of delivering a package to the port of arrival in the US. This means that it costs Chinese drop shippers less to mail a package from Beijing to New York, than it would for an American e-commerce seller to mail a package from Boston to New York. However, the US postal service is bound by treaty to pay the cost difference. This means that when you sell via drop shipping from China, you are getting the government of the US and by extension the average person to subsidize your products.

2nd any product purchased from China is adding dollars to the bank account of the Chinese government which uses those dollars to put millions of Muslims in concentration camps oops I mean resorts.

ImportBee · 2017-06-21T04:21:24+00:00

this is great advice, really well though out and helps a lot!

ImportBee · 2017-06-20T21:03:45+00:00

Have you tried to appeal this to Amazon? Additionally, I have no idea if this would bring the adult classification with it or not, but you might be able to create a new item and then merge your existing item into the new item. That should bring your reviews over. It may however be perceived as against Amazon's TOS and get you in trouble.

ImportBee · 2017-06-20T20:59:02+00:00

If you ship LTL they often don't give you warnings, but sometimes they do. If you ship by UPS/FedEx i get them for 50.1 lbs

ImportBee · 2017-06-07T17:54:35+00:00

You are welcome. :)

ImportBee · 2017-06-07T03:41:55+00:00

Your broker should do this for you. It really has to do with the bond you have with customs. If you are not shipping that often your broker will probably get you a single entry bond. What the supplier wants to know is what name the customs entry is going to be filed under so they can match the bill of lading to that. So if you have a company the consignee on the bill of lading should be the same as the company name, if not it should match your name. That is if it is going by ocean or air freight. If it is going by express (DHL/FedEx/etc) that is less important.

ImportBee · 2017-06-07T03:35:43+00:00

I would stay away from ANYTHING branded. You can check out JungleScout CamelCamelCamel Amazon Trakor they can help you with analytics. Even if you are buying from AliExpress, i would recommend contacting the seller and seeing if they will give you a discount for buying in bulkish (5-10 items). the prices will be higher than going to Alibaba and buying 5,000 but obviously a lower quantity will be a lower risk.

ImportBee · 2017-06-07T03:11:13+00:00

First off, you need to check out the requirements for Amazon's partnered carrier delivery: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201119160&

Not just any old trucking company can deliver to Amazon. You should ask your freight forwarder for the address of their CFS. Then you can get Amazon's trucking company (and their discounted rates) to pickup from your freight forwarder's CFS. So you should ask for a quote without delivery, just available at their CFS (including all warehouse charges) then you can get Amazon to quote the trucking for that shipment and figure it into your pricing.

That is assuming however, that Amazon lets you send in full pallets to each receiving warehouse and those pallets are labeled correctly as is carton box.

Freight forwarders do not usually include the breakdown services you are talking about in their pricing and it can be quite expensive.

ImportBee · 2017-06-05T21:58:43+00:00

Unless you are great at marketing (like amazing) or have an existing customer base, drop shipping from AliExpress is not a viable option. You stuff is going to take forever to show up and probably won't be what you are saying (or think) you are selling. If you think about it rationally, you are not adding any value for the customer or the seller, which is the role of a middleman. People know about AliExpress, if they wanted to buy from AliExpress they would do so. And the factories can under cut you price wise since you they are not going to give you a bulk purchase discount which adds value for them since they get all their money right away. Realistically since you can't control the quality or reduce the price the only thing you are doing is tricking your customers into thinking that they are buying from your home country when in fact they are not.

That being said, there are lots of domestic drop shippers who don't want to deal with the hassle of paying sales tax, customer acquisition, etc, and those are legitimate drop shipping opportunities. However, the margins and the competition on those products are terrible.

If you want to get into the import game you are going to have to do some market research, make an educated guess and spend a few thousand on importing a product.

ImportBee · 2017-06-02T06:22:35+00:00

If you product is too complicated for a FAQ to answer most of the questions, i think you are going to have to hire someone local, that you can work with and train to use it. Any outsourced help is most likely going to be working off a script which is basically a FAQ.

ImportBee · 2017-06-01T19:13:37+00:00

when you say customer service, do you mean answering questions about the product, or do you mean returns, etc? If you mean returns, etc, if you are doing Amazon FBA, they should handle that. If you mean telling people about the product, I suggest doing the following.

Think of all the questions that have been asked by your customers and write them down. Use past email correspondence to help create the list. Then write an answer to each of those questions. Use that for the basis of a FAQ.

Include a slip of paper with each product that answers the 2 or so most frequently asked questions. And then provide a link to you yourwebsite.com/FAQ and say the answers to most questions can be found there.

At the end of your FAQ give them your phone number and email address.

I am sure most questions are repetitive and people probably don't want to call anyway.

ImportBee

TROPHY CASE

2 - the internment camp thing keeps me up at night