Topic: Ship your old Items to Africa for bitcoins (Read 1364 times)

Even if OP agrees on an escrow, why in the world would someone bear shipping fees and sell items in Africa when he can do the same locally and get cash instead.
This whole thread is either a scam attempt or stupidity super general.

If OP can make some escrow to hold bitcoins before he sell items there won't be any trust issue, and its the main problem in here.

1. Trust Issues, No one would trust you at first place, The best bet for you is to deposit Bitcoins to an escrow and seller has to wait for the item to be sold so as to get bitcoins released. But here's a catch, what if you tell him item never got sold?

2. Shipping Fee is going to be huge.

3. There are already many such facilities available locally over the net in my country where people can sell their used items for real cash, why would someone even use your service which includes huge risk and time?

And customs ? how will you deal with them for electronic parts ? cars ?? dont tell me your country does not have regulation on purchasing cars ...

You say you're gonna pay in BTC ----once the item is sold---- in your country, this means the good owner will rely on you for receiving, clearing the customs, reselling with a margin, with trust in every step ?

Hello newinbtc,

It is a pleasure this great feedback from you. Let move into the private for further discussions. my email is sam.deeknight [at] gmx [dot] com and my telegram username is @sammydeeknight .

DM me yours and let have fun doing business!!!

Respect

Sounds interesting , I have 3 Old Smart phones used one Will it work in your country ? How much $ we will get for Value , Estimate and what about Shipping charges That we need to pay at Courior office.

If you like to buy Cloths , I would like to tell you India is the bigget market of wollen cloths , All main Firms import cloths from India to develop countries. We can deal in bulk if You want i can send video or images of cloths what you need

I cN ship via Both courior and Normal post

great
lemme DM you right away!!

hi ... good idea

In an Interview Chris Sacca (One of the most successful Venture Capitalist in Silicon Valley) said that that one of his biggest mistakes was not having invested in RB&B when he was approached by the founders in the early days of the startup. He recalled having out of fear asked the founders "Guys what if things go wrong like someone rent a room and an accident occurred during his stay...?"

Today RB&B is an Unicorn worth Billions of $$$.

Anyways thanks for the wishes.
Regards

Doc !

Great & interesting ur story & experience

I have to read your post over and over again in order to get all the gems & insights in it then i'll pm you later (maybe next Year).

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

This business venture ain't gonna turn out well, me thinks...😂🤷🏽‍♂️ Good luck anyways, Brotha!!!

Hi Sammy,

I agree it can be extremely difficult for some people to consider risk beyond betting on the NBA or whatever. I have my own small business an my father has a much larger one.

I actually construct large free standing LED flood lights that run on 18650 rechargeable batteries - It's not complicated. Strips of SMD 5050 wired in parrell to 2/3/4 x4 18650 battery pack. I get the batteries both new if I can see a good deal but also re-furbish old laptop cells with a balance charger.

Even here in the UK/Ireland (I'm in N.I so most likely will have access to both the single market and whatever trading terms are entered into after Brexit - sounds like it's a good place, but has had a LOT of problems, civil war, not just about the border most was caused by bigoted people killing each other because of different branches of the essentially the SAME religon Catholic and Prodestant) I'm late 30's so I remember th bombings and shootings very well. As a reult our parents took us to live in the countryside and we attended some of the first ever intergrated schools in the country - even now only 10-20% of school's are intergrated.

Going to intergrated (Catholic and Prodestant school - the notion of seperated schools based on essentially very small religous differences will probably seem crazy to most in the West - but, hey that's how it was and that lagely how it is!)

But I think it taught me don't be so quick to judge. View evenone as essentially good, because essentially everyones needs and wants are allinged. But I'm no idiot, the world is full of scammers. And not being quick to judge means just that. not quick to judge good or bad.

The UK is definately in a slump - inflation is out pacing wages on paper by 1.1%. But for regular folks the disparatity between wage growth and inflation has really hit a lot lot harder, with food/electronics/clothes up around 5-6% with wages at 2.2%. This is largely because of 'Brexit' and it's incredibly relative. Whether you choose to buy your popcorn at the cinema or bring it from another shop is still an incredibly 1st world problem!

So really the Items I can just buy items from China and flip them on eBayAmazon for a nice profit a few and far between. I have to add a degree of value to my products - be that making the rechargable flood lights for painters or putting a wifi (or regular) motion activated spy camera with a smalller battery pack in a clock for small shops and home CCTV. Or sowing LED wire through childrens school bags and adding a GPS tracker os the child can be both visable and easily locatabled if they become lost. All this is value aded stuff I do myself (none of these examples are paticularly complicated once you have down a few)

But I believe this is a goo mentality and especiallly in Africa where it would be much cheaper to ship the componets and explain the processes of how to build them than shipping the finished article would be a lot more profitable for both sides. Because one commodity that is univeral is time. And everything takes time.

Right now it's christmas and retail is so busy. So I don't have any time to follow up until things settle in January. Then I will have 2 S9 miners and 2 L3+ miners working and my goal is to make enough to buy 8-10 electric bikes, a 10year old Toyota HiLux (or Nissan Nevara) and rent the bikes out to families in 2 local holiday forest parts at around £15p/h

But I see potential in keeping my knowledge of online commerence alive by dealing with 1 or 2 people in Africa and quit being a tiny cog in the eBay and Amazon world. My Dads business is much much larger than mine. He has around 250,000 about 90% of them being individual items of media, but its mostly all  analoge - People would be surprised how many VHS tapes and vyinal records sell in Europe - but my Father would only turn over a very small % of his stock a year but that small % would have a much higher value.

I prefer new, multiple listings that require little work cleaning up before being posted. It's 2 different styles. Neither can be judged right or wrong because they are both successful in there own way.

But I do have 2 stand alone EZCAP analouge to digital convertors and one day - if I ever find the time! I would like to start archiving my fathers stock. Infinately more transportable and it's rare video's stuff with a bit of age to it. Stuff that never made it onto another format - one of the biggest sellers are sports VHS of football matches in the 80's! Loads of stuff like that - and actually I should end this and help him with the post.

But yeah put together a simple business plan - It's something I have never done lol - but it would really have helped I think if I knew exactly what I was doing before I started.

Good luck sir, chat soon I hope

Merry Christmas

Edit, couple of lines missed in a hurry

Great suggestion!!!
I'll find a way to work it out if it's possible...
By the way your scrap idea is interesting why not try it together. Here in Africa everything in/on a car can be bought 

not sure why anyone would give this serious consideration. There's no financial benefit to use your 'service', and certainly no time benefit.

Is there a good reason I'm missing? Seems pretty simple.

THUMBS UP DOC!!!

Dr OCTAGON you really your stuff ....

I don't blame those who are spewing venomous reactions over here. It's part of the human nature. Millions of years of fights for survival has made human beings risk-averse. They've developed instincts of self-preservation. That's why everybody can't be a Trader or an Entrepreneur... (Read the Book "HOMO SAPIENS' by Noah Harari and you'll get what i mean...)

I smiled when i read the last paragraph of your post on "half worn tires" & "used clothes" importation Business. My mother has been in the imported clothes retail business for more than two decades. She buys the clothes per kilo from the whole-sellers here and roam from town to town to sell the clothes 1 by 1 to individuals. It's through that commerce that she has been able to feed and raised 5 (five) children (including me). Two of my sisters are currently in that business too.  So if you are interested i believe you have the right person to partner with  .

Lemme PM you right away... We have a lot to do together...
Regards

Well there is an easy workaround here that could solve the problem of trust.

There is no need for the product to be shipped at all..,

You can start a new thread on the forum somewhere and maybe even ur own website when u get more established.

Get people on the forum to send you an inventory of items they would like to sell... ask them to take pics of the items and provide relevant details like age, condition, etc...(make and model number)

Much like they would do if they were submitting a gumtree ad.

Then you secure a buyer based on the pics and description, if need be and if the buyer might want a video or something then u can try arrange that with the seller as well if u see the buyer is a serious buyer... once you have a confirmed buyer you get payment from them and buy the item from the seller via a trusted escrow service here on the forum...then await delivery and give the product to the buyer

Problem solved...

Something u might want to look into as well is finding cars in scrap yards and buying the catalytic converters, these converters have precious metals in them like copper, iron, nickel and even small amounts of rhodium.... I would imagine these metals could fetch a pretty price in West Africa?

I am willing to do escrow at cost (tx fees) for a few deals for you until you can establish your ability to follow through. PM me if interested I likely won't be returning to the thread.

I hope you do reply Sammy and I hope you are genuine. You seem an intelligent fellow, lot's of respect for anyone who can speak 2+ languages. I don't see the model Sammy is proposing as a get rich quick scheme.

And I could imagine him needing a little bit of wiggle room to get things started (hence I proposed 30% payment up front) and smaller value items to begin, maybe escrow for over $200, but if Sammy finds the 30% upfront, that means you don't really need to get into escrow until the $350 mark.

I have LOTS of consumer electronic stuff and 30 listings on eBay - should be 100 but its an ordeal.

Taxes a very important, as are the correct customs stickers- however I have experience selling all over the world, I would just need the tarriffs for your country so as to stay just under.

Way to long have people in the West judged Africa on the actions of a few and absolutely if the shoe was on the other foot I'm sure there are plenty in Africa would blame the West...

If BTC is going to mean anything (in my mind) it has to mean forging peer 2 peer global trading relationships.

However you can't cut corners in trade and when in retail you need to know you market - where, what, who, how much?

From much trail and error importing from China to sell in the UK, in the beginning you really need to focus on what you can turnover quickly. Cashflow is the oil of trade and if you get a load of stuff at the start and it gathers dust for a month you are going to struggle in the early days, so know your market, know what profit margin you need to make to grow and what margin the market will bare.

No matter what you do you'll have competiton.

The reason this paticularly interests me is that I was chatting to a lad who did tyres recently, cheap half worn ones - but the premise was huge. The other business they have - which is making far more money apparently is buying clothes by the kilo and shipping them to Africa.

So I know somone doing this.

However 2nd thoughts maybe escrow everything. Credit lines are hard won. But a certain risk is manageable.

This is wrong.. very wrong. The right, safe and legitimate way of doing this is for you to escrow a certain amount of bitcoins with a trusted escrow provider here who will hold or reserve the coins for the safety of those entrusting you with phones, gadgets and other items of value.

Asking people here to trust you outright and blindly is not a legitimate practice and is not acceptable. Let's hypothetically reverse roles here. Would you accept an arrangement where the shipper asks you to send the bitcoins first? I find it wrong (not just in this case but generally) when someone begs to be trusted while that same trust can't be reciprocated.

I remember an incident involving an Indian buyer of some of my coins last year and he kept talking like a broken radio... "brother, you can trust me, send the coins first and i will send your money at western union within the hour. my brother, you can trust me, i'm a good man and i am a businessman, we can do good business my brother".. he kept spewing this garbage about how trustworthy he is, how he never stole a single rupee in his life. As for sending payment first, that was out of the question for him. In other words, he is to be trusted while I'm not. There's something deceptive and cunning when someone addresses you as brother, friend, sweety pie, cookie and all along he doesn't trust you.

Use an escrow service. When bitcoins enter the equation in any transaction, assurances should be given both ways.

what will happen the things if not sold ?

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. 

How do we do this with you and how do we trust you because you might have realized by now that the response to the post is quiet discouraging not because people would not want to offload this unused items but because they will like to deal with integrity and trustworthy people and inthe end realize that they are making an impact. If this cannot be achieved by this then people will not venture at all or will opt out

There are sites that can provide for it and as one user says that it is ebay and may online selling platform that anyone can used to. Not be rude but how could anyone trust that they will get btc when the things they shipped was bought from Africa and do the seller provide the shipping fee or just yourself?  So it would say that you're the middleman but how could you possibly earn, how much commission do you get to the sold products/equipments and etc.? I think you should be more specific to details mate.

An African proverb says:

 "The fact that there is a well in the village doesn't prevent you for digging your own in your house"

Ebay is a centralized entity that imposes its rules on the users. Bitcoin  BTCBTCBTC has come to set us free from any form of centralization.

I've appreciated your point.

this what you propose already exists and it is called ebay

I guess most of the people wouldn't mind you here since they don't know if you could be someone to be trusted in conducting negotiations or any kind of transaction unless you prove to them otherwise simply trust is something not given but rather earned. So you should earn your trust to most of the people here in the forum by ranking up.

Hello Bitcoiners,

My profile can indicate that i am a newbie but actually it's been a while i've been in the Bitcoin space spending more of my time on Reddit, Social Media & slack groups. I know how crucial it is to earn and keep one's reputation in this space. So this post is a serious one.

I want to help more of folks here get more bitcoins buy selling their used stuff.

Do you an old computer, laptop, smartphone, TV, electronics, Play Station, Fridge or any other home appliance that you want to get ride of?

Do you have an old car, van, truck, pickup or Motobike that is occupying your garage?

Do you have a stash of old clothes, dresses, rugs, table-clothes that you want clear off?

I have the solution for you: Send them to Africa to be resold. ( You can make a search and you will find out that anything, either new or used, that comes from US, Europe or Asia can be bought here).

Items can be mailed via post or shipped via sea.

You can even start a business venture on your own by collecting other people stuff and export them to Africa (I live here in West Africa & i'm not a "Nigerian Prince" ) to be sold. I will be very glad to do the salesman job for you here in Africa.


When The Items are sold the money will be sent to you in Bitcoins BTC  .

PM me if you're interested for more details.

I know the value of trust so i will not play with it.

Waiting to start a new success-story with you