Stan Shmenge, please don't do this to your fellow conservatives.

The BBQ Pit
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Stan, I was reading your thread about combining ebay shipping and read this post of yours. I was going to respond in the thread, but I don’t spend a lot of time in GQ, and I am afraid that what I want to say violates the rules there. Frankly, this post makes you sound like an asshole, and it pisses me off because it reflects on conservatives in general. What people were trying to tell you in that thread has zero to do with political philosophy. My husband is as conservative as they come, and he won’t buy from ebay bidders who look like they are padding shipping to make extra $$$. It has nothing to do with not wanting people to make an honest profit. Sellers who inflate their shipping & handling look like they are trying to make a little extra, hoping that you won’t notice how expensive the shipping is until after you buy…which, as pointed out, is against ebay policy.

You say in that thread that your are new to ebay, so let me help you out by explaining a little bit about it. Customer good will is far, far more important than the letter of the law or making the profit you want on every sale. It’s not like other businesses, where if the customer is mildly unhappy, they will grumble and then forget all about it, because there’s no easy way to vent their frustrations. On ebay, buyers can and do go RIGHT to your feedback and leave you a bad rating. It’s not worth making someone mad over a few dollars.

Now, I agree with you that if you didn’t say you would combine shipping, then you don’t have to, and I agree with you that your buyer should have asked before bidding. However, considering that the shipping & handling is supposed to cover your costs of such, and is not supposed to be a profit center, people will expect you to operate in that spirit, regardless of whether or not you have stated your S&H policy. If you can’t give a really logical reason why you can’t combine shipping (that doesn’t include “it’s not worth it to me otherwise,”) then they will pay it because they have to, but they are not going to be very impressed with you as a seller, and they will probably leave you a negative rating. If you want to do well on ebay, you should worry less about who has what political philosophy, and more about the kind of relationship you want to have with your customers.

Turning this into some kind of political rant about how there is no respect for business in our liberal society, or taking swipes at housewives, both of which you do here is irrelevant bullshit, which contributes to the political polarization of the SDMB (already at nearly intolerable levels). If you can’t figure out how to make a profit on ebay, maybe that’s your fault, and not the fault of someone who doesn’t want to get ripped off. Millions of people manage to figure out how to make a little money without inflating their shipping costs unreasonably, and I’m sure you could if you put your brilliant conservative mind to it.

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I’m sorry I spelled your user name wrong in my header. If a mod could fix it, that would be great.

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Wow, that’s a hell of a chip on his shoulder. I wonder if he’ll next shoot off about how Reagan was the smartest economic mind ever elected President when someone complains about how their roof is letting rain trickle down into the house.

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Or maybe he’ll do something incredibly stupid and pre-emptively base an OP on that premise.

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Yes, I was going to add a link to the post where he says he won’t “dignify” the request for a cite that Reagan knew what he was doing economics-wise. If you want to have a debate, you can’t make bald assertions like that and then claim it’s common knowledge. To the contrary, the folks around here could debate that one issue for 20 pages without a blink. Again, makes conservatives look like like smug assholes, and it annoys me to no end.

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Nah, it just makes this one conservative look like a smug asshole.

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Well that’s a relief! :slight_smile:

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I think I understand the basic philosophy at work here as a sort of rough one-way libertarianism. No buyer has any rights regarding goods, services, or the price of same except to say Yes or No to the seller’s terms, in toto, as they stand.

It’s your money, it’s my stuff, but it’s not “our” deal: it’s my deal. I refuse to negotiate.

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This is what I think makes him sound like an asshole, though. You can take that stand, but ebay is a community with it’s own culture. If you want to do business there (or anywhere, for that matter), it doesn’t get you very far to piss off all your potential customers by not at least appearing to consider the customer’s best interests and to understand the expectation they will have, based on the way the culture has evolved.

I mean, he certainly is within his RIGHTS to make the customer pay for the individual shipping costs, but whether it is smart or the right thing to do is a whole different issue.

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Well, that’s an example of what happens when “culture,” which is composed of mutual interests, meets the (notional) backwoods, where it’s all about the self.

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Side story:

The day after the presidential election, things were tense and chilly in my office. Georgia is a very red state.

I sent an email to everyone inviting them all to share lunch in one of our conference rooms as “purples” (red+blue). We’re usually friendly.

Quite a few of our very conservative Republican coworkers made it a point to be there. Most of our very liberal Democrats attended too.

Just one ugly comment in response to the email - she “replied all”: Better buy lunch now while you still can afford it.

An ugly bitter statement.

That’s the feeling I got when I read the political comments by Stan Smenge.

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It’s interesting, before I even bid I look at the S&H the seller is charging and if he combines. I don’t think I have ever won a pair of bids from the same seller to take advantage of lowered shipping but if the S&H is high and the seller does not combined I tend to think a lot less of the seller and often won’t bother bidding on their items. I also always calculate the S&H into the bid I make so that if I think an item is worth $30 to me and S&H is $7.35 my top bid is $22.65.

So while I think Stan is probably costing himself some bidders, he is at least correct that he doesn’t need to combine and reduce S&H. He just needs to understand that he will lose more potential customers. As he is no longer going to use Ebay, he might as well say no and get his last bit of profit.

His rant on the housewives was silly and just shows he is not as savvy at estimating shipping costs as the housewives he is besmirching. A good seller knows his costs and where he actually makes enough profit to bother.

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He also spelled “usury” wrong.

I also have a feeling he would bitch to no end if he was the buyer under the exact same circumstances.

And what does “liberal” have to do with anything?

I get kind of a youngish vibe off this guy – like a Young Republican College Freshman.

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I missed the edit window by that much.

I will add reading more of the thread, I think he just got frustrated by the time of his rant and was probably just blowing off steam. He seemed very reasonable earlier in the thread.

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Sarahfeena

So did you vote for Obama? Because you know that’s all relevant and stuff.

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It’s a problem I have with certain conservative thinkers that the assumption is that your own interests and someone else’s interests are mutually exclusive (and that’s not exclusive to conservatives, either…liberal thinkers often make the same mistake). It’s not that I don’t think our primary concern should be our own self-interest, it’s that I think it’s short-sighted and not very nuanced to think that guarding your own self-interest in any and all situations is good for your self-interest overall.

Good for you for having a purple lunch! I like that. I think that on the SDMB, where everyone is so upfront about religion and politics, it’s easy to divide everyone into “us vs. them,” but it really shouldn’t be like that in real life. We all can & should (and most of us probably do) have friends of all different stripes from ourselves. People who can’t get past politics when others are trying to reach out do seem bitter, as you say.

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I agree, and I’m not trying to flame him. I just thought he’d like to know how he’s coming across to me, a fellow conservative.

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Twice!

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I didn’t even know you were conservative. I’ve always seen you as just plain level headed.

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I agree about the culture of places like Amazon Marketplace.

I buy a lot of stuff and what matters far more to me is the seller’s reputation than the price.

Stan Shmenge needs to learn that lesson (and that liberals buy stuff too :eek:).