The most important thing about only accepting PayPal is, again, a matter of customer service: some of your potential customers might not have or want a PayPal account. Not everyone loves electronic payments – some fear them, and like eBay because it is one of the few places on the Internet where many sellers will accept payment by more traditional methods. Do you want these people as customers, or don’t you?
You might notice that some people are aware of the issues of PayPal and refuse to use it, but still want to pay electronically. For these rare cases, it’s worth opening an account at a well-known PayPal rival that has a better reputation – the current favourite seems to be NoChex (www.nochex.com), which offers free chargeback protection.
NoChex is quite a lot better than PayPal by most standards, but just doesn’t have the same market penetration or convenience of use on eBay. Still, there’s nothing stopping you from accepting both, just as long as you make it clear that you do on your auctions. If you find that you really prefer NoChex to PayPal, then you could offer your buyers a discount for paying through NoChex.
Once you’ve got the payment, the next thing you need to do is ship the items. In the next email, we’ll take a look at what you should write on your eBay shipping boxes.What Else Belongs on Your eBay Shipping Box?
The quickest answer I feel I should give to this question is this: not your handwriting! Scrawling addresses on boxes with a pen is extremely amateurish, and you shouldn’t do it. Print your own labels instead. But what should you put on them?
The buyer’s address: This might sound obvious, but you need to make sure the full address is there, including country and zip or postal code. Make sure you spell their name correctly, too, as they might be a little insulted if you don’t.
The eBay item number: Write this somewhere discreet and quite small, in this form: ‘Item number: 123456789’. Under the address is a good place. This makes it easy for the buyer to find the auction again if they need to look at it for any reason.
Your logo: Putting your logo on the shipping box looks professional, and lets your buyers see what it is that has arrived. A good logo can make the whole package look very nice, and can help build recognition of your business.
Your address: It’s worth putting your own address on the box in case the item can’t be delivered and needs to be returned to you. It looks good to write this under your logo, as it reinforces the impression that you’re a real business with a real address, not some shady operation.
Stamps: If you start to sell on eBay in a significant quantity, you might consider buying a postage meter. Again, this is a matter of looking professional – it looks much better than having stamps stuck everywhere. It also saves you from having to weigh your items at the post office and buy stamps there.
The ‘eBay Items’ Debate.Some sellers like to mark their shipping boxes with a phrase like ‘eBay items’, while some feel that this is an unsafe practice that could mark their boxes out to get stolen or interfered with in the post. Whether you’re willing to risk it is up to you – it’s probably better to be safe than sorry, though, and there will be few of your customers who get so many packages that they won’t know what yours is.