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Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

So, it looks like we are going to be slammed by hurricane in a few days. Anyone else in the projected storm path?


Aside from small talk, I'm really worried about the potential implications for my accounts. Ebay excuses shipping delays caused by natural disasters, but none of my accounts are registered in the state I actually live in. I checked with the post office and they say they will stay open, so it's looks like I'll be taking a drive in 100+MPH winds to get my orders out on time.

Anyone else have concerns about this?

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Sorry to hear about the Hurricane thing......

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

I'm way more worried about service outages than the actual storm.

Fairly pointless thread I know. I was more or less curious if anyone else will be impacted, and what their continuity of business plans are like lol.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

I am not sure of much of a logistical possibility, but can you take most your high selling items with you and then post them in the part of the country that you relocate to for a few days / weeks? Any large items that are not possible to move could
Then be ended for the period of time that you are away

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Seriously? Have you seen some of the post as of lately? this is actually a decent thread.

In your listing, you could change the ships from city to your actual shipping city (where the Hurricane is going to hit) and then in your listing just put that there might be a delay?

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Im in NY and they are telling us about it now.

I just put in my listings that there will probably be an extended shipping time due to the storm and if they cannot wait, not to bid/buy.

I have no intention of shipping things out in this storm.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

I'm in a tough spot now. I managed to get some of today's orders dropped off at the post office but they had a note on their door saying they will be closed until after the storm. All of my listings are very long term GTC BIN's with some having 1000's of items sold. I think it may be a red flag if I suddenly changed the shipping location after all this time. The nice lady at the post office told me they are still waiting on the final call on whether or not they will operate the rest of this week. I think it's stupid they would close on Wednesday when it's not expected to be here until Saturday at the soonest. Anyway I'm considering using vacation settings if I have to, but I would seriously hate to bring business to a screeching halt like that. That's the only solution I can think of that I would be comfortable with. If I were to keep accepting orders as usual without a way to ship them out, I'd accumulate about 300 late shipments every day until the storm is passed, which would be DSR suicide.

@James - As of now we aren't leaving. We are usually hit with a few tropical storms/hurricane's annually, and it's almost never as bad as everyone thinks it's going to be.

@CJ - Do you think it's going to have much of an impact on you in NY? Extremely rare for a storm to stay strong once it gets into cooler weather up north.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

May be a longshot, but could you not say your 'fulfilment centre' is based in the state thats being affected?

Sorry to hear about the bad news. Hope all works out for you. :thumb:

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

It's petering out all ready. The path doesn't even go over Florida land. Rain, wind, coastal flooding. Electricity outages are yours/my biggest fear. Might as well live in a cave when that happens.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

I resent that, I lived in a cave.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Well, we are going to treat it as super storm sandy. Last time we didn't expect anything, we were stuck inside for 4 days.

The meteorologists are all getting us pumped up since they cannot pinpoint the exact route the storm wants to take.

Most of the stores in my mega mall area are getting their shelves cleaned out.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

I like the Carolina's with that big highway going west. They made both sides (east-west) go in one direction...cool.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

It's suppose to hit dead on where I'm at Thursday night, early Friday morning. I live 5 blocks from the beach and am under mandatory evacuation. I spent a few hours this morning making sand bags. Thought I was going to die it was so damn hot. I also got plenty of liquor and beer (The mandatory hurricane essentials). There hasn't been any water to buy for the last 2 days anyway.

I was wondering how this was going to work with eBay. I figured as long as I bought the labels and shipstation uploaded tracking I should be alright even if the post office isn't open. But I'd be lucky if I got 5 orders in the next couple days (still have little new born baby accounts). 300... that's ruff... All my faith is in cell service not going out, my AT&T and Verizon phones, 3 vehicles with full tanks of gas, and a AC/DC converter.

I lived in Fort Lauderdale for Wilma which was a Cat 1-2 when it hit. It ripped Lauderdale a new ass hole. This is suppose to be a Cat-4.... I was in Lauderdale for Andrew (Cat 5), it didn't do much where I was at but it destroyed Homestead/Kendall... I just hope it stays off the coast and I still have something to come home to Saturday, or when ever they open the bridge up. My Landlord wont let anyone put up plywood either.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

That's where I am. It's cool to see but at the same time I think it was a bit premature. There are people running out of gas left and right because if you're on the reversed side of the interstate, you can't get off from Charleston to Columbia. :noidea:

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Stay safe out there guys......forget the packages, gotta stay safe.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Include your packages in the hurricane, i'm sure the hurricane will update tracking faster and get it there more reliable than USPS.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

United states hurricane services. Your package in 2 days or less...along with debris, or your money back.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

USHS sound catchy doesn't it?

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Mannnnn this is f***ing terrible. 80 PO's closed in my area for what's looking like the rest of the week, while it's sunny and 75 outside.

*bangs head against wall a few times*

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

The problem with that is that customers are then going to want the same service all the time!

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

what are they saying about potential power outages in your area...?

maybe you should lengthen your dispatch time on listings now?

I heard over a million evacuated!

but more importantly stay safe, dont want you or your stuff ending up somewhere over the rainbow..........and your little dog too..

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

I know amazon has a vacation mode for merchant fulfilled listings.

Does ebay have the same?

If not you're going to have to manually close/adjust processing times on all your listings.

Fwiw, amazon does not excuse shipping delays for ANY reason. If your account isn't on vacation mode and you do not ship on time you will be suspended.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Haha, that's got a lot to do with why I want nothing to do with AZ. Amazon purposely makes their standards nearly impossible to meet because they are in direct competition with their sellers. Ebay is just a venue and they rely on their sellers for revenue, so they're a bit more forgiving from what I've noticed. Ebay does have vacation settings but I'm only going to use that as an absolute last resort.

I got really lucky today. Even though we are under a "state of emergency" and all PO's are supposed to be closed until after the storm, our local PO actually opened today and the mail even ran! So we were able to get about 95% of today's orders out on time. I'll still be taking a hit if PO's are closed tomorrow, but at least tomorrow is Friday so I won't be penalized for late shipments on Saturday and Sunday.

@oompa - I wouldn't be surprised if we lost power for a bit, but luckily we live about 1/2 mile from the power plant. We've lost power in storms before and it never takes them more than a few hours to get it restored. My concern with changing the dispatch time (handling time for those of us stateside) is losing TRS status. Losing that 2% discount would cost me about $1200 more in fees per month, just on the most active account. Plus I'm sure it would destroy my search ranking. :(

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

I left FL last night @ 1am. Every hotel on the gulf coast was booked full. I couldn't believe it... I called hotels.com, travelocity, and every hotel google pulled up for hotels in what ever county I was driving through at the time. Every hotel I passed on the interstate and turnpike had full parking lots. I slept for a couple hours at a rest stop in the pan handle, there were about 100 cars at every rest stop down I-10. I've never seen anything like it. I ended up having to drive 8hrs, An hour north into Alabama just to find a hotel. This town is so small it only has one restaurant, this hotel, and a water tower. I barely get AT&T cell service, no data. Its like the movie wrong turn... But the hotel is booked full and almost every car in the parking lot has FL plates.

The eye of this storm is projected to hit or hit close to the island i live on with a storm surge of 10ft. I really hope i have somewhere and some thing to go back to. Guess mother nature plans to give it to me with no Vaseline str8 in the a$$...

On the brighter side... DHL text me today to see if I was still home to deliver a package I had coming. They don't even f#@k-off... At least I know I've still got inventory to come home to.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

orlando here now .. change your shipping time to 3 days atleast that will give you little more time to figure it out . looks like tomorrow morning before getting slammed

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

I wish you guys from Florida the best. Not looking like it's going to be much of a problem for us in SC at this point.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Hey, if it moves 20 miles to the west, you are dead. You can't survive unless you're very lucky. Your kids are going to die also.

https://www.indy100.com/article/fox-...to-die-7349841

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

nuttn but little wind lot of rain didtn lose power, kids , or disney tickets :) jacksonville is floating tho pretty bad that way but we were spared .. best of luck up the cost

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

It wasn't much of a storm for us. Really bad winds for about 6 hours and really bad rain for about 3. The road that comes into our neighborhood was built over a stream years ago, and the intense water flow caused the drainage pipes under the road to wash out, which in turn caused the road to collapse. So we are stuck in our neighborhood until further notice, but at least we have power and internet. :)

Looks like I'll be throwing our mail across a gaping hole in the road to the mail carrier on the other side.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

:attention::lol::lol:

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Amazon's not that bad. You just have to deliver the level of service you agreed to. If you cannot ship as you agreed to then you need to deactivate your merchant fulfilled listings by turning on vacation mode.

The thing is, ebay caters to casual sellers as well as professionals. Amazon wants professional sellers only, and their standards are NOT hard to meet for any professional seller.

For example, their standards are no more than
1% ODR
2.5% cancellations
4% late shipments

Those are MORE than generous. If you're cancelling more than 1 out of 40 orders, or shipping more than 1 out of 25 items late, there's really no valid reason for that. For the former, you're clearly listings things you don't have for sale, so wtf? And for the latter, if you're having a problem with that then you're either not shipping every day or you have more volume than you can handle.

Order defects should almost never happen. Sure, you might get the very occasional unjustified A-Z or negative feedback, but for the most part those are caused by something the seller did wrong. Like if you look at the amazon forums, practically every complaint regarding negative feedback stems from something like the seller not wanting to take a return, or giving a buyer the runaround about it.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

I hope the best for all those affected by the hurricane.

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Things are slowly returning to normal. They've finally rebuilt the road coming into our neighborhood which was washed out by the storm, so I can leave again!

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! "

/musicquote

:focus:

Re: Hurricane threatening my stealth health
 

Hahaha trust me, I spent plenty of time at The Hotel California during this clusterf**k. It's been ridiculous. Luckily we never lost power like most did, but losing your only access to the outside world SUCKS.