Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about a mistake on a recent flip that almost cost them $1,000.
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A Mistake That Almost Cost Us $1,000
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we're talking about a mistake and more specifically, a mistake that we made on one of our last flips.
Melissa: And we're gonna talk through it to help you not make some of the same mistakes.
Rob: Alright. On today's episode, it is gonna be a fun one. We are talking about one of the recent flips that we did. I don't think we went into de detail with it, about it yet. So we wanted to talk a little bit about it, and I made a couple mistakes on this. So, I wanna give you guys,
Melissa: it's almost a thousand dollar mistake too.
Rob: The, the purpose is to help you guys not make the same mistakes. Give you some key takeaways from the mistakes that I made, and let you know.
Even being in the business for almost three decades now, you still can make mistakes. And I did make mistakes. So this one actually worked out okay. But at the same time, we did make mistakes that we wanted to, make you guys aware of, so you don't have to fall into the same traps or make the same mistakes that we made.
Melissa: And a lot of times in this business too, we get asked, you know, like the risk and like you're, are you taking risks on items or, and we don't like to take a lot of risk in our items. So we try to reduce the amount of risk as much as possible, reduce the amount of returns that we get, and there are steps that you can take to do that.
And one of the ways to protect yourself is something we did not do on this flip, so we're gonna dive into it. So what this was was a big old drum that we found at the flea market a couple weeks ago. So they sold within a couple weeks?
Rob: It did. It did, yeah. Really quickly after we listed it, it sold really quickly.
Couple mistakes that we made throughout the process. But it was a, I think a Timpani.
Melissa: Timpani. Yeah.
It looked, cool looking drum.
Rob: Really, really cool.
Melissa: Except for it was super loud in the house and I did not like that.
Rob: Almost 30 inches wide is how big it was. And it stood probably three foot tall, had a little pedal on it that you could actually adjust when you hit the drum.
You could adjust the pedal and it pulled down and up on the actual drum portion of it, I dunno what that's called. It made different noises while you're beating on it or playing it. So really, really cool. Retail on it, I wanna say retail was over,
Melissa: it was like $2,500 I think.
I think it was close to three.
Rob: Yeah, I think you could find them between two and $5,000. But I thought I would've made a little bit more money on this. And I probably could have got a little more money 'cause we sold it really, really quickly. But the whole thing was,
Melissa: well you sold it for a thousand dollars?
Rob: Paid a hundred dollars for it, sold it for a thousand dollars. So that's kind of what we teach. What we try to do is always. 10 x what you're doing. And it was very, we are blessed that we were able to do this on this because we did make a couple mistakes, that we still made profit on it, but at the same time, we would've made more profit had he done a couple things a little bit different.
Melissa: The first mistake was that you didn't list it with a shipping cost was, and we do that, we do that with items like we know that we're gonna offer free shipping, but we built it into the price. But you didn't really build it into the price. I did not. And do free shipping. You would've charged shipping.
You should have charged shipping on this.
Rob: So, mistake number one, rushed to get this thing listed and went a little too quick, but I didn't list shipping on it. So I would've charged $300 for shipping, which it cost us $296 for shipping. That was the first mistake. I should have put $300 extra on shipping or raised the price, an extra 300 bucks.
So, okay. Not a huge ordeal because remember, we have a lot of profit built into this. A hundred dollars to a thousand dollars.
Melissa: It would've been 300 extra dollars.
Rob: It would've been 300 extra dollars. So that was kind of crappy. That was the first mistake that I made rushing to get it listed and not getting that on, set up the right way.
Melissa: So, before you go, go into the rest of it though. Sure. We have made the mistake before and we've had people and members, you know, if they, if you list something and the shipping ends up being way more than you expected, you can cancel the transaction. You're not, I mean, eBay doesn't like it and it's not something that you should do regularly, but we have done that in the past.
I remember that fuel thing you did the big old thing, the shipping was gonna be extra and so you, you can if like, it's not gonna work out and you're not gonna, you know, make anything or you're gonna lose money even on the item, you can cancel the transaction and, you know, be very apologetic and have good customer service.
And like, like I said, you don't want to do that, make that a habit because eBay will frown upon that if you do that, you know, habitually. But every once in a while that does happen. You could cancel it, but we still have profit in this and you are not gonna cancel the transaction.
Rob: No, absolutely not.
So that was the first mistake we made.
Second mistake. So after the gentleman bought this. Which it all made sense to me, and this is why I did it this way. After he bought it, immediately he messaged me and said, can you ship it to our school? Now you might have people, scammers sometimes will buy something and ask you to ship it to a different address, where it could be a different, even state, a different city or something like this.
This, I kind of play this out in my head and to kind of don't do this no matter what. This is what I teach our students and I didn't follow my own because I played it out in my head and I thought, okay, this guy's buying this. He's a probably a band teacher, which I was head on. He's a band teacher. He bought this for his local school.
He's getting it shipped to the school. It's gonna be on a pallet. He doesn't wanna have to try and transport it from his house to the school. So everything played out okay for me on that. I was like, okay, I shouldn't have any issues with this. So I did ship it to the address. He asked me to, not to the address that eBay gave me, which was his house, because it was his account.
Now, hindsight, 2020. I shouldn't do that. We always tell our students, the safe thing is go with the eBay location. Absolutely. Ship it to the address that eBay tells you to ship it to because you cannot have problems. You're protected. If something does happen, you have proof that you shipped it to that address.
Now, if this guy came back, and said he didn't receive this for whatever reason, I do have a fight and I a fight that I have to uphill battle that I have to do because eBay's gonna say, why didn't you ship it to the address that we gave you? That's how your protected seller protection is because we see proof that it was delivered to that address.
Now, like I said. I did this, I would never recommend somebody doing this. If somebody had asked me about this one of our students, I would've said, refund it tell them at checkout to change the address where they want it shipped to. So it's perfectly safe. You can do that at checkout as well. It doesn't have to be shipped to your home address or wherever your eBay account is registered to.
You can actually change it and have it shipped, and then eBay will still protect the seller. So that's what I would've done, but I played this out in my head. I knew if I sent him a refund, it would've taken him a couple days. eBay would've, you know, dragged their feet a little bit. Probably three days before, and then I would, I would have to resell it to him again from another transaction, and then ship it to the address when he did it the right way.
So I chose not to do that because like I said, everything lined up. I knew what he was doing. It wasn't just like I bought it, ship it, instead of shipping it to California, ship it over to Maine. It wasn't something crazy like that. Yeah, somebody was trying to take advantage of me. I, it all made sense in my head, so I did it against my better judgment, but I did it because it would've taken me longer to do the refund, waited for the payment again and all that kind of stuff, and it was a headache for him as well. So I was trying to make it easier for everybody. So. Mistake number two, I didn't ship it to the address that eBay gave us. So the problem was I shipped it to the school address. When he gave me the school address, he put the wrong zip code.
Now this is very, very bad, because a lot of times when you put a zip code into a track, a, shipping calculator, not a calculator, but a, a shipping quote like data code. Exactly. Even if it says a different town than what they have on their address, sometimes towns are close. Like our zip code is close to a town one number off.
Yeah, yeah. No, it's close to a town next to us. So it could be our town or the town next, and it could be the same zip code. So it spans on that. So I never know looking at it if it says a different town than what he had typed in. Sure. If it was right or wrong, because it could be towns that are close on the same zip code.
So when I did that, I, I created the label that way. They gave me the shipping quote that way we paid for it that way. Well come to find out, once it got out from our location went to the terminal where it was gonna be delivered to his location. They found out that the zip code was wrong. It was one number off, and it was switched.
So the guy might be dyslexic. I'm dyslexic. I understand that. But the problem was I didn't make this mistake. I mistake, didn't make this mistake. Mistake, otherwise I would've had to eat the issue. And the issue was they're gonna charge more money because it wasn't at the right terminal to get the delivery to the right place.
It was a whole. I think he said like 150 miles away from the correct zip code. So what they had to do is take it from that terminal over to the other terminal before they actually delivered it to the school, which all that being said is it was actually an extra $200 and I wanna say $90. Yeah. So almost double the shipping cost, because of the mistake.
So right away I messaged the guy and said, hey. Sorry about this inconvenience, but you gave me the wrong address, the wrong zip code, and he's like, no, I didn't. And I was like, it's in our eBay messages. You can clearly see you put the wrong zip code, you switched two numbers, and that's what I shipped it to.
Now they're quoting me an extra $300 to get it straightened out and ship it to you. And at first he was very, very upset, which I can understand that as well. But the problem was, it wasn't my mistake. I shipped it where he asked me to, had I done it where eBay asked me to. I would've been protected and not had any issues at all.
So I told him, since this is not my mistake, I have to push this onto you if you want it. I have to get the $300 from you, to cover, the extra shipping cost because I can't go out that money. I could have and I still could have made money, but at the same time, that's not my mistake.
Melissa: No, but you would not. You would've made nothing.
Almost so.
Rob: Exactly. But that's not my mistake, so I don't wanna be responsible.
Melissa: But if it was your mistake, you would've.
Rob: I would've. I would've eaten it. I would've paid for it because I made the mistake. But typically, that's why we ship it where eBay asks us to ship it to. If you don't, you can run into problems like this.
So. That was the next problem. Finally, I got him under, he understood where I was coming from.
Melissa: You actually called him. You talked to him on the phone.
Rob: I did 'cause he didn't respond back to my eBay messages and I didn't wanna pay storage at the freight facility where it was sitting at. So I called him up on the phone and said, listen, this is what's going on.
At first he started getting mad at me and I'm like, listen, I don't, I don't have any other options with this. I'm just telling you what happened. I didn't do anything wrong, but we have to get it figured out.
Melissa: And then he wanted to pay you after he, he did. He said, he said, I'll send you an invoice or something. And he's like, well get it delivered and then I'll pay you. I'll, and you're like, yeah, no, sorry.
Rob: That's not how eBay works. eBay works. We get all of our funds up front before we actually give you the delivery because once you're delivered the item, we don't have any recourse to come back after you once it's actually received.
So, then he understood that he actually said, I'll send you the rest of the funds through PayPal. He sent us the rest of the funds. We went through the rest and everything was delivered. Everything was okay. So that was the only bad part. It cost him an extra $300 because of the two numbers he switched on the zip code, which was not our,
Melissa: so I guess he made a mistake and you made two mistakes.
Rob: Exactly.
Melissa: So there's a couple mistakes made on all sides of this.
Rob: So all of this could have been fixed just by me shipping to the right address. Which typically that's what we do.
Melissa: And then he would've just had to drive it to the school.
Rob: Exactly. And I should have done that. But at the same time, like I said, I felt for this guy because I knew it was a bigger drum, it was something coming on a pallet.
I didn't know if he had a small car, not able to get the drum in the car ship to the school. So that's why he had it going there. So I understood the whole thing and I was okay with it. And typically you don't run into this problem 'cause I've done this before. You have. I'd never tell our students to do this.
I always tell them, refund it and get it to the right address to protect you, but if I, if every situation's individual situation, I decide what I'm gonna do. And this one, I made that decision. Which it caused me a little bit of a headache, but at the same time, everything worked out. We got our, our funds, we still made our profit, on top of it, which was... what was our total profit?
Melissa: So we bought it for a hundred dollars, sold it for a thousand dollars. eBay fees were $111 and shipping was $296. So our total profit was $493. So almost $500.
Rob: Just, just under $500. And to be honest with you, it wasn't a lot the time that I had into this very, very minimal time. The kids had a blast 'cause they played this in the house.
Oh my gosh. Drove melissa crazy because I brought it in the house. I cleaned it up, we took pictures and the kids played it. It was a blast. So we had some fun with it. Made 500 bucks. And I honestly I'd be surprised. Didn't take any crazy tools. I picked this up. I picked the pallet up by myself, moved it around.
Not any special machines or anything like that. Palleted it up, put it on the trailer. No crazy tools. Probably I would say no more than two hours invested to make $500. So roughly 250 bucks an hour after everything said and done. Not that bad a profit, but still a little bit lower than what I would've expected.
I would've hoped to made around $800 profit on this. So not horrible, but still it's okay.
Melissa: But if you would've charged for shipping, then you would have
Rob: charged for shipping and did everything else right then yeah, we would've been in that, that place with it. So.
Melissa: So if you do have something that is or somebody that's asked you to ship it to another address, the best thing to do is hopefully before they buy, a lot of times they don't though.
Usually they buy it and then they ask you to ship it to another address instead of asking you before. And then, 'cause then if they ask you before you can ask them to do it, to change it at checkout 'cause they can change it right at checkout. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Then you're protected with eBay.
So if that's the way to do it, because when you do refund somebody and have them do it the right way, some you do run into the possibility that they won't rebuy it. They won't rebuy it. Yeah. So that's, because sometimes it takes a while for eBay to refund, like you were saying. So that is the one. That's what you kind of weigh in your head.
Like, do I do that and risk losing the sale, or do I risk it like somebody saying it wasn't delivered? And yeah. So those are the things that you have to weigh out in your head. For sure. Of what is, what is could happen. So.
Rob: Yeah, just so you know, when you do, do issue a refund, it doesn't, it's not immediate.
Yeah. Like with PayPal, when PayPal used eBay, when eBay use PayPal as the processor, immediately when you did a refund, it showed up in their account. You could send them a link, re-list the item, send them a link, they could buy it immediately. Again, wasn't that big of a deal. So that's what you could have done.
But now when you do a issue, a refund through eBay, it does take a couple days 'cause eBay does the processing, they go through and make sure everything's all right and then they'll transfer the money back, but they're not getting money immediately, so they have to wait and you have to wait for the sale to come through again.
So, that is the crappy part about if they want to ship to a new address. But as a seller. I would recommend you a hundred percent, always refund it back. Take that because you do have a risk for our items. They're expensive When we're selling an item a thousand, $2000, $5,000, $10,000, you don't wanna make those mistakes because they can cost you very much in the end if you don't have proof that it went to the right address that eBay told you that it was supposed to go to.
So you want that proof of receipt going to that address. So. Hopefully you don't make those mistakes. Like I said, this is something I've been doing these, this for decades and I still did this, but I used my judgment of reasoning out all the, all the, I had everything in front of me and I was like, okay, this is not a scammer.
I knew it wasn't a scammer, but at the same time, I didn't take into account if he gave me the wrong address. Yeah. What would happen. And that's what actually bit me in the butt. And that's what happened in this matter. So, safely I should have refunded it and we should have gone that route with it, but it's okay.
We still made money. We still had fun. We had a great story for you guys, to teach you guys and something.
Melissa: And something you can learn from and don't get upset if you make mistakes. 'cause they will happen. They will happen. They will happen, some will cost you money. You know, some are good learning lessons that you won't do again.
So you can always learn from them. And actually if you want to grab, we have a free PDF of five mistakes that resellers make that can cost them money. We'll put it in the show notes below. You can grab that. And thanks so much for listening.
Rob: You guys are amazing.
Melissa: You guys are awesome. Thank you.
Rob: See you on the next episode.