I really do not have that on the laptop
Oh, I didn’t realise it worked differently on the website. I find that quite handy on the app, because I can leave a message for someone who has bought or ‘favourited’ or wish-listed one of my items on an item in their profile (if they have anything for sale), because they might not see it if I just leave a message on the item they’re interested in/ have bought. Did she ever favourite or wish list the item? I think if you look in ‘News’ on your account on the website you can click on her profile there. I don’t expect it matters much to you now, the sale’s done and you’re shipping with the original label. It’s quite interesting though, to see if she’s evaporated!
They also seem to be having massive delays when it comes to QC, they claim 3 days but one item they have for 5 days now
Maybe it varies between brands? I think they have different checkers for different brands or values. Maybe there’s a backlog on some. I’ve sold a lot recently and I haven’t had hitches so far, or at least I can only think of a couple over the last month or two where it was slower. I think they aim for three days max but I suppose there are delays sometimes.
You know what you were saying about thinking there was one person valuing too low then you came back £1 lower and they accepted it? I think that’s just because they’ve changed how they assess the pricing. I’m not sure there’s a person involved at all at the first stage, unless simply in data input. The first email that comes with a lower price suggestion than the one you wanted has changed, now saying the algorithm predicts what will get you a quick sale based on past sales of similar items,
but that the final decision on price is yours. I’ve found if I go back with something much nearer my original price than their suggestion, it gets accepted pretty immediately, when previously there might have been two or three tries before an agreed price. So at that stage they are accepting my decision on price ...
...
But the email also now says that accepting the lower price suggestion means the item will be more visible online, i.e. they’re putting the best bargains higher up than the higher priced versions of the same thing, which might be annoying, but there’s an argument for it, and I expect a price somewhere in the middle gets a bit more of a boost than something high that I originally suggested, judging by how many likes and wish-listings I’m getting at the moment. So it looks like they are accepting it when you stick more or less to your price, but are offering greater visibility if you go with theirs or compromise. I think that’s fair enough and logical
to an extent.
I think they’re trying to reduce the amount of stuff sitting unsold for months and even years (and I have to admit I’ve had to reduce things I priced higher to their suggested level before I could sell them on several occasions, but I wanted to try higher first). An item second hand is only ever worth what someone will pay for it, regardless of its quality or original price first hand. But on the other hand an algorithm is only as good as the data input, and if it’s not just fully automatic when an item is first submitted by a seller, but relies on someone on curation inputting data about it, they could fail to input all relevant data, or even just make a typo, resulting in a too-low price. The algorithm could also over-average out values. So then the trouble comes I think when the algorithm can’t tell the difference between premium and bog-standard items from the same brand, and the averaging out is really extreme. It probably works most of the time, but it doesn’t work well for some items. I would think that with enormous amount of stuff they have coming in every day, they can’t hope to do it all individually unless they have thousands of employees, which I don’t believe they do. But you can still get close to your original price accepted because that’s policy now by the looks of it, which is something both of us felt was fairer in the past. Sometimes I’d rather wait for a sale at my higher price than go too low for a quick sale. It just depends on the item.
