I occasionally will pick at retail shops however for the most part there's a reason items are marked down. Just for example go to a discount book store and often times you'll find some pretty decent titles for a buck and I"ll think I could probably resell these but when I investigate on amazon or something there's like 100 other people selling the book for a penny so obviously it was overprinted and there's a ton of surplus.

I find oftentimes its the same situation at Ross, Gordmans, Marshals, etc. I have two stores near me I love for picking one is called bargains in a box. It's like a dollar store but they get like surplus and unsold stuff form costco and decent stores so you can find coffee french press for $5 that go retail for $20 or $30, cheap toaster ovens, laptop cases for $4 that go for like $20. Another store I really like is called Forman Mills. What Marhsals would sell for $15 they sell for $4. I just got a brand new members only jacket for $20 those sell pretty good kinda a resurchance in that as a style, non branded nice fleeces for like $6, etc. They also have plenty of brand names though.

I think this is an interseting topic as I run into this alot. I think most important thing to do is not offend anyone ie this piece of crap is not worth $100. I'll simply tell or even show people about comparables or I'll tell someone I'm looking to resell this I have to have some room to make money. My favorite line is this is what its worth to me. Basically tell people look if your willing to sit on this item for 6 monhts, spend time posting it alll over, show a number of people and find the perfect buyer for this maybe, just maybe you'll get that price, its worth such and such to me for this reason I got cash what do you wanna do.

I love picking grills, like cooking grills, from driveways on garbage day. SO many people throw out grills that are perfectly fine, I think once they get a little rusty or even dirty people just buy a new grill instead of celaing them. Worst case scenario maybe the propane hose is clogged or broken which is a cheap easy fix. Grills aren't cheap even a pretty bad quality grill is like $100 or $150 and grills are kind of disposable items ie many people dont bother taking them when moving so if you move frequently its probably something you wanna pickup used. I pick them up clean them or get a new propane hose and its an easy flip on cl or local paper. Just wanted to throw that out there as I imagine everyone has seen many grills sitting at the bottom of a driveway on garbage day.

Hey didn't realize you were in the restaurant industry. I know restaurants are a dream business for many people however its also long hours and quite a grind. I was wondering when you hear people say I want to open a restaurant or start a franchise is your advice stay away or get in as long as you know what you are prepared for?

I have a buddy who looks into every franchise out there. It's not as simple as many people think okay I'll buy a franchise, in my area at least most require you to not just buy a store but a whole region or commit to opening like 4-6 stores in sucha nd such period of time.

I have a buddy who started working fast food at 16, got in good with the family who owned the franchise, become gm, worked there for about 15 years and wound up getting a stake in the place. Plan was for him to buy it with cash upfront as well as repaying with profits however things eventually wound up falling through they forgot to renew lease and lease was upped bigtime, restaurant needed renovations which they tried tacking onto him, got to the point where it wasn't worth buying. He always dreamed of owning a restaurant and though I would attribute much of it from him being a restaurant owner going back to an employee he said he really has no desire to get back into the restaurant industry.

He was saying the work and hours necessary to run a successful restaurant just aren't worth it for the return. YOu can make a good income but also it requires someone activtly involved in the business and isn't by any means a passive thing. Just curious your take.

Hey guys, havn't been around lately as much as I used to. I'm finally getting ready to leave "the other job" was planning on doing it back in august but have some things up in the air, looks like its getting pushed back to November but in the very near future going to be leaving the other job. It's acutally to focus on my other business however my other business doesn't really require m-f 9-5 so thinking about getting more heavily back into auctions hitting a few auctions a week and trying to roll that in to my current ecomerce business. Also figure as long as I'm not tied down by a job and have much more freetime I'll be sitting in my own office all day so have plenty of time to have craigslist people stop by, figure I'm going to be there most of the day anyway so why not take advantage and really try to hustle cl. In the past I didn't try to hard as I have limited time and the flakes turn me off to really trying to hustle on cl but as long as I'm sitting in my own office all day and can have people come by anytime if they show they show if they dont they dont doesn't waste my time. Been kinda out of the loop only hitting occasional auctions and treating it more like a hobby shopping for my home than a business lately so will be good to get back into it. I would love to incorporate a retail store into my current business however it seems like once you open the doors to retail you have a lot more headaches in terms of having to get a city business license, my city is pretty strict about signage and stupid stuff. With an office you don't have all those requirements and cheaper as well so figure I'll just have an office and do some cl hustling. I'll have to report back on how things are going.

I normally just toss them, its normally just a few and normally not even anything good like progressive soup which can be a couple bucks, whenever I find canned goods its like aldi carrtos and stuff like that, I just toss them, figure thats probably like 0.40 cents down the drain oh well.

This happened to me also..

"Cancel's are ok" as long as you do not select "Out of Stock" or "Sold to Someone Else"

The one that got me was, people will open an "Item Not recieved" case and then get the package the next day.
Then people marking "Item Not as described" for items that was damaged in transit.

I never really payed attention like you did and then I went over that 2% threshold and got zapped.  I called eBay and complained and the first person, couldn't help, then their Supervisor couldn't help, now I'm waiting on a call back from the 2nd person's manager.

They issue comes in that they can't fix anything over 120 old, they tell me (It's their policy). So when a bogus case comes in you have to call them and then fix it immediately, to prevent it counting against you. I'm sure someone at eBay can correct it, but you have to work your way up the chain to make that happen..

Yeah this definately sucks. I think in my case I would have been okay had I not requested a refund on FVF fees. I had some items which buyers say oh I bought by mistake or I bought two or I paid with my PP account and wanted to pay with CC, can you refund. I refund which I don't think eBay knows about but then of course I want to try to get my FVF back since I'm being charged for a sale that never took place and on a profit I didn't make so I would want to get those fees back. I wound up filing for FVF fees back which in turn made me lose my top rated seller status. My top rated seller status got me ebay and shipping disconts which outweighed any FVF I was trying to save on so I should have just left them all as is or maybe picked a few high dollar items to try to get fees back on so I still stayed below 2%.

Also, thanks for the tip about which thing to select as to not get dinged. Lastly I totally agree with you that pisses me off when people click item not as described instead of item not received because in an item not received case as long as I show tracking even if ebayer gets their money back it typically is given back out of paypal or ebays pocket and not mine as part of teh whole buyer/seller protection deal.

I think its going to be almost two months in total before I rise back up to top rated seller.

if it was someone close id probably loan them the money. sucks to lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of stuff as well as personal items over a few hundred bucks.