CHU Reader starts new online shop

A long time reader and friend from the site, and my local comic shop, has started up his own site and comic shop. I love to see people grow from a hobby to a full fledged business. Ray is a good guy and I wanted to give him a shout out on his site. Take it away Ray:
 
Hello fellow CHUers. My name is Ray and I’ve been banging around here since CHU and Tony was in double digit membership. He had no regular contributors (well, except for Agent Poyo ;), which I am convinced has CHU up as his only source of communication) and no extra writers for the site. Man it has grown up. I’ve watched it and the base of people here grow and be some of the best around. I used to contribute more but have sat back to start a business.
Now is time for me to say hello and reintroduce myself. I have had a website up for a few months and am ready to bump up my traffic, and help out the fellow comic crowd. I am offering preorders two months prior on the Diamond schedule for 30% off cover price. Shipping twice a month, the second and fourth Thursday’s of the month. Your preorders will be bagged and boarded and shipped according to weight, either first class or priority. NO MEDIA MAIL, unless you ask, and are looking for a large scale more cost effective option.
I am also allowing for orders of statues, toys, apparel and action figures, pretty much everything Diamond offers in their catalog. Email me for specs on toys and prices. Odds are I will charge less than retail. Shipped.
I will make lists available when they have bargain prices on comics and trades, hardback books and such. Most likely through CHU.
This is still a learning process, and I want everyone to know that I plan and do pride myself on being professional and offering the best service out there. There will be hiccups and speed bumps, and I ask for a bit of tolerance these first few months. I have done business with a few of you guys out there and I am as down to earth and easy to chat with as your neighbor. I always make things right. If you want to check me out first go to eBay and handle rjnieder77. 2600 feedback and 1 negative. (That shouldn’t have been one).
I would not be doing this if I didn’t think I had the nuts and bolts to be successful and professional.
Rjnieder77@gmail.com
Ray Niederhausen on hangouts.
www.rjcomicsandtoys.com.
Follow me on Facebook too. RJ Comics and Toys. Twitter and all that stuff too. I appreciate your time. Thank you and keep collecting!!
Support comic books no matter where you buy them.
ORDERS FOR MAY DELIVERY DUE ON MARCH 24.
Ray

24 thoughts on “CHU Reader starts new online shop”

  5. Sshhh… don’t tell people this is my only form of communication! 😉
    Very nice about starting a new online shop Ray. We need more online shops!

  6. After seeing what your email is, I know I have bought a ton of books from you, and they have all arrived quickly and secure.

  7. Hey; good to see another new comics vendor looking to grow. I see your business is primarily on eBay (or at least seems to be) and that is actually something I have a lot of experience with (I’ve been selling there for nearly 20 years); but I don’t sell New/Upcoming comics, so we’re not competitors, lol. One word of advice I have is to avoid using Free Shipping whenever possible. eBay pushes sellers to include the cost of shipping in the item price and declare Free Shipping on all items, but it is not always a good idea (and they always get pushier about it and don’t seem to understand simple business logic). Let’s say someone is looking for 4 books and you happen to have all 4 of them, and so does another eBay seller. If yours are priced at $8 with Free Shipping for each of them, but the other seller is charging $5 plus $4 for flat-rate-unlimited shipping (like MyComicShop does), then that buyer is seeing the books cost $32 from you or $24 from the other seller; and they’ll go with that other seller. And even if you try to accommodate multiple item purchases by giving partial refunds to cut down the cost attributed to shipping, eBay doesn’t refund any fees back to you for partial refunds, and when Paypal mails out their end-of-year statements, they don’t take refunds into consideration; they will claim the full initial totals for every transaction were income to you.
    And I know how those Negative Feedbacks go. I have one on my account right now that says “TYSVM!!!!!!!!!!” after someone claimed they never received their package, but when I proved otherwise with the tracking (which for some reason they thought was invisible to the seller), they changed their story and said they’d had the books all along, but a few books were missing. And they had zero feedback, initially wanted to take the transaction off eBay, and wanted to try to lower the price after winning, etc, so the transaction was doomed from the start.
    I also previously had a Negative Feedback from an international user that just said “i got a book”. Yep, they bought a book, and I shipped them a book… and got Negative Feedback for it, why? eBay of course wouldn’t remove it. Luckily, with 5,000 positives, it doesn’t do much to harm my overall percentage, but is still aggravating.
    If you ever run into any issues with eBay, feel free to give me a shout. I don’t know if you saw earlier this year when they tried to require sellers to declare their comic books as “New” or “Used” (and with no guidance on what that means when it comes to comic books); I may have been instrumental in getting that reversed as quickly as it did, lol. I have a direct email address for eBay customer service, and I wasn’t going to let that one go. They basically wanted sellers to declare “New” for any book in Mint Condition and “Used” for anything that is Not Mint… without realizing How Few comic books are actually in Genuine Flawless Mint Condition. Or that no one in the industry uses the term “Used” to describe a Comic Book. >I< They already have a field for "Grade", they should just make the "Grade" field mandatory instead of optional. I'm appalled at the number of listings that just toss up one blurry picture and say WYSIWYG.

    1. Ebay is full of whackos and people with terribly high expectations. I recently had someone leave feedback (it was at least positive) saying “the pop was in mint condition but the box it was shipped in was well-used.”
      I could go on but I won’t because it is too early to think about these miserable scumbags. There are plenty of “normal” people out there that make it worthwhile.

    2. I stopped international shipping myself. I’ll make exceptions if the person contacts me but for the most part, the headaches from a few sales were not worth it. I got a negative once because the person didn’t actually read the auction (it was a computer part I sold) and it clearly said they were just getting the PCI-E card and nothing else, no cables, box, manual, etc. The guy from Ukraine just left negative and said “no cables, card is useless”.. well duh, should of read the auction.
      I also sent a shipment to Germany once, they actually provided wrong address. Claimed they never got it. They get the actual shipping costs refunded, so that was money out of my pocket (cost like $28 as well) along with $80 item (another computer part I sold).. trying to get someone over there with their shipping posts to track the package was just a nightmare. So I’m out $100 or so dollars.. effing 6 months later I get a returned package, there it was, big sticker on it that said “no such address” in German.
      So no more international shipping for me. Not worth the hassle most of the time.

      1. I’ve been in those situations; where the cost of postage is higher than the item, there is no reasonable way to track it (other than going Registered for an extra $13-14), and the buyer claims they never got it. Overall, I sell enough internationally that if this happens once a year, it isn’t a big hit for me. But I have stopped shipping to specific countries where it seems to run rampant that either the mail system is poorly run, or there is a higher percentage of con artist bidders. The Phillipines, Mexico, & Russia are on my list, as well as a few others. But I’ve had plenty of good experiences elsewhere, and the T-shirts I sell are actually quite popular in Australia, so I really could Never give up on shipping to them. 🙂
        I saw your other post, too… I also package my comics really well, to ensure they won’t be damaged in transit, and without using an actual box. It’s really all about including many layers of cardboard, and knowing how to tape it all together. I actually have a personal rant in my own listings, where I deplore other sellers shipping their books loose in manila envelopes. Even if they use a backer board, a backer board does absolutely Nothing to protect a book from the postal system. I’ve even had comic shipped in one of those white Plastic Bags that clothing are traditionally mailed in. I guess some people are just stuck in the days when a Porcelain Collector Plate could be mailed in a folded cardboard sleeve, with parts exposed, and still arrive flawless. Those days are long gone! Lol.

      2. eBay global shipping takes care of all that. They pay a higher fee for shipping but eBay takes all the liability and they cannot leave you negative feedback on shipping or lost or damaged items (I think the last part is correct) as long as it gets to the eBay shipping center in five business days.
        Sent from my iPhone
        >

        1. I don’t trust others, especially eBay people. I think the GSP they can’t leave a negative Star Review when a user rates the individual services.. I think they can still leave Negative Feedback though. 😉

      3. I’ve opted out of eBay’s Global Shipping Program. They charge about a 50% Premium, so it would cause me to lose bids from international buyers. Postage is already expensive enough without eBay’s excessive handling charges. I’ve written them about it before, and they say it is because they are offering an elevated level of customer service, so it is not a “handling fee”… even though they supposedly started charging final value fees on postage costs due to sellers charging excessive handling on their postage… which is exactly what eBay GSP is doing. And if an item is lost or damaged in transit with GSP, the seller is still responsible to refund the item price; and I trust myself better than eBay to package my items and send to the final destination.
        My dad accidentally opted into the GSP before, which is when I saw how much it was charging. When the actual cost of postage via USPS was about $22, it was charging the buyer $36. I have items of similar weight, so the thought of adding about $10 to the cost of postage for things that would only cost me $18 to ship, I’m sure I’d be losing interested buyers from overseas. And really, it’s pretty ludicrous how much postage has increased for international first class from USPS over the past 5 years. If I dig through past payments that far back, I’m sure it’s nearly Doubled from where it was back then (at least when it comes to packages in the 1-2 pound range; that’s where the biggest price gouge seems to be every time it increases).

        1. I can honesty say, and I do ship both ways, especially if a buyer contacts me first, I have never had a problem with using GSP.
          I did once ship a set of comics to a buddy in Spain on my own, thankfully I used priority and they did track and insure the books. They got totally misplaced for a while. Same thing happened when I shipped a priority package to Canada that ended up on the wrong side of the country. Both worked out in the end but shipping international via priority is my preferred method. Even shipping to GSP I use priority since if the books arrive in the country damaged I can still file an insurance claim.
          Sent from my iPhone
          >

      4. I had one of those recently. Shipped a package via Priority to Canada. It was going to the Canadian Arctic, but for some reason it first trekked to Montreal, then flew back to Florida, then went to Montreal again, then back to Florida again, then finally got flown far North to the destination. Apparently someone at USPS shipped twice to the wrong connecting point.

    1. Agent Poyo has never had bad feedback on shipping comics. I am the master of protecting comics. Ask Anthony.. I send him crap all the time just to hear him complain how long it takes him to get out of the package. 😉

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