WARNING: DEEPLY UNPOPULAR TAKE AHEAD
@op: Seems like you’re getting kind of dragged here, so I’ll throw down some support. Will probably get some hate for this, but w/e, I’m feeling feisty.
Buyers who don’t read the description are fucking idiots and I have ZERO sympathy for them if they end up getting shafted as a result. Do you have to click an extra button to see it on mobile? Yeah. Is that stupid? Yeah, of course. Is it still very, very, very easy and something you should do if you plan on spending money on something? Yeah, obviously. I used to think sellers who put “READ DESCRIPTION” in their listing titles were morons (because I couldn’t imagine anyone stupid enough to buy an item without reading the description), but after reading some of the replies/anecdotes in this thread, I’m reevaluating my position! Then again, I regularly get people messaging me asking a question that is literally answered in the TITLE OF THE ITEM, so that might not do much good anyway!
Regarding the “shipping once a week” debate: eBay allows you to set your handling time as up to thirty days. A max turnaround of 7 days is on the long end, but don’t let these people talk you into thinking you’re an incompetent/bad seller for shipping infrequently. You are dead honest and upfront about how often/when you ship, and if a buyer doesn’t like it, they can buy the fucking card elsewhere. People on here talk a reaaaally big game when it comes to “don’t like the price? don’t buy the card,” but “don’t like the turnaround time? buy the card somewhere else” is suddenly, like, radical and unreasonable and inapplicable. Like somebody mentioned earlier in the thread, Amazon has fucked up peoples’ expectations when it comes to buying goods online.
Likewise, pretty much everybody at this point has come to terms with PSA turnaround times of, like, a YEAR. PSA, a wildly successful multimillion-dollar company, was hit with an unexpected influx of business, was unable to rapidly scale accordingly, and basically said “shut up and be patient, we’re trying our best.” I was initially suuuuper critical of what I saw as a catastrophic business failure, but I’ve come to believe they actually tried their best and just couldn’t do it. And, of course, if you don’t like the turnaround time… grade somewhere else! However, why are we so willing to give a massive corporation a pass for being overwhelmed and extending turnaround times (by orders of magnitude) but it’s impossible to believe that a private individual with a job, family, friends, other responsibilities, other hobbies, etc. might not be able to ship out for a week? A week is not a very long time. I’ve been nonstop busy for a week before, or VIRTUALLY nonstop busy enough that I need to rest during the handful of hours I’m not occupied. Packing and mailing a bunch of orders, even printing the labels at home, is time-consuming and tiring.
If you’re upfront and honest about your handling/shipping times in your listings, you are doing nothing wrong. In fact, you’re doing your potential buyers a FAVOR by explicitly warning them that the turnaround might be longer than they’re used to! If a buyer is going through withdrawals and urgently needs their cardboard fix ASAP—sitting on their porch scratching their arms and frantically watching the mailbox with bloodshot eyes—you’d think they’d check what the handling time says, either in the description or in the info box.
It’s the secondary market. There historically has not been, and should not be, any expectation of business-like expediency (even less so when the listing literally fucking spells out the turnaround time). The sellers are predominantly normal people, with normal lives and responsibilities; holding individuals flipping on the side to the same standards you do Amazon (or even Troll and Toad) is ridiculous. The people that don’t bother to read the listing and complain about slow shipping are the same people messaging you “hey you still interested?” “hey” “hey” “hey man” when you don’t reply to their Facebook message about a deal for a couple hours. Like they’ll literally die if you don’t buy or sell them a shiny piece of paper within the next day. The entitlement is insane.
Keep doing you, man. It’s not a violation of any eBay policy, it’s not ethically wrong, it’s not irresponsible, it’s not anything. The onus is entirely on buyers who don’t read the item details. If I had a card listed with a crease that’s not clearly visible in the photo, I say in the description that there’s a crease and describe it. If somebody bought it and tried to return it because they didn’t realize it was creased, I’d tell them to go fuck themselves, escalate it as high as I had to, and win the case.
I realize all of this is a seemingly unpopular take, but I’m absolutely baffled by the replies here. Is it somehow not standard practice for you all (many of the top collectors in the hobby) to just read listing descriptions?! Like, the seller is somehow in the wrong for shipping slower than others, despite making that explicitly clear that would be the case in the listings?? If he loses business, he loses business, but to imply a max 7-day turnaround time (again, DECLARED, no less!) is “wrong” and a bad selling practice is incredibly misguided IMO. Just read the fucking listing. You should be doing it anyway.
EDIT: Also, for those of you fellow vendors with faster turnaround times and a “stronger commitment to buyer satisfaction”… good for you! That’s great! Perhaps some of OP’s customers will come your way. I kind of doubt it, though, because in my experience the majority of buyers are well-adjusted, patient adults who don’t care about waiting a few more days for their order. Not petulant, unreasonable man-children who NEEEEEED NEED NEED NEEEEEED their cardboard ASAP but are simultaneously too stupid to look at the handling time on the listing.
