SHIPPING BOOKS INTERNATIONALLY

Good morning

What is the best and cheapest way to ship books internationally? I have many that are too large for the flat rate envelope and in my opinion, they are not good for shipping books anyway. I would appreciate any help on this.

Thanks and have a wonderful weekend hunting treasures! lol

Rita

Victoria * UPS Shipping Update * 24 Hour Refund

A couple days ago, I posted a response to a question from Diane about affordable shipping for breakables, and I’d like to post a follow up to my original note (which probably got buried at the bottom of the topic and was therefore not read by most of y’all :o)

Short recap:  I greatly prefer UPS Ground over Priority Mail, as it’s usually substantially less expensive, includes free shipping insurance, and — best of all — they don’t quibble and moan on the rare occasions that someone files a claim.

Case in point:  It’s currently 10:15 pm Wednesday evening, June 4, in California.  At 8:30 pm on Monday, June 2, I received a note from a buyer, stating that a bowl I had shipped to him arrived with a teeny tiny fleabite chip on the rim.  He also stated that there was NO DAMAGE to the package.  The bowl was included in a box that also had 4 large mugs inside, everything was well-wrapped and padded, and I was quite certain the bowl had no defects when I packaged it.

I wrote back and requested his phone number, which I needed for the UPS claim form.  I received his phone number early Tuesday afternoon, and went straight to the UPS website to fill out the claim form.  It took less than 5 minutes to file the UPS damage report online, including uploading .pdf copies of my original listing and my PayPal transaction for shipping the package.

Within 2 hours, I had a response that the claim had been approved and that UPS did not need to pick up the bowl to inspect it.  They approved the refund of the buyer’s purchase price for the bowl, plus the ENTIRE cost of shipping the original package.

Just before 10 p.m. tonight, I received a note from UPS to let me know that my refund check has been mailed and should be received within the next few days.  With that information in hand, I refunded the cost of the bowl and prorated shipping charges to my buyer, just over 48 hours from the time he originally contacted me about the problem.

Amazing.

Compare this experience to dealing with the Postal Service:  USPS makes you drive to the post office and stand in line to submit hard-copy forms, and you have to wait up to 90 days while they process the claim and make a decision.  Follow up calls are almost always required, plus unreasonable amounts of documentation.  They don’t accept PayPal receipts as proof of purchasing postage or proof of mailing, and they love to argue about whether or not an item was already broken before it was packaged, and/or about whether they ever received the package to begin with. 

I’ve been a high-volume shipper – domestically and internationally — with the Postal Service for 12+ years, and have NEVER been paid by them on any claim, whether it was for damage to an insured package, total and permanent loss of insured packages (they lost several packages to Canada in the past year, plus several others that were shipped to US addresses), or for failure to meet their guaranteed delivery date on Express Mail (they temporarily misplaced 17 of my Express Mail packages for more than a week last December, causing huge amounts of holiday angst for me and my customers). 

OK, enough babbling.  IMO, if you’re not using UPS, you’re missing out on great service and low rates.  UPS offers discounts of up to 31% off their on demand and retail rates if you pay your shipping charges through PayPal.  If you haven’t signed up for the discount, you should do so:  it’s free.  Here’s the info link from my previous note:

http://pages.ebay.com/ups/home.html

Cheers,

Victoria

A Fix For The Table Problem Some People Are Having

I’m crossing my fingers when I say this, but I think I’ve found what is causing the problem some people hare having with the tables they insert in their posts to run off the right side of the page.

Actually, I think the problem is two-fold.

First, I went through the HTML provided in the How To Insert A Table In Your Post tutorial and found two errors in the code. These have been corrected. If you are using tables to track your process, you will need to copy and past the corrected HTML and use that in future posts.

Second, looking at the actual HTML of the problem tables, there is a lot of extra code there that is not in the HTML provided in the tutorial as well as some code that has been altered. After playing with a few test posts, here’s what appears to be happening and how it can be fixed.

What Do You Collect?

This was going to be a question for Gary, but I thought it might be more interesting to open a discussion if anyone is interested.

First, the question(s) for Gary … 

From your eBay ME page, I know that you collect aspirin and laxative tins, and have more than 750 of them.  Here are some things I’m wondering, if you’d care to answer:

1.  How do you display your collection?

2.  Do you mix the two types of tins when displayed, or are they separated?

3.   Do you display the entire collection, or are some parts kept in storage?

4.  If stored, do you use archival quality storage, or just put your tins away on a shelf, in a box, etc.?

Selling On Amazon.com WITHOUT ScoutPal… Possible??

I was wondering if it was really possible to make any real $$$ selling books on Amazon if you don’t subscribe to ScoutPal or some other service, if there is one!?!?

I want to build a profitable Amazon income stream, but it’s pretty much “hit or miss” with the guessing & hoping method I’m currently using. I don’t want to spend $20-$25 bucks wk/mo, whatever on books that won’t sell.

Does anybody have any specific research strategies that can help pinpoint what “Types” of books have a better chance of selling.

Thanks in advance for all comments and responses!!

Good Luck Everybody!!

Welcome To All The 2008 Garage Sale Challenge Participants

The 2008 Garage Sale Challenge blog will be the venue used by all participants in the Challenge to post their weekly or bi-weekly updates during the course of the Challenge which will officially begin on May 1, 2008.

Each participant will need to register here so that I can activate you as a contributor so that you can post your updates to the blog. Once you have registered, please leave a comment to this post stating that you have done so. When you do, I’ll receive an email notification and I will activate your contributor status within 24 hours and leave a comment informing you that your contributor status is live.