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Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

I might be going on a road trip and I wanted to know if anybody has had experience managing multiple ebay accounts while on the road and staying at different hotels.

I will email the shipping labels to someone trustworthy back home and they would package and ship the product for me.

It plays out smoothly in my head, but are there any problems that could arise that I'm not thinking about? Anybody see anything wrong with this plan and why it wouldn't work? Any experience with this?

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

Hi,
thinking about your question I can tell you what comes into my mind as far as account management is concerned. Be sure to check your accounts by means of a personal internet connection (USB key or somthing like that) do not, NEVER, do it by public wifi and double check thet the ip you are using is coming from your personal connection.
Use a laptop, don't use any phone app.
Don't check your accounts/mails while driving ;-)
You should be safe.

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

Urgent phone call for nodeal:

'Hey man, I am calling you to say I dropped that .......(fill in the blanks). It is smashed up now. I can not post it out. BTW, that printout of labels kinda got damaged. Your dog jumped on it and spilled the coke. They all got wet. Now they are ruined.
OR I aint got the labels yet ,Dude. Did you post them>:eek:

nodeal: Hell no. That was the last item. OMG. I have no internet access. How can I tell that poor buyer what is happening? How am I going to get a replacement? This hotel is so cheap I can not even use their wifi to do a thing.
ETC ETC ETC. Bringing to you a short version of road trip troubles by Greenie. :)

What we have found, nodeal, and what we do is close up for the time of a trip. Actually we do this to ensure we maintain control of the accounts. I have people I trust for dire emergencies not vacations.
Factor internet access & communicating with offsider.
Buyers contacting with last minute changes.
Be in damage control.

Enjoy the break of a road trip. Have some time away from ebay & recharge your batteries.

Be happy

:cheer:

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

What I do when I am away (though not on a vacation), is if I have access to internet, then install logmein free on my stealth computer and manage everything from there. You can change your MAC address and refresh your router and then BAM, new IP address right there. You will get disconnected with your remote connection for about 2 minutes, but then you just get back on to logmein. Sometimes though, the internet just doesn't come back on for me, and I have to ask someone at the house to unplug the modem and hit the refresh button on router's main page. Then I'm back on.

This should help because it would make you do most of the work instead of the other person, especially the logging out of user accounts and all that other stuff. If that other person doesn't mind doing the packing and slapping a label on the envelope for you, then you'd be okay. All of the other hard technical stuff up to the actual printing of the label would be all done by you.

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

Logmein and Teamviewer can work but you do need someone at the home spot to physically change IP

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

Yet the OP clearly says he is posting labels to another party.

Nothing to suggest remote access is widely feasible OR sensible

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

I have verizon jetpack for the purposes of changing IP. It is good here at home in a well populated area. I DON'T imagine it working so well wherever else I am -- even hotels. It is one of my concerns.

Yes you have touched upon my concerns here. To me, things are often easier said than done. It is easy to verbalize how I would run ebay accounts on the road, but it is more difficult to conceive of all the possible things that could go wrong. I notice how hairy it can sometimes get when I am here at the home base doing everything myself. Imagine on the road? Communicating everything to a third party?

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

I go out of town every couple of weeks for several days at a time.

I don't log directly into pp or eb from an out of town ip, because it might cause the dreaded "we notice there was a log in from an out of town ip address, you may simply be traveling, but we have frozen your account until you call us" email, and the less I talk to them the better.

I use Auctiva to print labels, update listings, etc. when I'm traveling. The $2.95 account is adequate for this. I set them up exclusively for when I travel.

My stuff is small I can bring several days worth of product, and I can ship from wherever I'm at if I have/want to.

Usually though, I make sure everything is shipped up until the moment I leave on Friday, just printing labels over the weekend makes most people happy, only idiots expect them to hit the post office until Monday anyway, I also have included in my ads that my two day handling excludes weekends, holidays, and the day of purchase.

I answer email through the gmail account attached to my account, again so I don't have to log in.

Refunds, purchases, payments, transfers to my bank account, responses to opened cases - anything that requires logging in all wait until I come back and can log into my account from the usual ip address.

It can be done, but it requires planning and setup.

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

Been there tried that, juggling several accounts whilst on holiday. Ideally you want away from the brain fog and daily grind whilst on holiday
You can set holiday mode on your account's, also an automated message if someone emails. Turn it back on 3-5 days before you return, you wont completely lose out in earnings and are ready to ship once you return, if you return on weekend even better gives you time to recoup and not rush to ship same day your back.

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

I agree with Dallis,

However, I have never seen that out of town email. I always figured because I brought my laptop which the cookies and flash cookies would recognize it as my pc wouldn't be a problem. But that is absolutely new to me.

Still, none the less. Like stated above. If you are gone a 2-3 days you can probably get away with just doing what is said above answering via email etc. But if plan on being gone longer that is when you need to consider ending items etc. And possibly having a friend or family member handle some business.

For me I have found it is very hard to take more than a few days off because of this dilemma.

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

I have never done this, but many sellers I run into have their settings set to say

seller is away until xx/xx/2014

I would setup something like that while you leave so the expectation is u will ship when u return.

I wouldnt chance checking crap on the road, I would check my accounts via email notifications, with beacons disabled of course :)

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

It's definitely possible to do what you are planning, the problem is there's no more trustworthy person than yourself because you have nothing to blame but yourself if you screw something up.

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

this is one of those instances where having a business partner has become extremely handy.

I brought my laptop away with me and could log on to answer questions or take care of any important customer issues. Luckily nobody wanted to return something, but if they did (or wanted a replacement shipped to them) my business partner was able to retrieve the item or send out a new one. I was even able to sell, as I would email my biz partner the shipping labels as the auctions ended and he would print them out and ship the product for me while I was away. I will be doing the same for him when he goes away.

I'm telling you, it's a rare relationship to have, but if you can find someone that you can click with, trust, and deal with business-wise, a partner can be a great asset. Two brains aren't always better than one, I tend to dislike people in general and find that working with someone slows me down. But in this instance, we have two very different types of smarts that complement each other very well.

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

If you got someone you can trust and can manage ur IPs, I dont see any problem with that. Its nice to take vacations, but even nicer when you make money while on vacation :thumb:

Re: Managing stealth accounts while traveling on the road?
 

The idea of a dedicated IP address is always good too. I was in Asia for a month and was managing some of my accounts with my laptop and coupe of dedicated IPs. Everything can be done if you got the right equipement and right people.