VERY LONG POST! Please read! Update on my business and whats been going on! Thank you. :) I want to share a little bit of whats going on with Tophatter, a site Ive been selling on for 2 over years, and within the last 6-8 months, I was doing pretty well, until they got even more greedy. Theres been a lot of bullshit honest sellers deal with there, because the others dont care. Those sellers sell Made in China crap at way too high of prices and/or dropship. Tophatter is a live auction site, so I want to know, how do you sell something you dont have in hand? Ive over looked a lot of things, because in the end, they didnt really effect me or my business. But they are now backing out of contracts, taking lots away from me, because we dont meet their selling standards. You see, my business partner and I also took an extra 100 lots when they asked, which ran us into 3 am the next day. All of our customers went to bed 2 hours before that! So our wonderful selling rate went down the drain, so they took 50 of our lots from our next auction. Seems fair, right?! It gets better! They had a BRIGHT idea to have us run 500 lot auctions, which we signed up for but before we could do them, they found they werent doing so well, go figure, we told them so. We are now stuck with auctions at times we dont want. We usually do Fridays at 7 pm PST. Well, we took Fridays and Saturdays for 3, so we would have ample time to do 500 lots. Well, now they wont change them, period! But we would understand if you want to cancel them. We, my business partner and I, were told a lot of sellers have sold well at other time slots than 7, even 3. SOOOO, tell me why you are forcing us to take this time slot! NO other time slot we asked for is available. How is that? When we signed up for these auctions months in advance, we got them. We have the foresight to ask way ahead of time, most sellers dont. I asked for a catalog on there. Meaning, my stuff is seen and not just during auctions. It took me 3 days to get enough items, 250 listed so I could get one. But not a month or 2 later, its gone! They were charging 30% for the Buy it Now feature during the auctions and out of our catalogs, but lowered them to 10%! This was because no one was listing the BIN feature. They saw this and lowered it to the 10%. We were doing well, and bam, they werent happy with not getting a big enough cut. So they raised it back to 30%, without warning! People got mad, so they put it back to 10% and gave us a date. But wouldnt you know it, it was back at 30% before the set day and time. Why? We didnt want our engineer up all night. Its your damned employee and your damn decision! And now?! Well, we have to redo our whole listing if it has the BIN, because we cant simple go in and change it! Greed! We are charged 30% commission on sales, which is steep, but I was selling and doing pretty well. Well, if we dont meet their selling standards, as I mentioned above, we are now threatened with more fees. Listing per item fee of $1 and Ive heard as high as $2. Now my profit margin goes further down and Im out money if the item doesnt sell. Yeah, doesnt make sense to me either! What are their selling standards? We have to have at least 80% selling rate, meaning if we have 100 lots, we have to sell 80 of them, but thats not all. We have to have an average of $20 hammer price, meaning out of those 80 lots sold, they have to have sold at an average of $80! We list items in all price ranges so everyone can afford something. What did we get for our 30%?! A platform to sell on and 1 post on their Facebook page! Thats it! We were never mentioned in their newsletter, we paid for ads on social media, we brought in our own customers! And just a bunch of grief, breaking of contracts, bullying, and harassment! The people replacing good sellers? They sell Made in China crap! Ive seen 50 cent rings go for upwards of $100 and more! False claims of stuff being sterling when its not! False claims on gemstones. They do have a list of banned items, and we report them but they are still sold. They look the other way as long as its making them money. You can find high end bags, makeup, etc, and its all bullshit! More fake crap! Ive never bought anything but supplies or jewelry, with the occasional tea or fudge purchase from another honest seller. Tophatter doesnt listen to its sellers! They came up with a new idea for integrated shipping. This means, they charge the customer and we print the label. Sounds like a good idea right? Not with Tophatters track record of over charging. It costs me $1.93 to ship a package up to 3 oz. They are charging customers $4! So I had to take the option of offering free shipping, because I dont want my customers to think Im overcharging them. Which was Tophatters reason for doing this. Too many sellers were overcharging on shipping and this was Tophatters solution. This was after they were charging us 30% of our shipping when we didnt offer free shipping! Greedy, yep! I am not making any money on my shipping, so why should they? Youd think they would punish the dishonest sellers?! No, instead they punish everyone! Now they want to do utility auctions, where the is no chat. The live chat is what brought in a lot of customers, mine included! The seller can be available for questions, but now I have to answer the same question multiple times versus just once maybe twice. The reason, the trolls (people who harass sellers and others). We dont have much of a troll problem, and there is a report button. Again, they are trying to ignore the real issues, their idea sucks! But here is a post I wrote and posted last night in their seller forums on Tophatter. Im surprised its still up. They have a nasty habit of removing any negative posts! I dont know why I stayed for as long as I did. I guess I wanted to get something out of all the time and effort I put into my business there and I started to finally do well. I was getting repeat customers and every person who left me feedback but 3 (neutral) were positive! This is just the tip of the iceburg on what they are doing to us sellers. Dear Tophatter, Please give me a reason, just one reason, why I should continue to do business on your site? You give us auctions, then if we dont meet your standards, even when we take more lots 2 days before the auction, which is helping you out, making us run into 2 am the next day, we get lots in our next auction taken away? We get catalogs, and work hard to get them set up, and bam, they disappear, with more lame lies ,excuses, and in typical TH fashion, without warning. Tell me why I should continue to do business with you when Im paying you 30% of my hard earned money to be continually treated poorly? You have your employees give us the whole if you dont like it, you can leave speech. You act like WE, the sellers, work for YOU. You are not my employer!!! WE pay YOU for a service and you should provide us with a better service than you do. You should have the mentality that every seller counts, because big or small, we make Tophatter what it is! I am a 5 star seller and have been since you came up with this system. All of my feedback are positive, but 3, and those are neutrals. So why would you treat me, a great seller, with great repeat customers, so poorly, to bring in drop shippers selling Made in China, Taiwan, Mexico, etc sellers? You delete our posts when we speak our minds and tell you that we are unhappy with your changes. You are the most delusional business out there. I guess if its not there for others to see, the problem doesnt exist, and will go away. Social media is getting filled with the truth of how you are treating your sellers! Your greed, ego, and utter lack of business sense will be your downfall. You could have been a good thing, but instead, you think your ideas are the only ideas and the rest of us are idiots. But its not me who has started 3 businesses or more and failed! It is you! So I guess I answered my own question. These reasons, and more, are why I will not be sticking around Tophatter after the new year. I made commitments to auctions and I, unlike Tophatter, am professional enough to keep my commitments. My word means something!
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 18:10:39 +0000
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