Simplx Blog

Recently I discovered a whole new market that I have always made a point to avoid in the past and let me tell you why…..

Nine years ago I was putting myself through the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University by selling stuff on eBay.  At that time I was buying a lot of stuff off uBid.com in bulk and then I would resell it on eBay and on the bulletin board on campus.  My first large bulk purchase after having a little success was a lot of refurbished laptop computers that cost me about $10,000.  I sold a few off of the bulletin board on campus to students that I met in the Cougar Eat to show off the item before we agreed upon an amount, and the rest I sold on eBay where I discovered that the fees that they charged were much more enduring than the personalities I had to deal with on the face to face purchases.  Back then my strategy was to list a laptop at a $.99 no reserve auction with a buy it now option at a price usually a couple hundred dollars above what the average selling price was for the laptop.  All of the laptops closed within the average selling price range except for one.  A buyer from Russia paid the extra $200 for the buy it now option along with an extra $100 for faster shipping.  I was ecstatic!  I collected about $1000 total from this fellow for a laptop that only cost me about $600.  The buyer stated that he was trying to receive it in time for a birthday gift and after several emails we had back and forth I felt comfortable enough to release the shipment via an expedited shipping method to Russia….

One month later….

I received a peculiar email from PayPal with a warning about my transaction with the Russian stranger.

We have reason to believe that the transaction with which you recently participated with xyz buyer may have been fraudulent.  If you haven’t shipped this product yet please do not do so until we have concluded our investigation….

What??? Are you serious?  I get an email from PayPal 30 days after I complete the transaction on eBay with an outrageous assumption that I may have not shipped the item yet?  If I waited 30 days to ship any of my items now, PayPal would certainly shut my account down.  Five days after receiving that initial email I received a heart dropping follow up email from PayPal.  They confirmed that the transaction had in fact been completed fraudulently without the consent of the true owner of the PayPal account.  When I logged into my account I saw 2 new changes to my account 1)the word limited next to my PayPal account balance and 2)dark red bolded numbers with a minus sign totaling about $1000 next to my account balance.

I fussed and moaned and probably even cried to PayPal about what they had done to me.  Each person I talked to gave me the same half sympathetic listening ear followed up with an ultimatum to bring my account balance positive.  As a poor starving college student that money was long since spent.  I had a tough decision to make.  Leave PayPal holding the bag because I felt like they deserved it for not protecting me and kiss my relationship with them goodbye, or….bite the bullet, suck it up, pay the dues of the school of hard knocks, and make it right by transferring a $1000 from my bank account back into my PayPal account.  I think it is evident what I decided to do by the fact that today I run millions of dollars through my PayPal account every year.

Nine years ago I vowed that I had forever learned my lesson with International buyers and would never make the same mistake twice.  This year I changed my mind and here’s why….

PayPal security has evolved over the years and continues to provide greater protection for sellers for both domestic and International transactions.  In the past PayPal only provided protection for transactions that were shipped to confirmed PayPal addresses with the U.S.  Although PayPal still doesn’t provide the Confirmed address option for International PayPal account holders, they do provide additional verification processes that International account holders must complete.  If they do then you will receive a payment notification from your buyer that shows “Seller Protection – Eligible” written in green on the email receipt.  There are still some requirements as a seller that you must follow in order to qualify for the seller protection, but let me summarize this statement by saying that if those security measures were in place today as they were 9 years ago, I would have still made the decision to ship that laptop.

Today about 1/4 of the volume that I do on eBay is done so as I openly advertise my products for sale to International buyers.  About 3/4 of all profits that I make each day come from International buyers…..need I say more.  I still use the Simplx network to process all orders for my International buyers, but because most of the merchants on the Simplx network won’t drop ship directly to my International buyers I instead place the orders with the Simplx merchants to ship to my office and then I repackage them and put them in the mail to my buyers.  If I average about $15 on a drop ship order that I place through the Simplx network, then through my International orders I average about $70 for that same product.

So my message today is to explore the International realm of eBay buyers…..you could be missing out on thousands of dollars of profits by trying to avoid the Russian scammers, but even if you are scammed once for $1000 is it still worth the efforts and the hassle if your were not scammed for $10,000 of profits with International orders?

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