Here is our guide for those selling Irish dance dresses. Shipping information is kindly provided by Stacy Farley of Aunt Stacy's Dressmaking.
When a potential buyer contacts you about your dress, always be honest about the condition of the dress and also the conditions of the sale. You don't want an un-happy buyer demanding a refund because the dress isn't what they were expecting!
Will you accept refunds, will you ship internationally? You will need to make it clear who pays shipping and taxes if applicable. If the buyer is from overseas, there may be extra taxes to pay.
There are many payment options out there including cheque's, paypal and direct deposit. Each have varying pros and cons and varying fees attached.
PayPal
If you use paypal and hold a valid US paypal account, your transaction will be covered by seller protection. Paypal allows you to receive monies from varying sources though there are transaction fees that would be taken from your asking price. The fee is approx 3.5% of your asking price.
Cheque
If your preferred method of payment is in the form of a cheque, ask for a bank/cashiers cheque in your home currency. This way you wont loose out if the exchange rate fluctuates and you wont have to pay any conversion fees your bank may charge.
Personal cheque's would potentially have a higher bounce rate. If a cheque bounces banks will charge YOU for this not the buyer. And again if the buyer is from outside your country, you may have to pay your bank a fee and the cheque will be converted using your banks exchange rates which may not be the same as the actually exchange rate.
Only send your item once the cheque has fully cleared. If you send the item before, you run the risk of loosing your dress AND your money. If the buyer is happy with the dress, then the sale would be considered complete.
If the seller is dissatisfied and asks to return the dress (and you are willing to accept a return) have the buyer send the dress back to you. If the dress is in the same condition that you sent it in, then send the payment back (minus shipping fees).
Direct Deposit
Direct deposit shouldn't be confused with other services out there like western union. Really, you should avoid western union at all costs. Its well known that scammers use this option, as once the payment is received there is no way of tracing or tracking the money OR the receiver.
Danny Says: I have personally used direct deposits to send money from my UK bank (HSBC) to a US bank (Suntrust) and its really quite easy. Although both myself AND the recipient were charged for the transfer. For me it was around £9 and them about $14. But this option could be fairly safe. The person sending the money MUST have a valid bank account, and if discrepancies arise the banks could potentially work with you to resolve issues. Although this is my presumption, and not guaranteed!
You would need to provide international banking info to the buyer (if from overseas) so that they can credit the money to your account.
From Stacy Farley of Aunt Stacy's Dressmaking
I mail with UPS (United Parcel Service) and I buy insurance. Use a large piece of cardboard folded like an envelope...the dress is encased in plastic sheeting and secured to the bottom inside of the big piece of cardboard to prevent shifting. (I use 4 smaller pieces of cardboard folded over the edges of the dress---these are taped to the bottom of the envelope and then the dress is taped to them) I hope this makes sense. This way the dress edges are double protected and the dress in the plastic is secured to the bottom inside of the 'envelope'. Then I just fold the envelope over the dress and use LOTS of tape to seal it up.
When shipping overseas there are taxes and duties that can be quite
expensive. This needs to be clear to an overseas buyer before purchase.
You've added your dress and are eager to make a sale. But you should ALWAYS exercise caution when dealing with people you don't know online. "But this is an Irish dance site, surely I cant get scammed here?" In 99% of cases were sure your right. But money is money and Irish dance dresses (even used) can still fetch a pretty penny.
We have some measures in place to prevent spiders scraping our site and sending out emails to addresses it finds. Your email address is not found in the source code of the site! Secondly, we use Captcha images to prevent automated submission of the email forms on the listing pages. These measures are not a guarantee that emails wont get through, but will reduce them dramatically!
If the buyer is in a rush, offers your more money than you asked for and requests that you just take out the difference and wire the rest back, or send a money order these will be signs that the person emailing you may be more interested in your money NOT your dress.
Other things to look out for are the email headers. This is a little more advance but if the "FROM" and "REPLY-TO" headers don't match use caution. We also use a different "REPLY-TO" address for our notification emails sent to sellers, so its not always bad, but if the message and headers smell fishy, then be careful. If in doubt you can forward the message to us and we will try to offer assistance as best we can.
If all else fails, you could ask questions about the dancers school. If the school isn't in the same area that the buyer is supposed to be from, or you email the school and they haven't heard of the dancer, then cease communication with the fraudster and forward the emails to us. We will delete the listing and the users account.
If you have any suggestions for sellers that we could add here, please contact us.
