Vampifella's blog

Today I got the final claim from that Spain buyer mentioned below. That's 8 in total and there should be one more from a second account that he's pulling the same scam on. I know it's the same person as I saw some of the same sellers on both accounts. I filed reports on him to ebay, but I know it doesn't do jack shit. They don't even read them. But I'm hoping anyway.

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So I was trying to cool off about that Spain situation by reading the eBay seller forum posts. Basically to be a seller you have to well arm yourself against new policy rules and current buyer scams and read up about them from other sellers every now and then.

I came across something called "Arbitrage Resellers" which I have never heard of before. It seems that people buy on eBay and then flip on Amazon for practically pennies. Or they may steal entire listings and list it on some strange third world website with a slight mark-up. I've actually seen my items on these websites but I thought it was some eBay partnership. It's more likely that there are programs out there mining eBay data and listing stuff to others for a slight profit.

So anyway this is obviously what had happened with that Pokemon game buyer I was talking about a few posts ago. I'm pretty sure that a foreign buyer bought the item. It takes around a month for all that turn around time and the item to arrive to his buyer.

It explains why it took 5 weeks to get a bad feedback from him about it not working. And why there was no return. It would have took him another month to get the item back and by then the ebay claim period would have expired. He could have done something with Paypal as they allow 180 days but they do limit your claims to something insane like two a year. So he was basically stuck! Assuming the item was bad, which I highly doubt!

Anyway I feel that it was obvious that HIS buyer was the one scamming him. His buyer lied over the game not working because that happens a lot with video games. Doubly so if they found out that they could have bought the same thing for a couple dollars less elsewhere. I've had several returns and refunds over games and whenever I get them back, I test them out and found nothing wrong and I end up reselling them again. In his case (as with so many before) it was obviously some scammer just looking to scam.

What pisses me off is that it's really wrong to go back and blame the person you bought from for your own bad transaction. It is your duty to check over and to test the items you are flipping. I buy stuff all the time but I never ever go back and blame someone for something I bought because I got it home and it was a piece of crap or someone else found fault with it. That's just a dirtbag thing to do. You just take the loss and do better next time. Learn to test items out before leaving a yard sale and certainly before you actually flip it to someone else.

Anyway, at first none of this transaction made any sense. Like why leave bad feedback and not return the game? Also I had an email at the time of shipping saying it was a birthday gift and to not include an invoice. That was suspicious but whatever, it was plausible enough. Turns out that was complete bullshit coming from him as I read over his feedback and found a seller comment on his "birthday gift" giving. No...he buys 100s of items a month and they are being immediately flipped. I like the idea of that, but it's scummy to blame sellers for your failings though.

It does also explain why he rarely leaves feedback to anyone other than on bad transactions. He has no clue if the items work when he reships them. He only reacts (with bad feedback) when he himself gets bad feedback or returns on the items he resells. What a real dirtbag!

So basically I got burned by HIS buyer. That is really low thing to do and it's a new one on me. Oh well, it takes all types! I've noticed a lot of reshippers buying my stuff but that's because I refuse to ship out of the USA and they go to strange addresses which are obviously reshipping warehouses. This is the first time I've noticed an actual reseller though!

Anyway this Sunday is the yearly Comic Show and I hope to find something interesting to buy and comment on. I'm just expecting more of the same yearly pickups that I refuse to pay full cover price on though.

I think the following Sunday is the Record Show and I'll do the same. We'll see. Sadly I didn't get any decent records this year. Another off year. Actually I think the resellers are buying record collections like mad as I see anything with pop/rock from the 70s-80s are worth at least $3 each in bulk. It would explain why I rarely find any popular LPs lately.

But over all this year was a really good one for buying general random stuff to flip. I expect one of my better profit years in quite sometime. I had 3 bad luck years in a row, but honestly two of those was because I could only work about 40 percent of normal as I had to take care of my mom. This year I've really busted my butt gathering inventory and it seems I'll be well rewarded this year for it.

Being a seller on ebay is not without it's risks. One of the worse things a seller can do is sell anything outside of the USA. That's because buyers simply do not want to pay for tracking on their packages. Yet the eBay/Paypal rules demands tracking on packages to be elegible for the Seller's Protection Plan. Yet to do that increases international package costs by about $11.50 or whatever it is these days. No buyer wants to pay more to protect the seller.

What customers don't realize is that without this protection, there are many buyers who will rob sellers blind. It only takes a couple times before a seller gets fed up and block international sales. Some may use the eBay Global Shipping program but that still costs too much for most buyers but it totally protects the sellers from scammy buyers.

Twice I was saved thanks to this reshipper program because there are some countries (like Russia) which is just too dangerous to send to. A couple months ago someone from Russia bought a musical keyboard from me via the program and surer than shit, it got lost (stolen) but luckily I didn't loose a cent. I was a bit pissed off though as I had spent around an hour cleaning that one up and it wasn't worth all the effort, but I do it for my love of keyboards.

Anyway on my other account, the one I use to ship stuff from Japan, is one where we cannot afford tracking on 99% of our packages. That's only $4 more a package but we sell super cheap stuff on there. We cannot charge $4 more because there are dozens of other sellers selling the stuff for next to nothing. Not to mention that the Chinese sell knock-offs of the real Japanese stuff for next to nothing with free shipping because their government gets almost free shipping for reasons.

So some buyers out there are very aware of this no tracking trick and purposely find sellers to abuse. They live in crooked little countries where fraud and theft is not something to ever worry about getting caught on and ebay has no real presence in their countries to check their banking accounts to know who they are. Almost anonymous buying really. They'll buy from many sellers to find out which ones do not track their packages and then they will order up a lot of stuff and then file claims against that seller. This happens to me on my Japanese account about once every 5 years or so.

The key to doing this successfully is to never order a lot all at once or big value items. The seller will almost always toss in free tracking over a certain amount, in our case that is around $35. So what happens is that a person will order several times during the month instead. In this case 9 times! That does alert me of course but without reasonable cause I have absolutely no reason to block that buyer.

Then surer than shit, the claims for unarrived items roll in one after the other the very day they are allowed to do so. I know that they got the items, but there isn't jack shit that I can do about it. This person bought a crap load of times in the same pattern from other sellers as well. Ebay is supposed to take notice and put a stop to them, but then they go and start up a new account and do it all over again.

The other trouble is that we cannot leave bad feedback for buyers anymore. In theory the gal could be innocent and NINE packages didn't arrive, but the chances are so unlikely. These are the reasons why we should be able to leave bad feedback as we need to alert other sellers about customers that does this. It would also raise flags better for ebay to step in and put a stop to people like this.

I know technically it's my "fault" for not tracking packages, but it's not feasible to track every damned package when you are selling them for $12 dollars and tracking is $4 more. We don't even make more than $2 profit on the junk and the competition is fierce fighting for pennies. It's not even worth selling from Japan in all honesty, but I've been doing it for almost 20 years now and it's hard to stop.

Anyway, shipping without tracking actually tends to work as buyers are in fact generally honest, especially on the cheap stuff. It's the more expensive items (and popular electronics and video games) that they tend to scam on. So it's not a huge problem for me. I refund on "missing" packages normally about once or twice a month. No big deal. They probably got the package very late or whatever. It's normal and part of doing business to account for loss and theft.

And then you get the real scum of the earth that attacks innocent sellers like this asshole. I lost on 9 items where it cost me about $150 in sales, close to that amount in inventory cost, our shipping cost, lost fees which I cannot recover from paypal, and packing materials cost, time and labor, and so on with other costs that I cannot imagine. Probably around a $400 loss?!? Profit wise it probably was only $30 or so...

Anyway this dick, she tried to start up with the same trick over again with ANOTHER account. I know it was her because it was the same Canary Islands, which is basically like a small Spanish island off of Africa. It's totally impossible for it to not be a coincidence. So I had to block off the entire country (which happens to be Spain) from ordering from me in order to stop this one person.

I've had to do this before. About 7 or 10 years ago I had a Malta (another Island city, but for Italians) scammer which was doing this and I blocked that country just to stop that one person. About 15 years ago I done this for Russia. With them I think that they actually had shared a list online to target sellers to scam as I got hit with several of them at once and I had a crap load of claims and lost close to a thousand dollars of stuff.

Italy, South America, Latin America and Africa are all areas what I cannot ship to as stuff gets stolen or takes far too long to arrive to. Those are actually worse as 1 out of 4 packages got claims on them. They are well known to scam sellers into shipping without tracking to get free stuff.

So now I had to block Spain but I doubt I'll keep that block up for long as they are generally good people. I just need to cool this one jerk off so they'll forget about me and target other people. When I do remove the block, I'll learn to watch out for the Canary Islands and keep a better eye out for people ordering stuff every couple days non-stop like that. I used to get people ordering stuff from me like that all the time as sales where that good but lately it's super rare and it's more of an indication of a scammer looking to rip you off than a great sales run.

Luckily these issues NEVER happen with my USA account. That's because the USPS made everything with tracking (I think due to 9-11 terrorist attacks) and I never ship outside of the USA, only directly to the reshipper where they take over the responsibility for it getting lost.

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That reminds me of a customer I had last week. His media mail package took a holiday around his state. No reason, just hopping from city to city. The USPS does that every now and then because they have idiot mail sorters that just tosses packages wherever they like.

Of course it just had to be one "those" impatient customers that files claims the same day he's allowed to. Like freaking chill out asshole! Look at the tracking! You can see it's hopping around and still in transit, so give it time.

So I had a claim filed against me but the thing is that ebay wants you to answer to the claim immediately, but the truth is that you have 4 days to do so. A smart seller will wait those extra days just in case.

It seems that he turned another seller in for this same reason. I think his state had some issue with the mail and it kept getting redirected as it's rare for two packages to the same buyer to be late. Anyway that other seller had answered the claim immediately and of course that seller lost. And I knew that the inexperienced buyer got the item later on, but was foolish to not wait a few days to see what had happened.

Anyway, the buyer was getting all anal about the package and wanting his refund ASAP, emailing me like an insane person. I was like, no way dude, I got 4 more days for the post office to deliver this. And sure enough it did two days later. I called ebay up as soon as the tracking shown that it was delivered to his door and had the claim removed.

So there are a couple lessons here. Buyers, contact the seller first and do not file claims just because you can. Most of the time you just need to wait a few days longer and it'll arrive. Sellers, do not jump immediately because eBay sends you a warning and makes it sound so important. Know the time limits you have to get stuff done and take full advantage of it.

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The situation above reminds me of something that eBay is pushing that I detest. They want me to join their program that says something to the effect of "3 day guaranteed shipping or it's free."

YEEEEEAAAAHHHHH RIIIIIGGGGGGHT!

OKAY. Packages like that one prior is the exact reason why NOT to enroll into this program. Why should I offer an insane policy to my customers when the USPS cannot be held to such strict standards? They won't pay ME for THEIR being "late", so WHY should I refund my customers back for something totally beyond my control!?

Sure that's a nice thing to offer to customers, but it's totally unrealistic in practice. There is no (cheap) postage that can guarantee such a delivery. I'm the sure in hell am not going to pay 3 to 10 times more for guaranteed delivery postage (AKA express mail) to always be in compliance with this program.

The postage we are paying for is "ATTEMPTED DELIVERY" and it should be advertised as such with a disclaimer that sometimes shit happens and to be patient. The cost is already insanely too high where customers bitch about it. They rather pay nothing for postage, get items for next to nothing and have it arrive the same day or something insane. That fantasy is also nice for customers but it's totally unrealistic.

EBAY! Break customers out of unrealistic lines of thinking! EBay won't as they bend over backwards to deceive them to keep them away from Amazon. Ebay always blurs the line to confuse customers about delivery times and customers gets horribly pissed off at us sellers for when the USPS is slow.

From what I understand about the policy, ebay will cover for postage...maybe...but they won't cover if the customer refuses the package due to it being late? I think? Nor do they refund the fees involved and blah blah blah with the rules and regulations.

I just couldn't sit and read though it as I knew it wasn't to MY advantage. What I do understand is that there is a very possible situation that I'll be eating postage cost for negligence which isn't due to my fault and that is wrong!

Honestly, and this is the thing I just cannot understand. Why the freak would anyone buy anything that has to be there by X amount of days OR ELSE?! I'm like WHAT!? You are emailing me because you are buying little Johnny something late on a Wednesday night and you need it by Friday? Like, yeeeaaaaah, right. What sort of magic do you wish for me to use, you freaking moron!? Go in your freaking car and drive to Walmart and buy your spoiled grandbrat something instead of messing around online expecting a package to magically arrive in an unreasonable amount of time.

I actually got an email like that about 3 weeks ago and I told the guy that it was highly unlikely to arrive in under 48 hours. Luckily he didn't buy the item. Sometimes though they buy the item first and then demand the item arrive by X or ELSE!

So aside from the logistics of it all, what'll happen is much like the first topic I was mentioning. You'll end up with scammers ordering stuff from across the USA in rural hard-to-deliver-to bum-fuck areas which always takes weeks for anything to get there looking to cash in on the 3 day policy to get free shipping or whatever crap the policy really is saying.

I know that Amazon has a similar policy and eBay is doing this to compete with them. I wish they themselves would guarantee fast processing with their free shipping, as lately it takes almost always 2 weeks to get anything from Amazon directly unless you are in their prime program....but do we have to cater to insane customers whims this much?

EBay...why not tell your sellers that they have to drive the fucking items directly to their customers the very moment it sells? That's makes about as much sense as this new eBay program you keep constantly emailing about to get me to join in on.

It's just not happening, nope no way, no how. I'm my experiences that the insane customers with unrealistic expectations are to be kept away from at all costs. No amount of money is worth getting involved with them. I rather wait and sell my item to a rational person who can wait and understand about postal delays than to deal with them.

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There was something else I wanted to rant about that happened about a month or so ago. I had one asshole who bought a group lot of books. I had copy and pasted a title on the listing and I didn't notice that it had said HC (Hard Cover). So one of the books was plainly and obviously a paper cover. Fine, generally not an issue to any sane and rational buyer.

This person used the global shipping program to get these books and it was very obvious that they where doing so in order to get free stuff. With ebay you can call in on the sellers wording mistake like that and get free stuff, more so with the global shipping program as it's too cost prohibited to send items back.

That really really pissed me off to no end. I was only making a couple dollars on the books and the shipping was insanely high, so I lost a ton on them. Only 1 book out of the 4 was wrong, but the dick got a total refund instead of a partial refund which should have been the answer. And yadda yadda.

So yeah. As a seller you have to be dead on with your listings. Totally my mistake here as I was tired because I was trying to do around a 100 listings on the same day and I was going loopy and not paying attention. But to scam a seller because of an obvious miswording is extremely low and dishonest.

I go by the adage that less is more with my listings. Try to say almost nothing about the item and you'll be safe against morons like this who takes every freaking thing in the listing as a potential escape clause for any whimsical reason.

If it's obviously in like new shape, then call it very good shape. Under-grading is always better as customers like to get stuff in better than expected condition.

Be super vague about everything as once you go into details you simply open yourself up to issues like that above. If it's red, then don't say the color at all. As someone will say it's more pink than red and they will win a claim against you. I know it's stupid stuff, but it happens! There are tons of jerks out there that prey on sellers that try to honestly describe their items like this. It's a very cruel world looking to scam you and it's far better to say almost next to nothing and to undergrade items than to fight with assholes and jerks nitpicking on every tiny thing you say. When you say more about anything, it just leads you into that much more potential troubles.

Something sellers may not know is that it's cheaper to use FedEx for packages over 3 pounds. I found this out only fairly recently compared to how long I've been selling. It seems that USPS doesn't really ship certain packages across the USA any longer, they use FedEx. Actually it's more complicated than that, but you get the general idea. So essentially you are paying for the post office to hand it off to FedEx and paying a lot more to do this.

Today for example, I have a 4 pound package going to Arizona from New York. USPS price was something like $17 after my sellers discount. FedEx price something like $11 dollars after my sellers discount. It's essentially the same service but for $6 less.

I've heard rumors that it can be trouble but so far in about 30 sent packages I've not had trouble. I think the huge discount is on the insurance coverage as you get almost none with the cheapest FedEx service. I have read that it's impossible to get a refund is something is damaged and there is no way to add more coverage. So I don't use it for stuff that is fragile and expensive. It's good for those really cheap $30 items which is heavy but won't break.

Before I didn't really like using FedEx before as their office is about 12 miles round trip out in the middle of no where. Sometimes I had to go out in terrible winter storms to do this and it was a such pain. Sometimes I just paid the extra to drop it off at the post office which is only about 20 houses away. Sadly you cannot get them to pick it up at your home.

Luckily a few months ago they made it where Walgreen accepts these packages. That's a lot better for me as Walgreen is about 2 miles away in the direction of a lot of places I go to. Of course I get store employees that rather not be bothered by these packages but whatever. I think I'm one of the first to take advantage of this service there as well. As soon more sellers discover this, they'll get hit heavy with people looking to save a buck as it's what we sellers do. It's not very well advertised though, it's almost a well kept secret!

Anyway, it does help sell my more heavier items as the savings really goes to my customer, not to me. They pay less for shipping. Of course people to this day will still try to cop free shipping from me, especially on the heavy items. They won't believe something 5 pounds costs $30 bucks to ship across the USA but it does. We sellers have to use every trick in the book to get junk out cheaper but still sometimes you get someone who will try to take advantage of you like that.

The trouble is that you get a lot of rookie sellers that will list heavy stuff cheap with free shipping and they get taken to the cleaners because they don't realize these pricing horrors. I myself just bought something fairly heavy (about 4 or 5 pounds) for $100 buy it now with free shipping. They were in Florida and I know that they paid at least $30 to do so. That same box would have been about $10 a couple states away. It's why I never ever do free shipping as $20 is $20 less in my pocket! Anyway what happens is that you get customers expecting all sellers to do free shipping on everything AND still sell items dirt cheap.

That reminds me of a buyer I had yesterday. Wanted vintage 80s striped socks (they are very pricey these days) but he was trying everything to get them so cheap so he could flip a second set so he wouldn't pay anything for his little adventure. I'm like WTF dude. I'm not running charity and I don't do wholesale. I can easily sell two packs for $50 each and you want 2 for $35 dollars? The nerve of some people. I mean sure if I was doing a flea market I can understand doing deals like that but I had to go to at least a 1000 garage sales this year to get my inventory and you think I'll just give my stuff away? Sorry but no, I work hard for my money and I deserve every last drop. I know that seems mean but sometimes you have to be a little mean to people.

I got a rare email today.

hi

im trying to by this item

yet there is a sales tax on this purchase.

im indonesian citizen. the item will be shipped to new york 11434 my warehouse and it will be forwarded to indonesia for resell

can you help me to refund the tax ?

About every 5 years or so, I get someone trying to skirt the tax. Unfortunately no excuse in the world can get you out of it here in New York. Typically for most states, if it's being shipped within the same state, then sales tax must be collected. There are ways around the tax, but usually they are so bothersome that it's not worth the effort.

The main one involves being a registered entity, typically a business one, with the state. That stops every one who has ever asked me about this over eBay as most people are not registered businesses.

Then you need to fill out a form to get permission from the state for this exclusion. That's so the state knows what you are doing and to keep an eye on you. You really don't want to be doing that as it can raise red flags and audits. Usually it's smarter to just pay the tax.

If you do do this, then it's filling out another form for every seller every time you wish to make a sale to not pay the tax. Some locations keep a file on you but it's been my experiences that you need to fill out this form over and over again. That just takes too much time which can be better used doing just about anything else.

In this case, the person only needed to fill out a ST-120 form attesting that he's an out of area buyer. But on that form he needs to supply his location and his business number, yadda yadda yadda. I'm supposed to keep that on hand in case I ever get audited. Or I can do what many small businesses would do and simply refuse it. It's just too much bother. The state lets you do that and you as a buyer are supposed to fill out more paperwork with the state to get it back.

I shop at the local thrift stores and I can save around $100 to $200 but it's not worth it. Sometimes I come across older women doing this to get out of paying for their 25 cent sales tax, holding up the line behind them for some 15 minutes. It's beyond stupid and quite annoying.

This is one of those laws that is obviously intended for businesses who spends thousands and thousands on sales taxes. It's not really intended for the small penny pinching sellers.

And most sellers which does go though this process abuses the system anyway, using this for every damned thing they buy. That's why you don't do this as a smaller seller as it raises your risk for an audit greatly.

And really, if you are making a huge profit on the junk you buy and resell, then saving $100 or so a year in taxes is not worth spending 10 hours a year filling out forms to get that money back.

In theory I could collect all my receipts and fill out some form and mail it into the state for a refund, but again it raises red flags and audits. And it's a lot of work for what almost amount to pennies. I feel that it is better to focus that time into making more money for yourself then to fight for so little back. Or just use that time to relax from working so hard with your business.

I feel it is a lot like theft. It sucks but it's a fact of life. You have to accept that there will be losses and it's not worth fighting for every minor little cent. Worry about the big stuff, not the small stuff like this.

--->This<--- is the tax law about the subject.

Got another neg and of course this one is batty too.

The guy bought a Pokemon game and said it didn't work...but he waited 5 weeks to neg me? What's up with that? And he never tried to get his money back with a charge back, contacting me or whatever? Smells fishy to me!

So get this. He buys the SAME game (this time sealed new) and the guy canceled the order and relisted it. LOL No doubt he saw the neg that he left me over the SAME item and didn't want any part of that. BRILLIANT! Serves you right, jerk!

The moral here is don't be a jerk as there are still some sellers out there that monitor buyers feedback leaving patterns. They want to determine if you are safe enough to sell to.

The same works for a seller. You cannot be mouthing off and acting pissed off as it means loosing potential customers. You have to say something reassuring that the customer will like, which I had done as seen down below.

Anyway second bad feedback he left for someone else is really interesting! It's for a bad seller who definitely deserved a bad feedback. He won a cheap auction for a book but the seller decided that he didn't like the prices which he got for his books, so he had canceled and relisted them at a much higher starting bid. $14.99 vs. .99 cents.

That took some amazing balls! So far he got at least 3 bad feedbacks for doing this and I expect he'll get more. I wouldn't doubt he'll loose this account for doing that as ebay is set up to punish sellers like him. I doubt he cares though. It was probably some 14 year old kid that has no clue how to conduct business.

Anyway, this is something that ALL new sellers discover about selling on ebay, that you never EVER list anything on auction at a cheap price as you WILL loose money. Most people price stuff low (mostly because ebay advertises that you should) but what happens is that something that you should easily sell for $15 (buy it now) will go for $5 (auction). A ten dollar loss!

Smart sellers (like myself - BRAG BRAG) always prices high but they will then relist the item with the price just a bit lower from the last time. And they keep repeating this process. It'll eventually sell for the right price that way, even if it takes months to do so. You never use auctions unless you don't know the price of the item, and even then you should price it high just to be safe. If you must use auctions, set at a price close to what the market will bear for it. Never be cute and price things for a penny or a 99 cents like this guy as you will get burned! I learned this lesson pretty quickly. It seems wrong and a little dishonest, but you need to remember, are you in it for morals or profit?

And the last neg on the list is mine, do you see how nicely I had said to return the item? I was wavering over contacting the guy directly and discussing matters, but I've learned to let sleeping dogs lie and decided to go that route here. I wonder if he had even read my message?

It's almost never a good idea to contact idiots as they almost always prove to be insane and unable to be reasoned with. It's better to ignore them and move on to please other customers. I'm pretty sure that I've ranted about this philosophy before a number of times on my blog. I honestly don't like it but it's just better in so many ways. I'm the type that dislikes trolls and I think most crazy people have a high degree of troll blood inside of them. They live to spread evil and cause others grief.

Anyway, this customer is insane. Like, if it didn't work, why not file a claim to return it to get your money back? Why not bother to contact me about it? Why take 5 weeks to get around to doing this? I mean I'm a very decent seller and easy to work with. Just leaving someone a neg without talking to them first is just low. I can see it for both of these persons who had relisted the items, but not over something damaged to see if the seller will do something about it. Whatever, the way it is now, is that I'm keeping the money, like thank you batty customer!

Anyway (I do love saying that word) I love to see Karma at work. I'm sure that if he had never neg'ed me, then the other guy would have had no reason to not send him the game. So yeah, think twice before doing something mean. I cannot remember the last time I neg'ed a seller because I know karma will bite me for it. Most people feel that it's better to just don't leave any feedback at all if you're unhappy.




He bought a sealed new version of the game for $99.75. Yeah, I'd be worried too and probably would take a neg than to deal with this jerk's tomfoolery.




This is the listing which he bought.



The relist, not sure if it went unsold or not. O_o;