Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark17
I used to collect GU bats. Bat tubes, bought in bulk, cost about $4.00. When I would sell a bat and ship in a bat tube, I taped the end caps on to ensure the item (the bat) arrived without damage. Rather put tape residue on a $4 tube than risk damage to a $300 bat.
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I run into this issue from time to time with baseballs that I sell, which I ship in a ball cube for protection. I have received a negative feedback from a buyer before because that ball cube had a sticker on it.
Another time, a ball cube arrived cracked, but the ball inside was fine: in other words, it did exactly what it was intended to do, in that it protected the ball from what had to have been horrible abuse of the package (it takes a lot to crush a 6"x6" shipping box). The buyer confirmed that the $10 ball itself was unharmed, but demanded that I ship him a replacement ball cube. When I let him know that I had sold him a ball, not a ball cube, and that he could return the ball for a refund but that I would not be shipping additional packing materials to him, he left me a neg.
All that is to say that, especially on eBay, you cannot please 100% of the people 100% of the time. If a buyer has a reasonable criticism of my packing / shipping methods that they would like to voice, I am happy to take it under consideration, and in some cases have adjusted my packing methods. Simple adjustments like adding "courtesy tabs" at the ends of tape used on otherwise new materials so that they can be reused, or not taping polypropylene comic bags to a piece of corrugated cardboard due to the material's tendency to rupture rather than stretch, leaving the book exposed if the package is severely jarred. Those kinds of "huh, I never thought of that, but it makes sense" adjustments I can make. It's the ones where I would have to purchase an entirely new category of shipping supplies, spend significantly more time packing, or spend more on postage than anticipated that I just have to politely decline. Given that many (most?) collectors have very specific ways that they like to store their collectibles, I'm also not going to tailor my shipping materials to try and meet those many and varied long-term storage requirements. If the buyer wants to reuse the shipping materials for storage (or for their own shipping), that's perfectly fine by me, but if I want to get into selling specific collectible storage supplies then I'll set up a separate category for that in my eBay store.
And for what it's worth, while I'm sure that all of the above sounds overly curmudgeonly of me, I do generally ship small card-sized or smaller flat items (whether cards or more often negatives and transparencies) in a penny sleeve inside a toploader inside a team set bag. Typically. And largely out of convenience and minimizing packing time for me while also ensuring the item arrives safely to the buyer. The toploader may be scratched or have a label on it, the penny sleeve may have a label on it, the team set bag will generally be new simply because I use them for shipping not for storage on my end. They're probably also going to get the plastic strip from the team set bag adhesive in there, and the strip off of the stay flat mailer that I ship all of the above in. If any of the above is useful or repurposed by the buyer upon receipt, that is wonderful, but my primary concern is getting them their purchase in the same condition it was in when it left my hands, all in the most economical (in time and $) manner possible. It's a balance, and may not please everyone (hence the occasional neg feedback), but seems to be well-received overall.
03-12-2021, 09:25 PM
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