Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

WOW  Bobbie is there anything you can't do    ,  you are like a magic jeannie or something you always have a solution for people,  so glad you are on this list as you are a fountain of information   :hug: .

big hugs

Shane

OH Gladys I have all of the Harry Potter computer games too PLUS I have all the games for my game cube, aaahhhh  I love them.  NOw if I could only get my hands on a Nintendo Wii      they are so hard to come by but soooo much fun to play .

big hugs

Shane

I got this from another group that I belong to,  I know it's long but it's regarding some changes that ebay is making with ebay.co.uk and I know a lot of our TT's are from the UK and use ebay and they would be interested in this and may not know about it.  This is from their FAQ page regarding the change, I hightlighted  and underlined the questions so they would be easier to read.

Just goes to show you what ebay can do and again how they are becoming more like a dictatorship, I figure it won't be to long now and they will be trying this same thing with Ebay Canada, looks like a great way to get more money into ebay.  I know they are hurting big time :crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:  in the first quarter of this yr ebays profits increased 52% yet their revenue only increased 27%, ebay is estimating their gross revenue to be between 7.2 billion and 7.45 billion for 2007 their net income for the first quarter of 2007 was only 377 million.  One can really see why they have to keep increasing their rates  :crackup:  :crackup:  (that's a bit of sarcasim there  I'm not on ebays side )

In order to buy from the UK you now have to go to eBay.co.uk

Why did you make this change?

At its simplest, we made this change because we think it will increase domestic trade on eBay.com by more than it reduces cross-border trade between eBay.co.uk and eBay.com.

eBay operates thirty or so country marketplaces around the world. We have a responsibility to try to increase the total amount of trade that takes place on all of those marketplaces put together. If that
means making a change - like this one - that will benefit one site by more than it harms another, then that's what we tend to do.

More specifically, the several million UK listings that used to appear by default on eBay.com had begun to do measurable harm to US domestic trade. That measurable harm exceeded the measurable benefit
of UK-to-US cross-border trade. So, counter-intuitively , removing the visibility of UK items in the US can increase the total amount of trade that takes place on eBay globally.

Did you have to remove US visibility from all UK listings?

We think that having `no UK items showing in the US' is better for the `total trade' mentioned above than having all UK items showing in the US'. But we also think that having `the right UK items showing in the US' is better still.

We turned off all UK items because we could do it quickly, and because we knew it would result in more `total trade'. Over the next few months, we're committed to identifying `the right UK items' to show in the US and restoring US visibility for those items.

Which items will end up having their US visibility restored?

We'll determine this through the testing that we'll be doing over the next few months. We'll be doing two types of tests:

1) Tests where we simulate showing UK listings on eBay.com, as long as they meet certain criteria (like specifying postage to the US, offering PayPal, having reasonable feedback etc.) - we test this by
giving this `experience' to a random selection of 1% of US buyers as they move around the site

2)  Tests where we show UK listings in specific categories on eBay.com -as you'd expect, we know which categories used to have a significant proportion of US buyers, and which ones were pretty much all UK
buyers.

The tests will run in both directions, so as well as determining `the right UK items to show in the US', we're also be determining `the right US items to show in the UK'.

That's all very well, but a few months is a long time. What do I do in the mean time?

For the vast majority of UK sellers, whose businesses are helped by, but not reliant on, having US buyers seeing their items, we would advise you to continue listing on eBay.co.uk.

If more than 50% of your buyers used to be in the US, we'd advise you to list on eBay.com so that you can reach that audience. This applies to a tiny percentage (less than 1%) of UK sellers, however, and most
of them were already listing on eBay.com.

There are some sellers (again, a small percentage) in between these two camps, for whom between 20 and 50% of their buyers are from the US. We would advise these sellers to consider listing on both eBay.co.uk and eBay.com until we make our final determinations about visibility. As sellers would incur additional fees to do this, we would advise them only to do it if it proved more profitable for them than listing on eBay.co.uk alone.

Are you trying to get UK sellers to list on eBay.com, or on both eBay.co.uk and eBay.com?

No. We would only advise the tiny percentage of UK sellers for whom more than 50% of their buyers are in the US to do this.

We would only advise the small percentage of sellers in the third group mentioned above to consider `dual listing', and then only it was a more profitable option for them.

Will you be reducing UK listing fees to compensate for lost US visibility?

No. For most UK sellers, these changes will make little difference to their business. (This is not to say that the sellers reportingsignificant falls in business on the boards aren't correct; it simply means that they are a small minority of the hundreds of thousands of UK sellers, most of whom only sell domestically) .

If we had made a change that significantly affected the business results of a large majority of UK sellers, then a fee reduction might have been appropriate, but that isn't the case here.

Furthermore, the US was never the majority of eBay.co.uk's export business - other countries, whose visibility of UK items is unaffected by these changes, collectively account for more buying than the US did.

UK sellers still all have access - for pennies per listing - to the largest audience of UK buyers on the internet.

Will you be charging a fee to give UK sellers visibility on eBay.com?

This is still a possibility, but our preferred approach is to show `the right UK listings' either through filters or by category as described above.

There are some advantages to a fee approach - it allows sellers simply to choose whether they're willing to pay for US exposure, for example - but we would probably only take this option if the testing/filtering option proved unworkable for some reason.

Why do eBay Australia listings still show up on eBay.com?

This is largely because eBay Australia is much smaller - an order of magnitude smaller - than eBay.co.uk. There is little risk of Australian listings appearing on eBay.com in sufficient quantities to do harm to US domestic trade.

Don't US buyers oppose this change?

The majority of US buyers have never purchased from another eBay marketplace and have no real interest in doing or motivation to do so.

Those US buyers who have been motivated enough to complain about the changes on US boards will naturally tend to be those who have bought from eBay.co.uk and who don't mind looking through UK items. These
buyers are a small minority of the tens of millions of US members, most of whom don't have any reason to support UK item visibility on eBay.com.

Aren't you discriminating against eBay.co.uk to protect eBay.com?

No, we don't think so. This is a business decision, taken to increase the total trade on eBay as described in the first FAQ above. If in the future we need to make a change that harms another site to generate a greater benefit on eBay.co.uk, we would tend to do so.

Items listed on eBay.com don't show up by default on eBay.co.uk, and items listed on eBay.co.uk don't show up by default on eBay.com now either. This seems fair.

Is it true that a lot of UK buyers use eBay.com?

No. eBay.co.uk gets roughly 3-4 million unique visitors each day - the number of UK visitors to eBay.com is a very small percentage of this.

British people who do visit eBay.com receive a message on the homepage prompting them to go to eBay.co.uk (at least the first few times or until they turn it off!).

We also promote eBay.co.uk heavily on TV, in newspapers and online. We are the most visited e-commerce site in Britain, and our current `logo people' adverts were named the `most recalled' ad in the country in March by Adwatch.

What role do exchange rates play in all of this?

As many of you will know, the US dollar is currently at a 15-year low, with one pound now worth two dollars. This naturally makes it hard for UK sellers to price their items competitively for US buyers.

We usually see our export rates to individual countries closely following the exchange rate, and as the dollar has weakened over the last 18 months, we've seen the proportion of our trade that's done with the US reduce slightly as well.

Nonetheless, it's still most likely that the recent sharp falls in US trade that some sellers are reporting is attributable more to our visibility change than to exchange rates - but the exchange rates certainly aren't helping.

A couple of posters have suggested that this change was made to try to `prop up the dollar' - big as eBay is, it isn't that big!

Are you saying we're imagining things? I don't believe these figures that you quote.

We aren't saying that the sellers reporting significant falls in business on the boards aren't correct; it's just that they are a small minority of the hundreds of thousands of UK sellers, most of whom only sell domestically - and thus are not protesting on the boards.

We sympathise with any seller whose business has been negatively affected by this change, but we stand by the change nonetheless because it will result in more `total trade' as described in the first FAQ above.

We offer figures and percentages in our replies in the spirit of transparency, and to try to enable discussions to take place based on fact rather than opinion and emotion. We are a publicly quoted company, and any figures that we share publicly have to be accurate.

It's difficult to continue a discussion with someone whose response is "I don't believe you", because that makes it almost impossible for us to put eBay's side.

Shouldn't you have given us more warning of this change?

We would like to have given more notice of a change that would affect some sellers very seriously. On this occasion, our analysis showed compellingly that the appearance of UK listings on eBay.com was overall doing harm to eBay trade, and we felt that we had to take immediate action.

We're sorry that this change caught some sellers by surprise and left them with little time to adjust their selling strategy. Our aim is to provide a profitable sales channel with as little upheaval for sellers as possible, and that manifestly wasn't the case with this change for some sellers

Hmmmmm Kathleen  we have a fat quarter of alpaca which is fairly long and it is a very soft green, it isn't a bright green but a very soft green the backing is more green than the alpaca.  It really just has a tinge of green to it, not sure if that's what you mean or are you talking a real green.

big hugs

Shane

Major Harry Potter fan here as well.  I believe as well that Harry has to die as he is the 7th Horcrux, also for Voldemort to die Harry has to die as they have the same blood running through them.  It will be sad if that happens and I think most children and adults will be very upset.  I do believe though we may see Hermoine and Ron die as well, as they have always been there to help Harry out but I think in th end it has to be Harry who does it on his own so the other two can't be around.  I think Harry may die somewhere through the book but believe somehow he is going to come back.  I don't believe that Dumbledore is still alive, I think he is going to be able to help Harry out from the "other side".  I think Harry will be saved in the end because of all the love his has of people around him, similiar to the love his mother had for him and that will bring him back (if he does die).

I havent' preordered the book though, the last time we did that we stood in line at Chapters for almost two hours to pick up our order , but if we hadn't preordered it we could have picked it up and walked out of the store right away.  Plus we paid almost $20.00 more by preordering , went into our local grocery the next day and they had it for almsot half the price. (I was really ticked off)  I have noticed though that this time the pre order price is much lower than any of the other books.  I am going to have to buy one in Canada and one in the US as they will have different Jacket covers.  I'm not sure if other countries are like that ( I think in the UK they have a different cover jacket compared the Canada and the US)

big hugs

Shane

Wow  excellent information everyone.

Shelli thanks for reminding us about the banner ad's, I never would have thought of doing one for bears shows or listing bears show's we will be attending.  Cool idea , thanks so much .

big hugs

Shane

Well hopefully we will see you at Expo as well as TBAI.  TBAI is the best though, it's sooo much fun and well we usually get up to no good there (but it's always everyone else's fault as they get us going and then before you know it all heck breaks loose and people are telling us to be quiet and calm down  :crackup:  :crackup: ) 

You will have a wonderful time for sure, Niagara Falls is so nice and we just don't go there enough.  We are only an hour away but never seem to make it there.  We are doing a show there the beginning of June so we may go down the night before and mooch around a bit and meet up with some of the other artist that will be coming in.

hugs

Shane

:crackup:  :crackup:   so true Brenda.  We have an account with UPS so we can usually just hop online and determine the shipping cost, most times we are pretty acurate but sometimes we are out by about 10.00, but again we don't mind as usually this is from a good collector of ours and we like to keep our collectors happy.

big hugs

Shane

Ohhhhh when are you coming into Toronto??

This is so exciting ,  we are picking Christine Pike and her husband up at the airport right before TBAI and they are staying with us overnight and then we all leave for TBAI the next day. It's a 5.5 hour drive for us and that time should just fly with all of us in the vehicle.  Of course I'm sure customs will have a hayday with two Canadians in the vehicle and two British people  :crackup:  :crackup: . 

Are you going to be doing the TBOV show in Toronto while you are here as well Samantha??

hugs

Shane

Brenda-  Are you sure it was a duty or customs you paid??  If that is the case then definitly you can get your money back, according to NAFTA there is no duty on stuffed toys.  According to everything that I have been told Teddy Bears whether artist or manufactured are considered toys under NAFTA.  Now if you had to pay the provincial tax and GST on the cost of the bears coming in because of the value she put on them, well you might very well be out of luck on that one.  I'm not sure how you would go about getting a refund for either one of those.

As for participating in any of her other shows I would say NO WAY.  If you were not pleased with the way this show went and she has basically been ignoring you on the customs matter then why in heavens name would you even contemplate doing any other shows with this individual.  Just think how worst it could get if you do participate in another show, and what's to say the same thing doesn't happen again. 

But like some of the others have said she may not have even received the email,  I would suggest that you contact her by phone (but take a couple of days first to calm down and then contact her)  I agree it is so much easier to get things straightened out via phone or in person than through an email.

Good luck and keep us posted

big hugs

Shane

Well Sabine I think Microsoft has been digging their own grave for yrs.  I agree that you still have to careful regarding viruses and security, I certainly didn't mean that we should ignore those at all    .  But as you pointed out Mac's just work so much better and you don't have the problems with them that a pc has.  I also have to agree with you that they do cost more but you won't have near the problems or headaches that's for sure.  I won't even get started on the VISTA operating system  YIKES  :crackup:  :crackup: .

big hugs

Shane

Hmmmm good question Heather.  Our web designer charged us $30.00 an hour to build our website, now that was a very straightforward website, no shopping cart or anything like that.  I think in total it took her about 15 hours to do everything.  I have no idea if that was a good price or not  :lol:.

big hugs

Shane

Edie for us sending to the US with UPS they don't seem to get hit with the brokerage fee's that we do when something is shipped into Canada ( I don't know why I think it's just another grab by UPS).   I know we have been hit with them when having something shipped into Canada by UPS (unless we are shipping stuff back to ourselves we don't get hit because it's our own stuff).  I think we had one package once get charged a brokerage fee from UPS but out of all the ones we have shipped that was the only one.

Brenda regarding your information on the handmade items not being insurable with UPS.  I have never had an item not be insured because of this, of course I don't state that it's a handmade item I just write Teddy Bear on the customs form, I also keep my value under $200.00 on that slip as this seems to be the magic number and UPS or customs do not seem to bother with it.   Luckily there is no duty on teddy bears as customs consider it a Toy and therefore there is no duty on it.   

We have never had a problem shipping with UPS , it's trackable and I don't even worry about insurance on the parcel most times.  I figure because of the tracking information they know where the heck it went and they should be able to find it   :crackup:  :crackup: .

We had so many problems with Canada Post and trying to get stuff shipped, and every time we went to a different outlet we were charged different rates.  We did have stuff lost by Canada Post and they were a nightmare to try and deal with regarding the insurance.  It took us almost 4 months one time to get money back from them and finally someone at Canada Post said this is rediculous and they even were shocked at how long it had dragged on. 

Big Hugs

Shane

Cool Samantha, that's why we want I books as well.  It's great to be able to stay in touch with people when you are travelling.  I forgot that you were coming over to the States,  you are doing TBAI aren't you?  or was I mistaken on that  (my mind sometime gets so mixed up  )

big hugs

Shane

Hmmmm that's a good question Jane.  We ship to the US all the time but we do it via UPS and not Canada Post, UPS is roughly the same cost as Canada Post anyway. 

Whether it is Canada Post or UPS the cost of shipping the package is based on weight and the destination,  they will weigh the package first then they will measure the box.  Although your package may only weigh 2lbs if they measure the box and determine that based on size the box could hold up to 5lbs (based on the measurements) then they charge you the greater of the two. 

Then they look at the desination of where the box is being sent, the US is set up in different zones on Canada Post site and UPS's site.  They will look at the weight of the box and then locate the zone you are shipping to and look at their chart which will determine the cost.

We use to pack the box up and take into Canada Post or UPS get them to give us a quote on it, that is the best thing to do.  We do prefer UPS though, we have never had a problem and it's trackable and insurance is not very much.  Again the cost of UPS is so close to Canada Post but at least your parcel will arrive in a much shorter time, when you fill out the customs form just write down Teddy Bear on the contents and the dollar amount in Canadian Dollars.

NOt sure if I helped you or confused you    

If you don't have a UPS store near you then go with Canada Post, I have not shipped with them for a long time as I found they were getting very expensive and shipping took forever to the US, with UPS their standard is 5 business days, so if it was shipped today sometime they would have it by next Friday or earlier.

big hugs

Shane

Edie I would suggest you go with a Mac, they do cost a little bit more but basically with a Mac you just open it up and away you go.  NOthing like a pc with having to install all the different programs as it comes with a lot of the programs already installed.  I would recommend though buying from the Apple Store or from Apple online if you don't have a store near you.  Also friends of ours do run the parrallels so they can run windows as well, but remember then you will have to run an antivirus program on the windwos part of the mac (Mac's don't get viruses  like pc's do).

good luck and big hugs

Oh Samantha so right you are,  I love all of our friends Mac computers, they just make so much sense and are pretty much idiotic proof.  Steven has been a little apprehensive about it as he is so use to a pc and being a Tech kinda guy at his work where they only us PC's he was so worried about having to get all new programs to do this and do that.  I told him they come with pretty much everything you need  , granted it's going to different operating system and I think that's what scares him the most, but all our friends tell us it's not a problem and they will help us out with any problems.  I gave up on Internet explorer over a yr ago, I just hated it and I have been using Firefox which I think is the coolest browser going.  We are really looking forward to getting them, I think we are going to go with an I book for each of us, since we do so much travelling it will be nice to be able to take them along with us.

big hugs

Shane

I'm guessing as well that it is wire, the artist is Kumiko and Masaru Nakano they sell under Ma'Sal Creations.  They are nominated for both a Toby and a GT this yr, they have the most fantastic creations.  If you check out their website you can see the dogs with the mouths that open and close   www.ma-sal.com  . 

big hugs

Shane

Excellent Jodi and huge congrats,  couldn't happen to a nicer person. 

big hugs

Shane

Both Steven and I are using PC's at the moment, but that will change in the next few months when we both will be changing over to MAC's, I'm really tired of all the crap and problems with PC's  and it's been long over due for us to get a MAC.  Most of our friends have them and love them and they all state they could never go back to a PC.  We are really looking forward to it, I know it will be a big change for us since we are so use to how a PC operates and having to use different programs for MAC's vs PC.

big hugs

Shane

:crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:   hmmmm should the rest of us be really concerned for you Mindy 

big hugs

Shane

Huge congratulations Heather    :dance:  :dance:  :dance:  :dance:  :dance:  :dance:  :dance:

big hugs

Shane

I use to use my normal house vacum for doing it Daphne, but then I purchased this little vacum called a "Shark" it comes with a small hose attachement and a brush that you can take on or off.  I think we only paid about 15.00 for and the great part is if you do suck up a bear part you can retrieve it easily as there are no bags. 

big hugs

Shane

Well we usually give ours a big brushing as well (the bear not the dog Maria)  our dog doesn't much care for the vacum    .

I guess I was just being anal about the whole thing, our friends said anything left on the bear just adds to the artisticness of the bear haha.   

I shake out all the loose ends onto the floor as well , I can do that as well since I do majority of the cleaning around the house.

thanks for everyone's comments

big hugs

Shane

Chloe if you can't find any of the iron on interfacing just let me know,  I'd be more than happy to pick some up for you and ship it off.  It's not very expensive here.  What I do is lay the fur out and lay the interfacing on top and and then iron on the entire piece.  But remember to just do it lightly, you may have to go over the piece a few times with the iron to get it to fully stick but it does work and stops any stretching.  Sometimes it will come loose when your working with it but that's ok because when you sew it you are connecting the interfacing anyway.

Let me know if you would like some of the interfacing send me a PM with your mailing address and perhaps I can pick some up today when we are out.  We have to go to the fabric store anyway.

Big hugs

Shane