Well it would appear our recent fresh batch of five listings, each of four colour views from our stock, these being from the Southdown Enthusiasts Club were not of interest to members on ebay then, or was it that those looking through the listings just saw a postage fee against others a lot lower, had not been curious enough to check like for like, as these were using recorded delivery second or first options at our cost which included about 12p for a boarded envelope!

As this eBay & Paypal team seem to be tinkering yet again, appears that using what is required, a trackable postage method, the potential buyers just dont want to pay for it, going maybe for standard postage, yet this will just not cover the seller if the item somehow disapears 'in the post'. Next month sees the final removal of using 'alternative' methods of payment by the buyers, paperless only, finally in other words no Cheques. Knew that coming.

One good thing out of no sales of the five sets offered, no one can have spoilt the 100% feedback rating here, so maybe it is time to move on like many others to other auction sites with far less fees involved & a happier atmosphere in the forums too.

Unless things change here, come find us, as wherever we sell we use 'Dinnages' as our username where we can, this way we are easily found all around the internet, just Google us...

To maybe ease our stock of some 70,000 photos, we have decided to have another bash at eBay from September 2008. Our stock of photos are primarily UK, (foreign views elsewhere), with a return to selling four at a time in themes, which could be livery, vehicle type or original photographer. Listings would give a gallery view of the four, with registrations and a basic vehicle description. None of these would be with any copyright to the bidder as these would have come from our 'used' stock, not from our own negative library.
We may be able to arrange lots on request for themes, based on UK buses, quite a number could be from the
Southdown Enthusiasts Club for example, plus many other by unknown sources.
Modern Fire Brigade is well covered too, originally provided by Mr West & friends.

The issues surrounding the PayPal insistence will mean we will be listing only for the UK for the time being, and anything won will be sent under a tracked method, that’s to be included in the postage fee the recorded cost. Never had anything lost or mislaid, or deemed damaged either on sale at eBay or other methods. As for feedback, not ever had anything but positive feedback and cannot see why we would ever have otherwise. Only one issue did cause a query & that was settled before either of us had given feedback. However on this point, we will only give our feedback after the buyer has given theirs after they have received the won item/s showing others their opinion of the item, packing, & service. Once that’s been done we would provide our individual response in equivalent depth.

As a reminder, for those who have not dealt with us before, please do search us out & see what we can offer. We have traded long enough to have become established, and known by the Southern England buyers at stalls, past retail customers and online shopping.
Time to spend on eBay is scarce, and is when there is something different to offer our buyers, otherwise it’s just another marketplace competing on price.

September is after most would have been on Holiday, kids are back to school, and nights start to become more in-house for hobbies and entertainment. Happy for queries at any time.

While we have always offered paypal to our bidders in the past, it is with some hesitation that as sellers we are becoming informed that its to be mandatory to include paypal as a payment option.

While this is an easy option it is by no means the only safest, & definately NOT in the best interests of everyone, and apart from being seen as a forced 'option' its bordering on a restrictive practise, hence a thread on this is gradually geting bigger at the forums while a petition at #10 is gathering apace too.

We have previously retailed & could never imagine that we could insist on our customers paying in cash, cheque or any other method exclusivly, while this is not quite the case, on eBay, by far the easist method on ebay has indeed been paypal. The impression is that the buyers are given that all other methods are more potential for fraud. What they dont allow us to provide, is any method in which the seller can offer its buyers an incentive to encourage other payment methods, using direct banking (BACS), cheques & other money transfer agents (not including Western Union here), have been no problem to us, in fact the only problems we have ever encountered since 1989 was the use of paypal itself !!

Fixed sale items are always found on our own sites, & a much improved shopping system offering variable discounting, with many other up & coming auction sites around Europe too, eBay may have had its small beginnings come to a peak where its almost publicly seen monopoly falter as times moves along with the bias on forced use of such additional percentage revenues on auction sales, with the final percentage by paypal.

The smaller the item the harder it is to make sure its worth putting on any auction that takes a fee for listing, final sale, & the payment take, let alone any options along the way. For much bigger purchases at the start price the fees do get bigger but at least there more of a margin to lose the fees at £300 then something at £3.

 http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?start=0&threadID=1100164367&anticache=1211399927411

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ebayripoff/

If this blog or anything else on our ebay pages are deleted then so much for a democratic free speech society!

From Autumn 2007 we now carry the range of booklets from;
The Maidstone & District and East Kent Bus Club.
These compliment the booklets from;
The Southdown Enthusiasts Club
where since 1997 we have stocked all current (& some out of print) titles.

For 2008 we have started to stock the Train Simulators & add-ons based on MSTS1
Looking to the end of 2008, & early 2009 for the release of the long awaited MSTS2

We welcome some thoughts...

Wonder should we bother with auctions, with fixed sales working fine for us.
Most who have know of us since 1989, know of our stock.
Photographs, second-hand on buses & other transport.
Photographs both new printing & hand-prints from our unique library of negatives.
Postcards, including our most recent charitable cards.
Booklets from Peter A Harding on Branch Line railways,
or something from the Southdown Enthusiast Club publications stock,
maybe a local or themed topic book, be it Southdown, Brighton or similar.
A number of timetables to sell, along with a few models.
Mind you we sell these things already on our long established home & shopping cart pages, and on stalls in the South-East long before our sales on eBay since 2001, dislike some attributes of it, hence we dont add items frequently. One-off items more likely here. Time to create items for auction on eBay is not always available either.
Found another busy site for our postcard & photograph auctioning, with lower fees too!
Maybe some bundles of photographs might tease some newcommers...

Regards
Gordon & The family team of Dinnages (Est. 1989)