[Todd Patterson]

Compound Question for eBay sellers. Does anyone use Sixbit for creating shipping labels, and if so do you get discounts? Does anyone use Sixbit for feedback? Does anyone use Sixbit for messaging to eBay buyers? thanks

Good morning Michael. I will try to answer this the best that I can in the manner that we use these features.

1. We utilize SixBit for creating our shipping labels with UPS, FedEx and USPS. It make it very easy to not only generate the shipping label but it also ensures that the shipping charges are updated in the sales record to help give us an accurate profit per item and in our profit/loss reports. It also notifies eBay automatically that the item has been shipped and updates the tracking information for the customer. After processing the shipping label for an order, that order is then moved to “Fulfilled” and no longer shows as an order waiting to be shipped. Our shipping discounts are applied when generating a shipping label based on the discount rate that you receive from your shipping carrier. For example, our UPS charges are based on a negotiated rate with them based upon our shipping volume. USPS will provide you with commercial rates instead of Retail rates.

2. We manage our Feedback using an App through eBay called Feedback Pro. You setup this app for a determinate number of days. For example, after 10 days have passed we send a Feedback Request to a customer. After 15 days have passed, we send them a follow-up request. Then after 30 days we send an automated message to the customer stating something to the effect of “We are so sorry that we have let you down with your order. Would you mind taking just a moment to let us know what we could have done differently to have ensured your 100% satisfaction?” In terms of automating OUR feedback, we utilize this app to automatically leave positive for our customer when they have submitted their payment. There is also the option to not leave them feedback until you have received feedback from them. We have found over time that generally speaking we receive quite a bit more feedback when we go ahead and leave it for them after they have submitted their payment.

3. We utilize SixBit for probably about 3/4 of our messaging. Simply because most of the time the questions are similar, such as: “How much is shipping to xxxxxx?” We have setup several “canned messages” for handling these various instances.

Hope that this helps a little bit Michael. SixBit has really developed over the years to try and handle the vast majority of tasks that you would before have had to handle by logging into eBay each time. For us, it is a time saver to utilize as many of the features as possible that are built into the system.

[Todd Patterson]

Jeffrey this actually sounds like a good idea. I am not sure how high up on the feature request list would be however I would suggest that you perhaps put up the request on there. The developers tend to look it at quite frequently and if there is enough interest in a feature then they are pretty good at adding it.

[Todd Patterson]

I am trying to list my items from one eBay store to another, but it is not working. It keeps saying the I have exceeded my limits. I can list over 1000 items on my account.

Good morning. As mentioned by Sally above, a call to eBay may take care of your situation. Depending on how long you have had your 1st account active they can base your selling items and dollar limits for your 2nd account off of your first.

Also, keep in mind that there are actually TWO limits enforced by eBay. The first is the actual dollar amount which you are allotted and the second is the quantity. Both of these take into account what you have already sold for the month as well as what you are attempting to list.

So lets’ say, for example, that your monthly limit is $1,000 and 100 items.

This month you have sold $750 so far and 25 items.

In this case, you can only have up to 75 items listed with an overall value of an additional $250.00.

Now lets say that you are listing widgets for sale at a price of $10 per widget. Then you can actually only list 25 widgets before you hit the threshold of the existing $250.00 limit. While this is looked at as us, as sellers, as only ONE item, we are actually listing 25 of them.

Does that make a little sense? So you have to take into account not only the number of items (regardless of the number of SKU’s) but also the individual prices for each item.

I hope that this helps at least a little. I am including a link for eBay Selling Limits pages. From there you can also request to have your limits raised but quite honestly, it is usually much more productive to just give them a call and speak with an actual person.

[Todd Patterson]

I’m working with a client/SixBit user who has several listings we’ve ended. Some of these have over 100 sales so we want to relist them after revising. What is the procedure for doing so?

Good morning Sally. Are you utilizing the Allocation Plans for these items? These make it very easy to automatically relist items when they end on eBay, taking into account the existing inventory levels. I am including a direct link for the Allocation Plans information. I hope that this helps.

[Todd Patterson]

Colleen,

We have this happen occasionally when there is a Windows update immediately with the next startup. What we do then is exactly as Herb stated on the “server”. Once this is done and you can ensure that SixBit is opening on the server then go ahead a shutdown and restart. That seems to take care of the problem until the next Windows update. While it is not EVERY update that does this, I would guess probably right around 50% of the time we have this happen.

Also, as stated above by Moe, it is best to use the SixBit SQL option for connection. Make sure that you are using the exact same password, unless for some reason you have changed it….

Todd

[Todd Patterson]

I’m beginning to see the following failure messages again when submitting listings to eBay:

Unable to write data to the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.

I’m using the newly released latest version of SixBit v3.00.304 although it was happening on the previous two versions also.

Wasn’t this addressed and resolved?

We had the same issue 2 beta pushes ago. Even after updating to the newest patch we were continuing to receive the same error. What we did was:

[*]Make a complete database backup.
Remove SixBit
Do a complete, full, install
Restore the database

That solved the problem for us. Hope that this helps.

[Todd Patterson]

Don,

The formatting of my emails that use the “Sales” snippet and the “SalesDetailsLineItem” snippet have changed. Is there any way or reason they could have changed without me going into the edit mode and changing them myself? I know that sounds like a stupid question but to the best of my knowledge I have not made any changes to these snippets.

Can you give an example of what you are seeing? It does not look like ours have changed.

Todd

[Todd Patterson]

Jivko,

You are absolutely correct and we utilize a multitude of them ourselves. It would be nice if there was an area that displayed the estimated charges. For example when we are creating a new listing and we want to offer free shipping then that “estimate” would seem like an easy way for a seller to calculate their selling prices a bit easier.

For example:

1. We want to sell an item that we need to make $25 off of (including the related fees of course)
2. We would go to usps.com enter the weight, dimensions, type (priority, first class, etc.) and choose a “sample” zip code. In our case we use a zip code for Los Angeles as it equals about the furthest range for us. Then USPS returns us a rate of, say, $12 for Priority Mail.
3. Then we go back into SB and our selling price (fixed price) would be $37 with free shipping.

Just suggesting a way that perhaps would integrate a sample rate base right on the item creation window. Due to the variance in where shippers are selling from the rate lookup could utilize the shippers zip code, which is already in SB, and let the sellers have a set zip code for delivery for their sample rates.

Does that make any sense, LOL 🙂

[Todd Patterson]

Justin,

I’d like the ability to set up SixBit to print automatically multiple listing labels when the listing has multiple quantities.

While this may seem an odd reply, you can click on “Labels”, “Inventory Labels with Preview” and then change the number of copies that you are needing.

Does that help?

Todd

[Todd Patterson]

Importing can be a touchy issue but once you get used to it the rewards are huge. The biggest thing that you really (emphasize: REALLY) need to pay attention to is that the correct spelling of your template name, shipping presets, payment presets, etc. all have to be exactly the same as the ones that you have already setup in SixBit.

For us I have found that it is easiest to export items to a csv file and then simply edit that file for importing keeping the field names the same.

So hang in there, sometimes all it takes is a matter of stepping back, get a fresh cup of coffee and pursue it with fresh eyes.

Todd

[Todd Patterson]

Personally we are happy with xCart and would love to see integration for it in the coming future. While we also realize that there are several shopping cart solutions I am sure that it is not going to be feasible to interact with all of them. Another of the more popular ones in use is the OSCommerce platform as well as ZenCart.

As in the past John we are available to assist with Beta testing on xCart, OSCommerce, ZenCart or Magento.

Todd

[Todd Patterson]

DL,

Up at the very top, click on the SixBit logo (looks like a guy doing jumping jacks). Then go to MANAGE (should be the first option), then click on DESCRIPTION WRAPPERS. From there you can create, edit or delete your description wrappers.

In your Sell Items tab when you are creating an item you will see a tab that says “Description Wrapper”. Click over to this tab and you can define what description wrapper you want to use.

If you want to apply a description wrapper to multiple items you can select them from your repository, right click, choose edit then batch change items.

Hope this helps.

Todd

[Todd Patterson]

We also use the older Dymo MS-25

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