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Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box

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Re: Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box

#31

Post by blueprint »

jarrett wrote: post #12
axxl wrote: post #6

Interesting idea, however I just don't think the issue with selling most items is the box. The post office has plenty of free boxes you can take, and if it's a bit too big you can usually pad it with newspaper. They specifically say they're only supporting small objects so that ruins any argument about something big. When the author says "As someone who hardly ever sells anything online in part because I never have t…

For me, the biggest hurdle to selling my personal items online is flaky and/or malicious buyers. On Craigslist, buyers tend to be extremely flaky. Every time I've sold something there, I've wasted substantial time with people who arrange meeting times and don't show up. This happens many times per item. It's also overrun with scammers, although those are easy to spot if you know the signs. (Bad grammar, being unreali…

You might want to check out Bondsy, a way to trade with friends :) You shouldn't have to worry about fraud if you trust your friends. https://www.bondsy.com

(disclosure: i'm the lead mobile dev at Bondsy)

Re: Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box

#32

Post by jlgreco »

bittercynic wrote: post #18
jarrett wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the biggest hurdle to selling my personal items online is flaky and/or malicious buyers. On Craigslist, buyers tend to be extremely flaky. Every time I've sold something there, I've wasted substantial time with people who arrange meeting times and don't show up. This happens many times per item. It's also overrun with scammers, although those are easy to spot if you know the signs. (Bad grammar, being unreali…

For me, the worst part about using ebay is the stench. Ebay has done so much to build ill-will with sellers over the years, and with the recent fee increases it was almost too much for me to continue. I decide to hold my nose and list a couple of items anyway this past week, but the listing page is now broken in both Firefox and Chrome on linux! Enough is enough. It is a shame, though. The users generally seem to be…

The stench of ebay becomes unbearable as soon as you start trying to close your damn account with them.

A few months ago they emailed me saying that they were going to close my account in 30 days because I had done nothing with it in about 5 years. I thought this was fantastically nice of them to do for me, so I did nothing. Then 29 days later I get an email saying that they locked my account because it was compromised (After 5 years of obscurity? well okay, I suppose that is possible.) I logged in, verified that I did not have any personal information in the account that could have been stolen, set a long random password, and told ebay to remove the account. After filling out their survey about why I wanted to do that (which forced me to choose an option that was not my real reason...), they tell me that they need 150 more days to close my account. It was 30 days, but now they need 150 days to ensure all of my (five year old...) transactions are finalized? What bullshit.

That was several months ago. A few weeks ago I got another email from them saying that my account was again compromised. I am now convinced that they lie about that as a way of tricking you back onto the site to regain you as a customer. Or maybe they are incompetent and an account being closed trips their fraud system...

Re: Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box

#33

Post by mtct »

>As someone who hardly ever sells anything online in part because I never have the right box, I am clearly the target market for Sold.

Yeah, if something so trivial like find the right box stop you from make money, Bryan, selling is really not something for you.

Re: Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box

#34

Post by kriro »

Seems legit to me. I feel quite a bit of pain that can be solved. I usually just don't sell stuff because it's quite the hassle to go out, get a box, ship the stuff at the post office etc.

If they can just solve that for some fee I'd be pretty happy already. Buyout from Ebay/Amazon is likely if this works.

Basically I'd like my workflow to be: Put stuff on Amazon/Ebay...when it's bought the postman will come the next day and pick it up and deliver it for me. Kind of like a reverse Amazon-Prime.

Re: Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box

#35

Post by xur17 »

taylorwc wrote: post #8
axxl wrote: post #6

Interesting idea, however I just don't think the issue with selling most items is the box. The post office has plenty of free boxes you can take, and if it's a bit too big you can usually pad it with newspaper. They specifically say they're only supporting small objects so that ruins any argument about something big. When the author says "As someone who hardly ever sells anything online in part because I never have t…

I can relate to the pain involved of not having a box. Unless I just got something from Amazon, I won't have a usable box. And while the post office may have free boxes, the trip to the post office in and of itself is pain enough to cause breakage [1]. [1] I think I'd rather have my fingers run over by the car than make a trip to the US Post Office. Right up there with the DMV.

I agree. When I was selling online more frequently, I had a collection of Priority Mail boxes to use, and this still didn't cover all of the sizes I needed. As dumb as it sounds, shipping me the properly sized box would be amazing.

I'm curious if they provide packing material too - that was the other big issue for me. I typically used newspaper or peanuts from a box I had sitting around, but I still ran into trouble a fair amount of the time.

Re: Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box

#36

Post by ereckers »

Sounds cool and the mechanics of it seem to be really well thought out. However, the service seems to provide a lot of value-add that will eventually have to be paid for. "Sold" will have to make a pretty compelling argument to the seller that losing 25%? from just doing it themselves is going to be worth it.

Which gets me to thinking, do services like Gazzelle make money?

Re: Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box

#37

Post by Domenic_S »

jarrett wrote: post #12
axxl wrote: post #6

Interesting idea, however I just don't think the issue with selling most items is the box. The post office has plenty of free boxes you can take, and if it's a bit too big you can usually pad it with newspaper. They specifically say they're only supporting small objects so that ruins any argument about something big. When the author says "As someone who hardly ever sells anything online in part because I never have t…

For me, the biggest hurdle to selling my personal items online is flaky and/or malicious buyers. On Craigslist, buyers tend to be extremely flaky. Every time I've sold something there, I've wasted substantial time with people who arrange meeting times and don't show up. This happens many times per item. It's also overrun with scammers, although those are easy to spot if you know the signs. (Bad grammar, being unreali…

The message appears to be "buyers suck", which should not be surprising if you've ever worked retail!

Re: Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box

#39

Post by Domenic_S »

taylorwc wrote: post #8
axxl wrote: post #6

Interesting idea, however I just don't think the issue with selling most items is the box. The post office has plenty of free boxes you can take, and if it's a bit too big you can usually pad it with newspaper. They specifically say they're only supporting small objects so that ruins any argument about something big. When the author says "As someone who hardly ever sells anything online in part because I never have t…

I can relate to the pain involved of not having a box. Unless I just got something from Amazon, I won't have a usable box. And while the post office may have free boxes, the trip to the post office in and of itself is pain enough to cause breakage [1]. [1] I think I'd rather have my fingers run over by the car than make a trip to the US Post Office. Right up there with the DMV.

USPS will ship you free boxes, for free.

https://store.usps.com/store/browse/subcategory.jsp?category...

Re: Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box

#40

Post by Domenic_S »

kriro wrote: post #34

Seems legit to me. I feel quite a bit of pain that can be solved. I usually just don't sell stuff because it's quite the hassle to go out, get a box, ship the stuff at the post office etc. If they can just solve that for some fee I'd be pretty happy already. Buyout from Ebay/Amazon is likely if this works. Basically I'd like my workflow to be: Put stuff on Amazon/Ebay...when it's bought the postman will come the next…

Hmm, that's the workflow already. If you're shipping at least one Priority package, the postman will pick up your packages for free. They'll deliver boxes to your door for free, too.
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