Brittany driftwood for sale

If you fancy getting hold of a bit of Brittany but don't have the time to go and get your own, I just noticed an ebay auction that's on now for a collection of driftwood, shells and fishing net pieces from Brittany.

I'm guessing that these might be useful for flower arranging or craft displays??

No bids so far and a starting price of $19.

Proof that you can sell just about anything on ebay?

I think I'd rather go and collect my own ...

Low cost inkjet cartridges - recommended filling service

Last month I wrote about the panic I had with my son's expired passport that eventually required three trips to the Peterborough passport office as the photoshop editing caused the passport pictures to be rejected. All sorted in the end but at the time it was a bit stressful not knowing if we'd get a passport issued in time.

In amongst all the problems I had was the colour cartridge on my HP inkjet printer running out - passport photos in magenta and black would definitely not be accepted by the Passport Office!

Once we got back from France I needed to get a replacement ink cartridge. HP make excellent photo quality printers but they charge a fortune for their ink cartridges - circa £25 is not uncommon for the colour cartridge.

Looking in Tesco soon afterwards I saw that they were selling "refurbished" cartridges at 2 for £30 - better but still not good enough so I decided to turn to ebay.

After wading through the plenitude of options I eventually settled on an inkjet cartridge filling service. I'd never tried one of these before but the seller had a good feedback rating and offered a 100% guarantee so I thought I'd give it a go.

Magazine articles I've read have said that filling your own cartridges is the cheapest way of running an inkjet printer but equally tales of blocked nozzles, ink stains on your hands and leaking cartridges have put me off the idea myself. Paying someone else for their expertise seems a small price to pay.

I have to report being very pleased with the service and re-filled cartridge which appears to work as good as a brand new one from HP.

In total it cost me £6.55 for the replacement cartridge (£3.25 for the item off ebay, £2 for the return postage and £1.30 for me to send the cartridge off) - roughly half what it would have cost in the shops.

I'm more than happy therefore to recommend Compatible Imaging Technologists' inkjet filling service.

Which is cheaper - Paypal or Visa?

Just now I was paying for some video editing software I bought off ebay from an Australian seller and as I reached the paypal checkout page and saw the option to choose how the foreign currency amount would be converted I got to wondering (and Googling) as to which would be cheaper - Paypal or my credit card?

For overseas card payments you're offered the option of either letting paypal do the foreign currency conversion (which is the default) or letting your credit card do the conversion.

Thinking that I was bound to be being taken advantage of with the Paypal default I thought I'd do a bit of research into the two options, and was pleasantly surprised.

I bought the Ulead Video Studio 10 software for AUS $17.90 including Airmail shipping to the UK.

Firstly I found from my bank's credit card terms and conditions (helpful copy I found online) that they "will change the amount to sterling at the exchange rate used by the payment system and will charge 2.95% of the value of each foreign-currency transaction".

Then I Googled across a very useful Visa Exchange Rate calculator that lets you choose your credit card currency (GBP), the purchase currency (AUS $), enter your bank fee (2.95%), and in return are provided with a handy little print-out-and-put-in-your-wallet exchange rate table as a ready reckoner for when you're overseas.

Today Visa's exchange rate for AUS$ to GBP is 2.16 to 1, which means that with the bank fee my purchase will cost £8.53.

In comparison Paypal offered to charge me £8.37 using their own AUS/GBP exchange rate of AUS $2.13665 to £1.

So even though Visa was giving me a better exchange rate this was more than wiped out by the credit card overseas handling fee.

I thus paid with Paypal and saved myself 15p which I will be investing wisely !

By the by, the video editing software is so that I can try over the Christmas break to put together for our website some videos of our Brittany Gite. Next up I need to buy a firewire card ... so I'm back off to ebay for that purchase ....

Falling foul of ebay listing policies

In a situation that harks back to when I was suspended by Google Checkout for offering customers the choice of paying for our French holiday home on Google Checkout, I've now caused the ire of ebay.

In the first year that we started renting out our Holiday Gite (2006) we offered and sold quite a few holiday bookings through ebay, at what has to be admitted were knock-down prices.

As much as anything else it was a bit of a learning experience for us of holiday guests staying in the Gite, but at the time I figured that I would rather have guests who paid somewhat less than the advertised rate than no guests at all.

After cleaning, changeover and utility bills we didn't make very much at all, but it got our name out there, it covered our costs, and a couple of the guests have returned to us in subsequent years, so they obviously liked what they saw.

Over the years more people seem to have followed our lead and there's increasing choice (i.e. competition) for holiday home listings on ebay now, and we've also tended to not need to advertise on ebay as much as our Google page rankings have increased (e.g. we're currently showing as #2 if you search for "Brittany Rent", #6 for "Brittany Holiday" and #10 for "Brittany Gite").

Occasionally I do put up a listing on ebay (e.g. it'd be nice to sell the Christmas 2008 holiday week), only to find on Saturday that we'd received an email from ebay telling me that my listing had been cancelled because "it breached the Circumvention of eBay Fees policy".

According to ebay because I'd used the phrase "see our website for currently available dates" in the listing this was seen as an attempt to avoid ebay fees.

I argued back that I was simply listing the Gite for a week's holiday from now to the end of March 2009 (which is a quieter period for us), and that customers can have the choice of any dates that are still vacant (e.g. the New Year 2009 week is already booked).

Unfortunately the reply I had back from customer services has taken the line that

You are not allowed to offer different weeks in one listing as such a practice lowers number of listings on eBay and is considered to be Circumvention of eBay fees.

You may create separate listings for each week and then for the understanding of the prospective buyers you may mention in that 'Look my other listings for other dates/weeks'.

Well yes I can see that such an approach will drive up fee revenue for ebay if you're only allowed to list an item for one week's stay. I do believe that I've been singled out in a one-off by ebay as there are plenty of other auctions on right now that say "contact us for availability", but it's no use arguing any further as ebay has the final answer over such things.

So ebay listers beware of falling into the same trap as me - be well advised to read the Circumventing Fees policy.

(And if you do want a cut-price late availability deal, drop me a line and we'll see what we can do).

Update 9/12: Another email from ebay Trust & Safety about my cancelled listing, pointing me this time to the ebay choice listing policy which is a bit more explicit about listings not being allowed that give the buyer a choice of item colour/size or items that are 'subject to availability'. I've been told that any listings that offer a choice of dates throughout the year, or stays of varying lengths is a breach of this policy.

Ebay bargains near you - a google Maps mashup

As I've mentioned before on other ebay bloggings I quite like ebay for picking up the odd bargain or two (I'm more of a buyer than a seller, and am currently sitting on an ebay rating of 310).

Spotted another useful website the other day, Auctions Near You which is a great mashup of Google Maps and ebay searching.

Enter your postcode, how far you are prepared to travel, the text of what you are looking for, optionally choose a main product category, and it's as simple as that, you get a map with all the local items, you can click on any of them to see a quick popup details, and then zoom into ebay to read the full auction details.

Perfect for searching for a new (second-hand) lawnmower (I'm getting nagged by Liz because it's taking her ages to mow the lawn at the new house with our old "lightweight" mower) or for other things that you want to pick-up locally.

My only complaint is that you can only restrict the search by main product category (not sub categories) and occasionally you get odd map results - one Northampton based lawnmower is appearing on the map as being in Rotherham (in Yorkshire) !

Otherwise, a great and useful site.

Replacement swimming pool pump

Children playing in the pool

Been shopping (again).

Back in August I received a phone call from our Gite guests to tell us that they'd come back in after a day out and all the electricity was off. Cutting the story (and the phone calls between me and France) short, we managed to isolate the problem to "something" fusing the downstairs lighting circuit, which I then remembered was the circuit that had been extended from the boiler room into the outside barn, which was where the swimming pool pump was plugged in.

Turns out that the guests had switched the swimming pool pump on when they went out in the morning and for some reason the pump had died and was causing the trip switch to blow. Unplugging the pump and everything worked OK.

The following weekend Alan went over to the Gite and swapped the pump for a spare one I had in France, so everything was back to normal.

Concious that we now didn't have a spare swimming pool pump, and one had gone after only a season's use, I needed to buy another one.

Retail prices of these pool pumps are circa £50, I found a couple of suppliers on ebay that would sell me one for £39.99, but last week I managed to snaffle one on ebay for just £4.99 + P&P, £12 all in.

A bobby bargain!

The pump arrived yesterday, it's absolutely brand new and never used so I'll be taking it over to Brittany when I'm next over.

PS: The lovely photo is from May last year and is of Jack and Toby playing in the pool whilst we waited for it to be filled up. The swimming pool takes some 18 cubic metres of water so it doesn't half take a while to fill up. It probably costs a small fortune on the water meter as well but I'm trying not to think about that.

Finding mis-spelt listings on ebay

Nothing to do with France this posting (so turn the page if you're not interested!)

I came across a pretty neat site today, TypoBuddy that searches on ebay for common misspellings in item listings.

The idea is you put in what you are searching for and then TypoBuddy searches on ebay but with variant spellings of the words you've put in. So searching for "xbox star wars" you'll find entries such as "xbox star wrs", "xbox star warzs", "xbox staa wars", etc which hopefully other people won't have found and thus will close for a lower selling price.

Well that's the theory anyway, how did it work in practice?

Personally I found the user interface a bit confusing because firstly I was told there my eBay results were "48 typos of 'wars' with xbox star" but when I clicked the link, I got nothing back. What was happing was that TypoBuddy found 48 different word variations of 'wars' (waars, waz, etc) but hadn't actually undertaken the search on ebay until I clicked the link, when nothing was actually returned - meaning either ebay users can type properly (unlikely) or the suggested misspellings were out.

TypoBuddy is just one of a growing set of such auction finder sites; a couple of others I tried out were Gumshoo and FatFingers.

Each of these search sites has similar features although they all differ slightly.

TypoBuddy allows you to try each misspelt word in turn and also does searches of Craigslist.org.
Fatfingers is I think one of the older search tools it tries less aggressive misspellings than TypoBuddy
Gumshoo has a very nice user interface allowing you to filter out junk listings, find those with free shipping, search for new/used items and a neat trend analysis to see if the seller's rating is on average going up or down over the last 30 days.

So do they work?

Well sort of. Trying searches for "xbox star wars", "Christian Dior" and "home theatre system" I generally didn't find many "hidden auction listings" but Gumshoo and TypoBuddy both turned up a "Home Cinema System Theartre" and Fatfingers turned some "xbox starwars" games.

Christian Dior was the most successful search as FatFingers and TypoBuddy managed to turn up listings for Chritian Dior, Christain Dior, Cristian Dor and Christain Dior, Chrisian Dior and Chirsian Dior.

If you're really keen to find such listings then you probably need to use more than one search engine; Gumshoo definitely looks nicest but has the poorest results and FatFingers and TypoBuddy both seem to be much better with FatFingers perhaps slightly ahead.

Unexpected ebay search results

I've been looking to buy a copy of "Lockyears FarmStrips & Private Airfields Flight Guide" which lists small private airfields and farm landing strips on ebay but unfortunately missed out by not quite bidding high enough on a recently auctioned copy on ebay.

So although I've got an ebay search setup to automatically email me when other books matching "lockyears farm*" are listed on ebay, I thought I'd try the "View Similar Items" search on MyEbay and ended up with some very unexpected results ... not what I was expecting at all ....

The joys of the global market place that is ebay! In amongst the 18-rated DVD's (presumably found because of the search word 'private'), I did find one copy listed on ebay, but at a higher price than I wanted to pay so I'll keep on searching.

And why am I looking for this book? Well I've been learning to fly a Microlight airplane for the past few months. Still practising flying circuits and trying to land without crashing the air plane at the moment so it's not as if I am going solo or will be needing the book for just awhile.

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200 not out on ebay!

ebay.co.uk

Whooo-hooo! Today I reached the dizzy feedback score of 200 on ebay with 100% positive feedback !

200 unique people (buyers and sellers) think I'm a "good egg" and can be trusted (in fact the actual number of ebay trades is higher at 220 but the rating system is worked out on unique buy/sell relationships so multiple purchases from the same person don't count).

I've been on ebay since December 2000 and remember reaching 100 about 15 months ago so I guess my use of ebay is accelerating.

And here's my ebay profile if you want to read all the nice things people have said about me!

Our half-term holiday's cancelled - my mum's died

Been an awful week just gone, and even writing this retrospective Blog entry 10 months later it's still no easier to look back on the events that have happened so I'll recap over them briefly.

Wednesday 18th May

My mum phoned me up on my mobile whilst I was at work to ask me about some paint I'd asked her to get from B&Q. We were due to go up to see my parents in Lancashire for the weekend on the Friday as it was her 68th birthday that day.

I quite like one of the pastel paint ranges from B&Q, we've done the hall and lounge in our UK house in the pale yellow colour and two of the bedrooms and the kitchen in our Brittany Holiday Home are also done in different shades from the same range. Wednesday is 10% off day for senior citizens so she was buying some more paint for me and getting the discount !
Anyway brief chat and she said that she'd give me a ring later on that evening.

Just after midnight got a call from my Dad saying that my mum's complained of feeling dizzy, checked her blood pressure (on a portable reader I bought for her last year) and found it was way too high. My Dad insisted that she went off to hospital and she went reluctantly, worrying about my Dad (who is wheelchair bound following a stroke 3 years ago) as she went. Offered to drive up but agreed that I'd wait until there was more news.


Thursday 19th May

5:45 am phone call from my Dad. He's been back into hospital again, she's "very poorly", had a "major stroke" and has been transferred to Preston Royal Hospital. I said I'd come up straight away. Threw a few things together and left within half an hour.

We live in Bedfordshire and my parents are in Lancashire - just about 190 miles door to door. Depending on traffic it takes 3 and a half to 5 hours to drive including stops.
As I left I figured that under the circumstances I had a good reason for driving quicker than I normally would do and so I completed the journey in 2 and ¾ hours.

In case the boys in blue have taken up Blog reading I'll make no comments about the precise speed I drove at, but the roads were very empty and I did take the M6 Toll bypass round Birmingham (for the first, and so far only, time) - worth the money on this occasion.


Saturday 21st May

I've skipped over a bit of the story but the essence of it was that she'd had a stroke and was only being kept alive in the intensive care unit by the ventilator. The stroke had been massive and fatal at the same time and on the Saturday the consultant confirmed what I'd thought that there was essentially nothing left.

In some respects this made it easier to come to the decision we did. My mum (and Dad) had always believed in organ donation and we gave our approval for any of her organs to be used for the benefit of others. Some months later we received thank you cards from the families of those who benefited - indirectly we helped a number of children and grand-children that we'll never know by improving the life of one of their loved ones.


Monday 23rd May

Had the most almighty row with Brittany Ferries. I was due to be going over to France the following week to with my friend Stephen and his girlfriend Harriett for a week's holiday, to do some gardening and to finish decorating the third bedroom in our Gite.

I'd bought the ferry tickets some time beforehand and unfortunately they were a special offer that was "non refundable".
As I explained to the BF lady I absolutely couldn't use the tickets any more (the funeral was that week) and that when I'd bought them I "hadn't intended to be burying my mother that week".
BF were adamant that I couldn't get a refund for the tickets as they were a special offer. Eventually we agreed to amend the ferry booking to a month later (for which I had to pay a £25 amendment fee). Oh well at least I didn't loose out on the total ferry cost.


Wednesday 25th May

Not expecting that I would get anywhere I listed next week's holiday (which was the school half-term week) on ebay as a "late availability" 3 day buy-it-now offer on ebay and was successful - a family of 5 are going to be enjoying themselves in Brittany whilst I'm sorting out arrangements back home.

One slightly brighter part of an otherwise awful week.

Only problem was that the Gite only had two bedrooms at the time (so could only sleep 4 - one of the things I was going to do whilst over that week was to finish the 3rd bedroom) so it meant that I had to get our local agents to carry through the other bed and assemble it in the master bedroom. Thanks Cherril !