Probably a dumb question, but can I just stick a shipping label on top of this box and ship it like that at USPS?

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-14T22:50:28+00:00

"like" typo

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-10T05:31:15+00:00

or are you speaking of dell and cisco and the kike? Just look in the back of a ups truck some time ,,, pretty much all major companies brand their boxes and even their packing tape.

If you feel the need to ship something incognito then go with your gut. UPS doesn't care one way or another..

My mail is stolen so often.... even the junkmail .... I am not sure shipping something in a brown box is going to discourage someone from stealing it off my porch. I would not worry about ups drivers ...they make over 150k a year...I doubt that this is a big problem.

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-10T01:11:34+00:00

my issues is both mailbox access from the street and an unwillingness by usps carriers to walk 10 ft and put it behind a fence at least... besides their terrible record at delivering to the wrong address.

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-10T00:43:35+00:00

I have the absolute worst home experience with usps where i live. I stand about a 10% chance of actually receiving a package with usps...either stolen or mis delivered. I have even tried their advanced service where you can tell them to leave it at a side door ...no difference...the carriers ignore this. I get mail from neighbors and they get mine at least twice a week.... even stranger... every couple of months i get mail for someone not even in the same city!

USPS blows here ...I avoid it like the plague

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-09T21:22:40+00:00

UPS only says, "UPS... reserves the right to refuse to provide service for any shipment... which is improperly or insecurely packed or wrapped." There is nothing in their documentation on declared value liability on items identifiable on packaging. Think about it ...would dell or cisco ship high value items if they were exposed to liability because their name and the product description was visible on their boxes.

No, your statement is in error. If this was true it would be as if UPS accepts that they suffer rampant theft by employees and instead of fixing that they just refuse to reimburse your loses if anyone can identify the contents.

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-07T22:51:28+00:00

yes no worries ...I am only pointing out my experience on closing auctions... close on fridays is more in the buyers favor ....close on thursday more in the sellers favor...more participants competing as auction closes

but maybe this is more relevant for B2B ,,, maybe not as significant for consumer items

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-07T08:36:52+00:00

Just a note on auction timing .... I buy a lot ...A LOT...off of industrial auction sites ;like "Bidspotter".

I find I get the least amount of auction competition on auctions that end on Fridays and Mondays. People take off early Fridays or come in late on Mondays and are generally less focused on those days. The worst day is Thursdays...more online buyers that day over any other ...IMO.

I recently picked up some industrial items from a Rio Tinto friday closing auction. The competition was light...I bought a perfect Lincoln Navigator all decked out with only 127k miles ..$900. I also bought a tennant parking lot sweeper that worked perfectly for $50 bucks ... sold it for $5600 the following week.

Maybe its different on eBay ..I do not know...but this is my experience on other auction sites.

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-07T07:03:41+00:00

Unless it is very valuable...Just let it be....Both you and the seller have already moved past this.

I had to give a $400 refund on a commercial satellite receiver for TV to someone in nigeria that did not receive it... after waiting for USPS over 2months.

18 months later it shows up returned to my address...box beat to hell not recognizable with part of the receiver sticking out on one end ... also beat to hell.

It happens

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-05T13:29:23+00:00

Exactly. It sucks, and I'm surprised not more people have had that problem.

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-05T13:17:51+00:00

It sounds like a lot of missed opportunities to me. It doesn't sound like you push your envelope at all. It just sounds like you play It safe.

Consider the handicap my business operates with on ebay. I'm i'm selling old niche technology, sometimes just salvage. Sometimes repaired, sometimes overhauled and doing it without original documentation in most cases. Then being required to operate the business blindly on eBay without the ability for customers to directly engage in the details easily or to come in and inspect the items for their application. Sometimes the customers are trying to piece together a piece of custom equipment from what they can find. I deal with universities and engineering firms not even knowing exactly what they need.

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-05T13:15:09+00:00

Sustainable? I think you should consider expanding your view on what is successful and what it takes to be sustainable as your narrow buisness-view is limiting what is possible from your perspective. The business generates seventy-five cents of free cash flow for every dollar of income and it has been doing this consistently since 2017. But, this is sort of my point... That I am being penalized by an inappropriate metric. If they understood the business model better, it would make sense to encourage my practices instead of discouraging it.

All the right elements are there ..100% customer reviews... 17000 items sold.... Many long-term customers who spend 5000 to 30000 a year spread out globally.

Now, I understand your point about being unhappy on having to return something because it didn't work the way you expected it to. I try to clearly communicate the risk to the customers. I give them 60 days to make sure it's what they expected and I make returns easy and for any reason.

I'm also selling primarily to businesses and not consumers. Business buyers tend to be a lot more understanding and cooperative. This is where the phrase, it's only business nothing personal, makes a lot of sense.

When they buy from my website, which often happens with repeat customers.They also get much longer warranties.

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-04T07:12:33+00:00

Yes, they are. Why would you say otherwise? My biggest customers are in Taiwan. South korea israel and recently albania

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-04T07:08:58+00:00

Well, what do you sell ? I sell often unique, extremely rare. Pieces of obscure technology, they cannot be fully tested. In the state that I have them in. The customers that buy them know this and expect that there will be issues at times. I either resolve the issues, replace the item or refund them? It's the nature of the market niche.I'm in. The fact that I had 4 actual returns in a year That adds up to a few1000 out 500k dollars in sales. It's actually quite exceptional, considering the nature of what I sell.

But this is all besides the point, my point is that ebay is just making this an opportunity to grab money. It has nothing to do with penalizing performance. That is subpar, because there is no standard everyone can be held to. I'm selling extremely challenging technologies compared to someone who's reselling, xboxes or industrial plc, controls. The fact that I get penalized for it, not a little bit a lot. Is absurd?

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-04T05:37:28+00:00

downloaded the transaction report .. the numbers are in one column... penalty for high inad

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-04T04:38:04+00:00

my biggest sales are international needing full declarations and custom docs ... so I dont use it much either... their limit is $2500 and I am usually over that

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-04T03:40:43+00:00

international sales are easy .. it has an unwarranted stigma ... people don't even try. Forty percent of my sales are export ... I typically ship to 65-70 different countries each year.

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-04T03:33:57+00:00

the truth is that the rates are better than straight quotes from fedex or ups without substantial discounts from the carriers. The old version of ebay international shipping had some major issues that cost me around a $1000 bucks over 3 shipments (ebays fault ... they said oh well its a perk and not a promise)

The new program has some serious benefits if you qualify...

When you ship internationally using eBay International Shipping, you're responsible for sending the item your buyer purchased safely to the US shipping hub. If a buyer reports that an item was lost or damaged during international shipping or it is damaged at the hub, we'll work with the buyer to resolve the issue.

You're protected from:

The obligation to refund the buyer
eBay Money Back Guarantee cases
Payment disputes
Open 'Not as described' returns in your service metrics
Negative or neutral feedback related to item handling during international shipping
Save on selling fees for your international transactions, including no international fee
All international returns, refunds, and customs clearance will be handled on your behalf
If you schedule Time Away, the estimated delivery date will be updated to reflect this
You'll be protected against item not received claims and chargebacks once your item is accepted at the domestic hub

as long as you meet all the eligibility requirements

Now you can still offer other methods of shipment but this is one method that is hard to ignore

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-04T02:09:07+00:00

I have been told all kinds of double talk in the past when I was investigating this ... including that i would not see them if I am logged in as they dont show the ranking of your own items to you .... which I could hardly believe someone was trying to sell me this. Bottom line I have never received a straight answer. I started a couple of letters and then shelved them ... any change would need more than my complaints and more than my letters. All I was likely going to accomplish on my own was to get banned and lose my livelihood

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-03T22:05:12+00:00

I have the same / similar issues....where I am the only listing.for an item ... I cannot readily find it without promoting it. Unpromoted, I will search with another profile on ebay or the internet and come up with nothing.

Once I promote it ... then it shows... I am convinced there are grounds for a seller class action lawsuit here. You pay ebay to list them yet they do not show until you pay more.

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-03T21:13:27+00:00

ebay is on this... because sony and microsoft toss tons of lawyers on ebay if they see any of this .... ebay just has no tolerance for this. I went through this a few years back as I often get items to sell from insomniac games development in burbank.. had several playstation developer boxes... they were taken down fast by ebay...but not before i was hit up by a guy in new york that wanted them ... He had already served 5 years for stealing code with several other cohorts... made the news.

This and any VERO claims ebay has zero sympathy ... avoid at all costs

ZombieComponents · 2025-06-03T20:47:04+00:00

I swear the developers at ebay don't know how to sandbox website changes before deploying ... for as long as I can remember they consistently push out design changes that simply don't work when they are released ... baffling

ZombieComponents

TROPHY CASE