Topic: Ship your old Items to Africa for bitcoins - page 2. (Read 1363 times)

This is the greatest feedback 

Thanks for For sharing your point out of your own personal experience while others were just throwing trolls.

Thanks also for the advice you gave here. Great insights!

I will send you a PM we will see what we can do together...

Regards

Hello,

I don't see this as nessesarliy a bad idea at all. Actually it's a very good one.

As a regular eBay seller - eBay is no easy place to make money. 10% fees, Paypal 4% fees, and if you want to find scammers you'll find plenty on eBay. The amount of chargebacks I've had recently because I havn't sent signed delivery ($4 for a $20 item) and asshats taking and using somthing (a $450 projector in my example) them just on the 14th day saying no - doesn't work, full refund please. I don't know if that Guy has stolen the $80 bulb out of it - point I'm making is there is a hell of a lot of stuff to be sold and don't think eBay or Amazon are bastions of ecommerce and free of fraud. They aint. And they take a buttload of fees.

Mate I think the best thing you could do is draw up a reasonable price list of fairly common goods - older gen mobiles, PS2/3's, toy drones, LED stuff,
I deal mostly in tech I import direct from china. Lots of 18650 battery components, raspberry pi / arduino stuff, spy camera's that kind of thing.

I think in order for me to do business with you, I need a price list of say 20 common items you would like to buy - this gives me an idea of where your coming from - then I would need to know details on postage, cost, sizes, weights and transit times all very very important.

To do a deal trust has to be on both sides - you should ask for various photo's in RAW format, or whatever, just so you know what your getting and when and for how much.

The seller of the goods should receive 30% up front - this is primarly to cover shipping - which in a fair business deal should be split 50/50%

Proof of your bitcoin holding also needs to be verified by a 3rd party. I don't know how to read a block chain, but I can run a business

Africa is BOOMING in relative terms and I am certain there is a need for consumer durables. I would suggest sticking to one or 2 categories and building a brand.

I don't see how you could sell a pick up truck - and be a good expert salesman in mobile phones - go with light, high demand, consumer electronics would be my advice. I mean I have a box of 50 really excellent LED torches but I can't sell them individually in this country (UK) because they cost £2.90 to post and thats without tracking.

If you could do that, you are so much closer to really establishing trading partners.

Best of Luck!

Great!!! 
 lemme PM you right away

thanks

Thanks for the feedback,
Shipping one fridge may be onerous but when you get many (whether 2nd or broken), put them in a Ship container the overall costs become low.

If you're interested in a venture as such just PM me.
Regards

We got clothes, books, shoes. Let me know quantities.

I agree. Trying to make people send you their stuff and making them wait for payments for weeks or months, because you can always say the items are waiting to be sold, only shows how unprofessional you are. That you have no money to start the business and are thinking people will just let you profit while taking all the risk.
It doesn't work like this. You start a business, you put up the money, you buy stuff from people and cover the shipment.

Hat down Magnento for your kind words 7 honest review of this project,
Let me address your worries that i've found legitimate.
First on the cost of shipping issue, there is no need to panic about the costs because there are low cost maritime companies that can do the work cheap.

On the Bitcoin premium issue, there is nothing as such in the country i live. It's not well known yet here so you can get it easily And the transaction fees are not up to $10. They are less per my experience.

Regards

Nice little venture you have here, but you're hustling backwards. You need to have a site with our pictures uploaded, complete the sale, send us the Bitcoin, then wait for our shipment. There is no other way, financially speaking. Good luck!👍🏽

The trade is available, the only exception is that it doesn't use bitcoin as means of payment. However, the reputation of West Africans have made it difficult trusting anyone from that region coz of the high instances of scams involving people from that area.

  Exactly. Ebay also ensures its customers both seller and buyers, it is really convinient service except of payment methods as for me. What about topic subject, I cant realize how it works. Do sellers have to send goods and pay for a post servise then just wait for result? What if no one will buy the stuff you sent?

yeah, this way of transaction has been discovered in early days

The idea is great, honestly one of a kind.

I'm fairly sure that if you want to scam, you would do it some way which you can probably scam bitcoins directly instead of having to end up with some other person's junk, so i'd trust you with my old items comfortably since i don't need them anyways.

But the thing i'm worried about is actually the business model.

First, you have the shipping fees. Shipping from the US to africa will probably cost a fortune especially for a stash of old clothes that may weigh several kilos. That'll be the first setback. Then, you'll probably be purchasing BTC in Africa for a premium of upwards of 5-10%(zimbabwe and countries that have economic problems are worse), taking away from profits. Then sending the BTC to your client will probably cost you $10 in transaction fees.

All this hassle and cost for probably a couple hundred dollars worth of rewards, isn't worth it compared to selling locally.

Thanks for this thorough feedback,
Lemme address it
1. On the trust issue i've already address it..

2. THE SELLER IS THE ONE WHO WILL DETERMINE THE PRICE. As the salesperson, i can give him/her my view based on the reality on the ground.

3. For the timeframe this will not be an issue because Electronics coming from The west are very hot here because their quality. People are fed of buying China-made low quality stuff here. If the price is reasonable enough, they definitely go for it.

Thanks once again for the feedback  

THANKS Norinho for the feedback,

We are talking about used stuff. Old things (either broken or in good shape).

Let me PM you my email or whatsapp number for further discussions.

Regards

Should just use an escrow from the forum. There are many that would be willing to escrow that have made many deals in the past.

Please fix your topic message - do you mean used or unused? Because if we talk about old things - electronics, clothes and so on - if it's old - it can hardly be unused. Gorgeous idea, by the, I'd like to be in touch with such a project.

100% on the mark!
why not simply buy the goods here on the forum using escrow service and put your own sell price on it at your location.
you would know what items are best and most profitable to sell and at what sell price so all you need to do is determine your cost price.
I have items I can sell but there is no way i am putting them in a box, paying for postage and waving good buy with one hand and fingers crossed on the other.
I doubt anyone would take up your offer under the terms you ask.

The kind of service you want to offer is quite controversial if you ask me and its because of several reasons I will try to itemize.

1.  The issue of trust, which you have right noted as to reason because you are a newbie on the forum, I think its just too early to start this kind of thing before understanding the way the forum operates and what is applicable for a service like this.

2. Who determines the value of those item, the buyer or the seller or the middle man which you are playing here and how do you propose that conflict be resolved.

3. You ask that something should be sent to you first to determine your reliability, that I say its a red flag because no matter how small the item would be, its has value and what if you don't sell the goods within a reasonable time frame, how do you keep explaining to the seller even though you didn't intend to scam.

My suggestion is to set yourself up to buy these things you wants, do it with an escrow when you receive it, the escrow release the bitcoin and you can place whatever profit margin on it depending on the market condition. With this, you can make more profit and free yourself from even hassle of explanations to the owner as to why the goods is not selling fast or why the value has dropped from the agreed amount.

This guy is damn right. I totally get the point of those refraining from trusting a perfect stranger because I also don't really trust this kind of people. Really don't want to be rude or something but the internet is a place full of scammers and these are the facts. However I think he at least deserves a chance to prove he's a legit and trustworthy merchant. I mean, you don't really have to spend millions to try and get in business with him. The idea of helping people in need while also earning some cents in the meantime is interesting imho. What do you other guys think about it?

Why you not buy from us and send BTC directly and sell your stuff over there.

This idea is not working. What happend if stuff did'nt sell or takes 2 jears, of less that expected or lost or..  whatever.