Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about a $1,000 refund request they received on their road trip.
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$1,000 Refund? From A Flip On Our Road Trip
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about a thousand dollar flip that we made on vacation that we almost had to do a return on.
Rob: What's up guys? So today we are on vacation. We had a thousand dollar flip that actually sold while on vacation and we almost had to give a refund for that flip.
Melissa: Yes. We almost had a return. And we want to dive into that because there's a lot to unpack from that.
There was a lot of nuggets that could have gone either way, and did we have to really give the return? Should we have done it? So we want to kind of unpack it because there was a lot of variables in there. So kind of, talk about those. So.
Rob: And if you can't tell, we are still on the road trip. But we had this fresh in our mind, so we wanted to actually talk to you guys about what exactly happened, the process that took place, and kind of how we averted, is that the right word?
Averted? Yeah. Yeah. Averted. Averted whatever. We didn't have to give the money back, so, let's dive into it.
Melissa: Yeah, so sorry if there's audio quality or whatnot, it's not very good. But, yeah, we're still on the road and we're almost back. And right now we are going to do a recap podcast and video on what we found so far.
So we, and if you've listened to the past episode about kind of how we got started on doing these road trips and started with the 127 yard sale, but we kind of intermingle, you know, we go to check out national parks and then also find some stuff along the way. And I think we're up to eight items right now for $24,000.
Woo-hoo. With a thousand dollars invested around a thousand dollars, I, we totaled it up the other day.
I don't know what you have, if you have.
Rob: But look out, the recap will be coming and we'll be able to dive into those numbers, dive into those items so you guys will understand exactly what we got on the road, what we're potentially being able to sell those items for and just talking about it.
Melissa: So yeah, and we have posted them on Instagram as we've been traveling, so you can go back and see some of those too. So anyways, back to the,
Rob: but on today's episode, we are talking about a telescopic, kitchen aid telescopic range.
No, sorry, not range, hood. So it's actually one that mounts into the counter behind a cooktop and then it pops up. It slides up, and that's where the vent is to actually vent all the steam off of the, so it's a nice one, right? Like a super nice. Okay. Like a lot more expensive than a normal hood, when they're telescopic.
So we bought this thing on the road, trip on the road last year. Last year, yeah. Sold it while we were on the first leg of our road trip this year.
Melissa: Can I add something? So this is, we almost had to give the return the first time because we were out on the road and we didn't put our store on vacation or we didn't change the handling time.
Usually we just change our handling time to whenever we're close, when we're going to be back. But we didn't do that and it sold. So we had the option, you had to message the buyer and say, hey, I'm so sorry. I can give you a refund right now. Or, if you know we're going to be back this date, we can ship it out.
So, yeah.
Rob: So pro tip, if this does happen to you, you are out of town, you're somewhere and something sells and you have to figure out what to do. The first thing you do is be upfront with the buyer. Let them know what's going on. I contacted the buyer, said, hey, you know what? We're so sorry we're out of town. I forgot to put my store on vacation. So I can easily give you, cancel the transaction, give you a refund immediately if you prefer that or if you can wait. I, we, I can get it shipped out once we get back. I gave her the date we would be back. The first response back from her was, please refund me.
Yes, I'll take the refund and I'll find something else. I was in the middle of that a day, I think 24 hours went by. This is when we were actually on the cruise. So I didn't have really, really good phone reception. I was getting ready to do the refund and I got another message from her that said, no, cancel that.
I want to keep it. When you get back, please ship it once you get back. So, that was how the whole thing went down. Then we had a turn of events. We had to go back, sooner than we expected to our house, to do something, but.
Melissa: Well, our friend passed away. Yeah. So we've talked about that. Yeah. But yeah.
So we had his funeral.
Rob: So had to go back to go to the funeral. The funeral funeral. And we were back, like I said probably what, two, three, no, four weeks. Yeah. Two, three or four weeks before we, originally that I told her that I would get it shipped out. And I contacted her also and told her that it would be coming earlier because we were, as soon as I knew we were going home, I knew it would take us a couple days to get home that I could get shipped out.
She said, even better, yes, I can get it. She was buying it because she wanted to, she broke one in a house that she was selling. I don't know if she was a realtor or what it was, but she broke the same exact unit, jumped onto Google and typed in the serial number. That's how she found it on eBay. She didn't sell the house.
Bought it immediately and she needed to change the one that she broke out with this one. So that's kinda the backstory on the whole thing. She told me to ship it out. I told her we'd get home earlier, so we could get it shipped out earlier than expected. And she was super excited about that.
Melissa: So, and that was kind of nice, like, okay, now we get to keep the thousand dollars.
So that's, you know, a nice little chunk when on vacation. I do want to add to o that if you, you don't want to make it a habit to, not put your store on vacation or do change handling times, change handling times because eBay will dock you if you ship late. So, I mean, once in a while, obviously, you know, it happens, but if you're going, if you're consistently shipping late, you know you're going to be gone.
eBay will start to pull, like not show your listings as much, on other stuff. So, just to know, and it kind of also looks like if you're watching the video that we're on a cruise ship, but we're actually not. It's an embassy suite. Doesn't it look like a cruise ship? It does a little bit. Anyways, it's hotel.
Not the point.
So anyways, leg of our trip. So we got it. You got it all shipped out. It was actually a weird box to do. It was, it had a whole bunch of foam and it, it was a weird box, but you got it to her. She got it. She was thankful that she got it a little bit early. And then she goes to install it. So this is where the next part happened.
Rob: So she had a handyman install it, and she emailed me on eBay immediately when she got it, he was putting it in. They were supposed to close on the house the next day. Once she got it, I paid extra to get it to her early, quickly. Yeah. Because of, it was my mistake. I ended up having to pay, I think it was an extra $50 on the shipping. Shipping was roughly $133, if I'm not mistaken.
Melissa: But we paid, we paid $30 for the unit, sold the unit a thousand. There's, there's room, wiggle room in,
Rob: yeah. And I paid an extra $50 so I could have got it shipped for I think $70. $70 or $80, $78. I think it was right around $80. I could have got it shipped.
And, but to get it time sensitive shipped, I had to pay the extra $50 and get it to her. I was okay with that. She was very, very, working with me. So she was very, very generous in telling me that I could ship it out late. We got it shipped. She got it. She started having the handyman put it in. And she messaged me and says, please call me immediately.
It's not working. So I jumped on the phone and I said hey, what's going on? And she said, he just looked it up, it's not working. Which he pulled a piece off of it from the manufacturer, the wiring from the manufacturer. And he, I actually got onto a video, a conference call. Yeah. FaceTime with him.
FaceTime, and saw that he pulled it off. And I said, why did you do that? And he said, I don't know. I just did it. That's how the old one was. So he pulled the manufacturing wires off the bottom right away. That's a red flag. He wasn't an electrician, he was actually just a handyman trying to install it. So that was a red flag right there. I knew once they did that, that I did not have to give a return on it, but I felt bad because this lady bought it and it was not working. They couldn't get it in there. So, that's what it went through. I could not figure out how to get them to do it. He couldn't figure out how to do it, so she asked me if I would take the return.
And I told her yes I would, I asked her if she would pay for the shipping that I paid actually a hundred dollars. I was going to deduct a hundred dollars from the total price that she paid and let her keep the item cover,
Melissa: cover the shipping. because you didn't want to mess with it.
Rob: Right. Go out on money.
Exactly. I was going to let her keep it and do that. I felt bad. Typically this is not something I do, but I actually got on the phone with this lady. So I felt, I felt connected to her more responsible for what was going on because of this.
Melissa: Can I pause for one second? Yes. So normally you don't get on the phone with them.
No. So, but she did ask you to call her. So you do like, I mean it's good customer service. It is to call, but that's not necessarily great to not have the conversation on eBay. Not in eBay. Yes. So what you would normally do if you were really going to go force the, or forced to not take the return. You would go and say, as per what we discussed, and you would go write the whole thing out in eBay, correct?
Absolutely. Whatever you talked, you want a trail. Yeah, whatever you talked about on the phone, you want to make sure there is a message in eBay that says what you were going to say because they can't obviously dig up your phone records so they
Rob: won't know what you said. Yes, so, so you definitely want the paper trail.
That's great advice. Make sure that everything, even if you do talk to somebody on the phone. Make sure you go back and put it in message through eBay so they can see what's going on. I did not do this, like I said, we were traveling and it wasn't easy for me to do that. It was easier for me to jump on a phone call and try and figure out what's going on with it.
Melissa: But you knew also that you could have made, you would've won this case because they altered the item and we've had that happen before and we knew like if we wanted to, we would not have to give the return. Yeah. But. We also felt bad, and I did, and she was in a hard spot.
Rob: So we're like, okay. So that connected.
I, I talked to her on the phone. I felt bad. Yeah, you just, she said she lost her husband a year before. So yeah, another issue with this. And she said, my husband could fix this if he was here. And I felt really, really bad. So I told her that, okay, this is what I'll do. And as I'm talking to her, I said, I know this unit is not bad.
I do you want to try and find another guy? And she said, I don't know anybody in the area. And I said, well, give me a day, gimme 24 hours. Let me see if I can find somebody in that area. I knew somebody else, a friend that was in the area, so I was going to contact them and see if I could figure out an electrician or somebody who could come, figure out if they could help her. She actually messaged, she said, absolutely. So before I do anything else, before I send her the return, she was going to try to get one other opinion on it. And she ended up finding somebody within like the next three hours. She made some phone calls, got somebody to the house, and then they started looking at it.
They figured out what the problem was. All it was was the filter came out of the slot. There was a on the, the, the, the telescopic slide when it comes up, there's a filter there, and there's a little tiny pin that the filter pops in and it completes a circuit on that. If I had it, I totally could easily figure that out, that that was a problem.
I can't look at it, and all I could see was what the, the, installer was trying to show me. So, but anyways, the new guy came. They, they put it back in. They figured out that it was a little tiny button, wasn't making contact because the filter wasn't in there tight. They put it in there. Everything worked.
Whew. Crazy, crazy event averted, a disaster.
Melissa: We still got to keep the, we did the profit, which was a nice, so nice thing. And she got a working unit, which was what she really needed, because another thing she would've had if it wasn't still working, yes, maybe we would, we would've given her the refund, but she still had to go find another unit.
She did. So now she had a working unit. And then she even said, she's like, maybe I didn't even break my unit. Yes. And she's like, maybe this is the same problem with mine.
Rob: So, but she called me back. She was super excited that it was in, then the other electrician ended up getting it installed. And I'm talking to her, like I said, we're on the road.
It's harder for me to do stuff through messages. So I'm talking to her on the phone. She's super excited. She got it fixed and got it taken care of. We gotta keep our thousand dollars because of the unit that we sold that I knew that was, there was nothing wrong with it. So, praise the Lord, everything went smoothly.
But all that stuff being said is, yeah, we did end up getting to keep the item. We didn't have to take the return, didn't have to pay for the shipping on that. So, or keeping the profit. Yeah, she kept the item. So a couple key things to note is, like Melissa said, keep everything on message. When you're, if I was at the house, I probably wouldn't got on the phone with her.
I would've went through message and tried to figure out that, which I would not have got connected closely to her.
Melissa: So it might have been a different outcome, which this was, this was the best outcome.
Rob: It was. And I'm glad that I did. It did work out this way. This is the best case scenario. She got a unit that was working, which is awesome, but she also, yeah, she got everything that she needed to have.
She got it installed.
Melissa: But I also want to add, at the end of the day, if we did have to take the return, I think that felt like it was the right thing to do. Absolutely. And we still would've like, you know, if she kept it and whatever, you know, stuff happens in business. Yeah. And that's another reason why to make sure you leave a cushion of, some of your money, for those things so that you have a little cushion each month. Because you know, sometimes you're going, you're making lots of sales and then, you know, if the money goes out and you don't have a little cushion for a thousand dollars return. Yeah. It could happen. So just always keep, try to keep that cushion there. So it's just a good business practice. No, absolutely.
Rob: So it was, like I said, every single one we've told to you guys before every single instance. Every single sale is different. There's different aspects to it. There's going to be different things that happen. The transaction,
Melissa: they're not all the same at all.
Rob: No. The responses back and forth between buyer and seller, all that takes you have to take all that into account when somebody actually asks for a refund or something like that. So she would, didn't even try to force me to take the return once she got it.
It wasn't working. She asked. Yeah, exactly. She asked me if I'd be willing to do it. And I told her I felt bad. I said, absolutely. You're stuck with something that's not working. I was even going to leave it with her because I didn't want to pay for the shipping back of $80. I had $30 invested into it after she paid me a hundred dollars for the shipping that I sent to her.
I had another $30, so I was going to go out probably $60, a little bit of time of packaging it. But she could have found something else and she wasn't going out the, the big lump sum for this, and then being screwed with it, so. Every single sale that you do has a different outcome. So it's going to be a different transaction for every single sale, and you have to operate that the best you possibly can.
Melissa: And I think one of the biggest keys is, well, there's two that come to mind for me, is keep communication with your buyers. It's always a very good. Like, you know, you kept communication. As soon as you, she, you sold it, you're like, so sorry. We're not home. Like, which, you know, so we had good communication the whole time.
That's very important because it can go either way if you just ghost somebody. Yeah. Like they might, that wouldn't be good. No. And then another is, like we've talked about before, always be a detective. Like you never, you want to find out all of the things before you go, like if somebody asks for a return, you don't want to be like, all right, and then like, get anxious and they need to return.
I have to reply right away in the next five minutes. Or it's, you know, don't do that. You know, stop, pause, ask questions, figure out what's going on. And you know, we, when we finally dug into it, we found out the guy did, but that wasn't even the issue that he tore it apart. But like, you know, that could be the issue.
So just finding all these different details,
Rob: but getting that. From her in writing that he actually pulled off the wiring and he pulled, that's manufacturing wiring. He pulled it off and then bypassed that to try and get it to work. That right there, anytime somebody takes up something apart that you send them and they admit it through a text or through the message, eBay will not force you to take that return.
That was the the road that I was going to take if I had to. But we didn't have to go that far. Like I said, everything worked out. It was good, definitely great communication through the whole process. That is one of the best lessons you can take is good communication. The other way that I was going to try and turn this was if it was damaged in shipping.
Yes. And that was the first question that I asked her. How did the box look? Did it look,
Melissa: because that's most of ours. It is damaged in shipping. They're not actually a return. If we have to do a return, it's usually actually a shipping claim. Yeah. So.
Rob: And she said it looked great. There were no major dents, no crazy things where they dropped it.
So did really, yeah. So I was like, well, I can't do anything with shipping. I can't force them to return it. On that aspect of it. So, that the, that is a good key is you need to be a detective with every single transaction that, that might go south. You have to figure out what exactly happened for this one.
Praise the Lord that this other installer came, before we did a refund. And he was actually a able to look in there and she's, I think she was the one who saw the button. It wasn't getting pressed because of the filter. When she was in there with a new installer, they figured it out. Got it together, everything worked out.
Melissa: So, so there's more than one solution. Absolutely. There's not just one way to solve the problem. So just yeah, be a problem solver and think about outside the box. What else could it be? So we can't wait to next, soon. We're going to go through our trailer and go through all the stuff that we got so that we can, yeah.
Show you all the stuff we got.
Rob: You guys rock. Have an amazing day and we will see you on the next episode.