posted on November 5, 2005 10:50:53 AM new
Although I receive very few complaints, it seems that ever since eBay came out with their system of enabling buyers to mark items "paid", etc., buyers want to complain about having to use the Vendio Checkout form. When I send my WBN I simply ask that they complete my form, it is not mandatory. What is the big deal and why do people think it is such a hassle? Maybe I should consider using the eBay checklist/process only. Are others finding that the eBay checklist is a better system than the Vendio format?
Following is the latest message sent by one of my buyers.
Just an FYI--I won't post negative feedback, but I think you should know that your special payment processing system is a pain in the, well, you know. It duplicates information I already put into e-Bay and which they provide you AND it is another pain to have to manually update My record as paid because it didn't go through automatically. In other words, it is unnecessarily time consuming and I along with others may think twice before going through it. Think about it. . .
posted on November 5, 2005 11:02:10 AM new
Sorry cta, but so many buyers hate third-party Checkouts. Some won't complain to you directly or leave feedback; they'll just simmer silently.
I'm with them. I hate filling out online forms that are completely unnecessary. Your buyer made some good points. The information benefits only you, not your buyer. And some sellers (not you) can be infuriatingly stubborn about it. I stopped buying from an eBay seller who was getting about $1,000 a month from me because his Andale checkout interface to eBay was broken. I'd do the Pay Now thing and eBay would hand the sale over to Andale...which gave me a "Contact the seller for shipping amount" error and refused to complete the process. Every time. He has complaints in his feedback from other people who experienced the same thing. And he won't change it.
Holy hand grenade, what's the POINT of selling if your buyers can't pay effortlessly?
I just don't get it. I just want to pay and get on with my life.
I go to Orchard Supply (big hardware chain here owned by Sears) and they want to know my zip code when I hand over cash for my purchase. Out of spite I'll give them one in Guam, and sure enough, the cashier dutifully enters it.
posted on November 5, 2005 04:17:42 PM new
How do most of you who do not use the Vendio checkout work Vendio along with the ebay checkout for post sale? Do you paste the data into post sale fields from your ebay notification emails, or do you just do everything in ebay and forget Vendio postsale? As far as I can tell nothing will get tracked in unless through the Paypal IPN, and everything else has to be manually entered if the Vendio checkout is not enabled.
I really like postsale and the checkout changes are much better now, but previously my customers really hated third party checkouts so I'm still debating which to use. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.
Thanks!
posted on November 5, 2005 11:58:21 PM new
Fluffy, welcome back! I agree with you, and I hate 3rd party checkouts too, if they state them in the auction I am less likely to bid, and if they don't state them I am very unlikely to use them and will ask to be invoiced via ebay.
posted on November 6, 2005 06:53:55 AM new
passed, I don't use any third-party's Checkout system. We generate our own EOAs in-house. Looks like about 98% of our buyers use eBay's Pay Now button to shoot a PayPal payment our way.
We've compiled our own postsale reports since the start. Looks something like this:
5/4/2005 Wednesday
27 auctions closed
100% sellthrough
$171.89 sales
$6.37 avg sale
$135.00 shipping fees/insurance/upsells
$306.89 total revenues
We know that fees run around 12% of sales consistently. No need to track that.
I don't know what else Vendio gives you but I suppose everyone should evaluate it for themselves.
posted on November 6, 2005 06:59:34 AM new
I use both - if they do Vendio fine - if they request an ebay invoice - that's fine too. I wish I could get it to one or the other but I know many bidders won't use Vendio.
One thing I have in my WBN is that if they your Vendio's checkout, they won't be required to give any information other than how they wish to pay. All information is gotten from ebay. This seems to help.
posted on November 7, 2005 09:09:45 AM new
Thank you both. Sorry for the novice level questions. The observations on how third party checkouts are viewed on ebay was what I also found, but I have never dealt through ebay. I began ebay auctions with Vendio and had no reason to do anything else until earlier in the year when the checkout started messing up, and it was so messed up that I just quit doing auctions instead of hassling with ebay.
fluffy-- Sounds like you don't use Vendio postsale at all. I am a small volume seller and I don't care about the inventory or reporting or sales analysis features Vendio offers. What I appreciate for my situation is the degree of automation and web-based tracking/managing ability for each sale with a running status for all the transactions all on one page without having to do invoicing, payment status, transaction process tracking, and emails outside the system or from my own computer files.
ladyjewels-- I take it you run the Vendio checkout option in your listing and send Vendio WBNs but do not enable the ebay checkout redirect so they can do either one. Are you pasting in the checkout data from your ebay checkout notification emails into the Vendio checkout for them so you can run postsale? How do you assure them in a WBN they will not have to fill out information if they use Vendio? If I buy something from a Vendio seller, I've never been allowed to bypass filling out the Vendio form unless I am a returning customer and enabled the store my data option the first time through.
posted on November 7, 2005 03:53:21 PM new
I have been using eBay's Selling Manager Pro since it's inception and it works flawlessly. It has all the automation and traceabilty required to manage post-sale activities. It handles all the WBN's and eBay checkout. Also makes it very easy to manage NPB's. Selling Manager along with TurboLister is an ideal low cost auction management system.
posted on November 8, 2005 12:49:30 PM new
Thanks. Glad to hear ebay tools are great, but Selling Manager Pro charges a higher subscription fee that would be in addition to Vendio fees and turbo lister requires extra surcharges for using the template designer and every extra picture that really add up. Since this is a Vendio discussion board, I was hoping to find some help with Vendio.
ladyjewels posted:
<I use both - if they do Vendio fine - if they request an ebay invoice - that's fine too. I wish I could get it to one or the other but I know many bidders won't use Vendio.
One thing I have in my WBN is that if they your Vendio's checkout, they won't be required to give any information other than how they wish to pay. All information is gotten from ebay. This seems to help.>
How does a person set that up--how do you get "all the information from ebay" into the checkout before they check out?
Thanks!
posted on November 8, 2005 01:18:49 PM new
I think this is what the checkout redirect does?? I have been using that wording in my WBN since I started the redirect and no one has ever said that they had to fill it out. I hope I'm not mistaken about this.
posted on November 8, 2005 03:20:23 PM new
Unfortunately, the only thing the redirect does is route the buyer to the seller's Vendio checkout instead of the ebay checkout the same as if they had clicked the link in the WBN or on the closed auction page without the redirect on. They still have to fill out the form like everyone else unless they have been your customer before and have had the checkout remember their information.
Remembering the customer information for each seller account used to be automatic if they went through the checkout once, but now with the checkout changes if they don't check the little permission box to opt in they have to fill out the form from scratch every single time they arrive at a Vendio checkout, even for repetitive purchases from the same seller. The checkout is more user-friendly now, but it is still a pain to fill out the form every time. That's the problem--there is only a "redirect" to Vendio, there is no integration with the ebay checkout customer information.
In contrast, if they use the ebay checkout it is all filled out for them every time in advance for every sale with any seller. Buyers tend to trust ebay's checkout and hate seller checkouts as extra and intrusive in general. Add to that the checkout redirect which prevents them from accessing the ebay checkout at all and many of my customers used to get really angry, demanding to check out through ebay because they felt I was a shyster using Vendio to deny them their ebay transaction rights.
If Paypal payments are automatically tracked in (Bidpay used to be but isn't any more, apparently) that means the higher the percentage of Paypal payments the less cost effective it is to pay an extra $16/month for ebay's Selling Manager Pro.
Have any of you Vendio software gurus out there figured out an honest-to-goodness viable workaround within Vendio for Vendio's lack of integration with the ebay checkout?
