Julie Zeppieri <bowluvr at hotmail.com> wrote:
Gee I'd like to say that I trained Julie ;-) as she ships almost exactly like I do. Good communication and good shipping practices will get it there alive almost every time. On USPS priority I tell them that it is perishable and liquid but I don't tell them that there are fish in the box. That part isn't illegal. It's like the army, don't ask, don't tell! That way you can do priority and get it there in 3 days. I always go to the airport PO for fish. Starve the fish, yep, and do a 50% water change, Rhonda this is really important for your system of low water changes, ~ 16 hours in advance. Also pull the plants because the darn bows and livebearers will continue to snack on the greens which will also mess up the water. I've gotten into the habit of pulling the fish and putting them in a bucket (with cover) the night before sending them out. Dropping in an airstone. The panic gets them to clean themselves out and then you can use fresh water out of their original tank. I
have used breather bags and they work fine but that tends to ship heavier so I normally ship with regular bags. 3/4 air, 1/4 water. I also keep a small scale around to check my weights. If you end up 1 oz over it can cost you a lot more in postage. I stopped using poly filters on bows as they thrash about in the bag and often cut themselves on the polyfilter edges (usually a 1/2 inch square piece per bag of 2-3 bows). Perhaps if covered by a piece of an old nylon stocking it would keep them from tearing themselves up. As far as aquabid disclaimers, ditto for me too, those are important to list. I read their b*tch page and when I see them complaining about a real turkey I just put them on my banned list. There are several of us in the area (St. Louis) that talk and when we get a turkey we all ban him. You can't communicate enough with the customer for shipping dates and expected arrivals. Although I don't do it my friend always gets a receipt confirmation for priority.
There are some people that try the con job. Many of the people with 0/0 feedback are cons that have changed their moniker and Aquabid isn't keeping up with them. BTW it REALLY helps to have a picture of what you are actually selling. When I posted my X. monties (originally posted as Rascon but different local I found out later) they had what I saw as a blue pastel body base instead of the usual green color. I had a fantastic pic of the male that really had several buyers making repeated bids. I probably had 12 bids before the auction was through. My selling rate (after the auction) started at $8 per fish for 7 fish for 3/4 inch fish, for all others that didn't win the auction. Any other bidders that didn't win the auction were sent an email to see if they wanted to either buy the fish at their final bid or the final winning bid. Since I had about 100 of the juveniles I was able to handle multiple bidders. A lot of people were happy to get this fish and it also paid for a
lot of stuff in my fishroom! Also make sure you state, payment is due w/in 7 days after auction close. Avoid shipping to Canada and I would stick with the 48 states as AK and HI are also a pain. Too many regs in HI and AK shipments, even express mail have had their problems. You select that when filling out the selling form. Make sure you set yourself a fair price to begin with too. If you don't want to sell for anything below $4 for a bag, make sure you put this as your minimum price. Sometimes you'll have to relist them but it's better than giving them away and then having to do all of the work to ship them. And always get your money before you start to ship. Some of the checking paypal accounts take 4 days to actually clear so make sure it is clear before you ship. Make sure any personal checks clear before you ship too. Quite a few things to consider but all in all it's really not that tough. You'll see my "Rainbowfish" moniker often on plant auctions as I have to
get rid of the excess "salad" somehow. The bows usually go out with me on the talks so I let Rarefish at LAX sell the bows.
cheers,
Gary Lange
---------------------------------
--0-451700268-1116253574=:88589
Content-Type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Gee I'd like to say that I trained Julie ;-) as she ships almost exactly like I do. Good communication and good shipping practices will get it there alive almost every time. On USPS priority I tell them that it is perishable and liquid but I don't tell them that there are fish in the box. That part isn't illegal. It's like the army, don't ask, don't tell! That way you can do priority and get it there in 3 days. I always go to the airport PO for fish. Starve the fish, yep, and do a 50% water change, Rhonda this is really important for your system of low water changes, ~ 16 hours in advance. Also pull the plants because the darn bows and livebearers will continue to snack on the greens which will also mess up the water. I've gotten into the habit of pulling the fish and putting them in a bucket (with cover) the night before sending them out. Dropping in an airstone. The panic gets them to clean themselves out and then you can use fresh water out of their original tank. I have used breather bags and they work fine but that tends to ship heavier so I normally ship with regular bags. 3/4 air, 1/4 water. I also keep a small scale around to check my weights. If you end up 1 oz over it can cost you a lot more in postage. I stopped using poly filters on bows as they thrash about in the bag and often cut themselves on the polyfilter edges (usually a 1/2 inch square piece per bag of 2-3 bows). Perhaps if covered by a piece of an old nylon stocking it would keep them from tearing themselves up. As far as aquabid disclaimers, ditto for me too, those are important to list. I read their b*tch page and when I see them complaining about a real turkey I just put them on my banned list. There are several of us in the area (St. Louis) that talk and when we get a turkey we all ban him. You can't communicate enough with the customer for shipping dates and expected arrivals. Although I don't do it my friend always gets a receipt confirmation for priority. There are some people that try the con job. Many of the people with 0/0 feedback are cons that have changed their moniker and Aquabid isn't keeping up with them. BTW it REALLY helps to have a picture of what you are actually selling. When I posted my X. monties (originally posted as Rascon but different local I found out later) they had what I saw as a blue pastel body base instead of the usual green color. I had a fantastic pic of the male that really had several buyers making repeated bids. I probably had 12 bids before the auction was through. My selling rate (after the auction) started at $8 per fish for 7 fish for 3/4 inch fish, for all others that didn't win the auction. Any other bidders that didn't win the auction were sent an email to see if they wanted to either buy the fish at their final bid or the final winning bid. Since I had about 100 of the juveniles I was able to handle multiple bidders. A lot of people were happy to get this fish and it also paid for a lot of stuff in my fishroom! Also make sure you state, payment is due w/in 7 days after auction close. Avoid shipping to Canada and I would stick with the 48 states as AK and HI are also a pain. Too many regs in HI and AK shipments, even express mail have had their problems. You select that when filling out the selling form. Make sure you set yourself a fair price to begin with too. If you don't want to sell for anything below $4 for a bag, make sure you put this as your minimum price. Sometimes you'll have to relist them but it's better than giving them away and then having to do all of the work to ship them. And always get your money before you start to ship. Some of the checking paypal accounts take 4 days to actually clear so make sure it is clear before you ship. Make sure any personal checks clear before you ship too. Quite a few things to consider but all in all it's really not that tough. You'll see my "Rainbowfish" moniker often on plant auctions as I have to get rid of the excess "salad" somehow. The bows usually go out with me on the talks so I let Rarefish at LAX sell the bows.
cheers,
Gary Lange