Tag Archives: stupid questions

Just Another Friday

11 Replies

The first of at least two posts.I am feeling productive.

I was so tempted to apply alliteration to the title, but I’m better than that.

Went to work, packed parcels, was rude to an Australian, was nice to some customers, went home. It’s Friday and it’s our new half-day.

Some of the customers were lucky they had rung ahead because I was able to tell them that coming at 2am would be a waste of time. I still cannot believe we are just shutting shop and going home with no notice to the customers. A very successful shopkeeper once told me that you can run a specialist shop for three hours a week if you want to, and people will come. But you have to be open when you say you are.

The Australian? Well, if you ask stupid questions it’s always going to be borderline what sort of answer you get. If you ask two stupid questions in the same email the odds increase, and if you then start telling me what to charge you for postage . . .

The definition of stupid question is not, in this case, based on ignorance, it’s based on making me waste time answering a question when all the answers are actually already in the listing. Why do I have to waste time on something that is perfectly obvious to anyone who  can be bothered to look? Ignorance is unavoidable and excusable in a specialist world – laziness is avoidable and there is no excuse.

Postage is expensive. It’s not my fault. We send our parcels in a way that is dictated by the value of the parcel rather than the parsimony of the customer.  In the old days we used to tell them we would send them unsigned and uninsured but it was the customer’s responsibility. You can’t do that now. For eBay purposes the customer is never responsible and they will always find against us.

Strangely, I bought in a Sacriston Peace Medal today – the first time I’ve bought a peace medal across the counter in the six years I’ve been there. As you may recall, I already have that one. Why couldn’t it have been a Gateshead or a Little Slaughter?

Sacriston Peace Medal (Obverse)

Sacriston Peace Medal (Reverse)

 

 

Day 90

14 Replies

It snowed this morning. The first snow of the year, and only the second lot of the winter. It lasted a minute. The rest of the day was taken up with a mixture of sunshine and precipitation – rain, hail, snow, sleet and graupel. It was the sort of day that a snow connoisseur would love, so many types, falling long enough to show itself off, but failing to settle.

If I say that was the exciting part of the day, you will probably get the general idea that the rest of the day generated little worth writing about. We didn’t have  a single customer enter the shop to buy or sell, and when we started, only had one customer on eBay. That developed during the day  and we sold several more items and had a number of emails asking question.

The Prize Question of the day was “Will you take £1,000 for this?” It was a modern set of silver medallions and is priced at £2,995. We thanked the offeree and said we were unable to accept his offer. I checked online but can’t find any trace of National Wind Up a Coin Dealer Day or International Stupid Question Week.

They say there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but I disagree.

Narcissi

Spring in the Mencap Garden

Another customer, from Brazil, has been pestering us about postage costs to Brazil. He wants us to post him something at les than it will cost us to post and keeps telling us that he buys a lot of coins from British dealers with that sort of postage. It’s been going on for several days with him sending us screenshots of people who charge less postage to Brazil than we do. At least half our parcels to Brazil end up with claims that they were lost, or with Brazilian customs sending them back for unknown reasons, so we aren’t that bothered if he doesn’t buy the coin.

That was one of the first lessons I learnt in selling, apart from the ones about honesty and punctuality, some business just isn’t worth having, so move on. It seems counter-intuitive, but it’s true.

Daffodils at the Mencap Gardens