was fading as a source of income due to rising costs and limited liability. Come April 2007, we finally found our next primary product line....At that time (April 2007) I was home, at my parents house, for spring break (exiting I know). Browsing around at the local mall I passed by a gift store which typically carried a lot of various hot and fad-esque items. At the very front of the store they had a fairly large display which included a small TV which, on a loop, was explaining more about the product. That product...was Webkinz
. What got me very interested in them very quickly was the simple fact that each one came with code (to access their online world). I did very well with Neopets strictly because of the codes that came in the packs, so naturally these Webkinz were very intriguing to me. So, I jotted down 'webkinz' on a piece of paper and looked into them further online when I got home.Longer story shortened...they appeared to be profitable so I began acquiring them. At that point they were already fairly high in popularity and you couldn't just walk into any store that sold them and expect to find a wide selection. Often times many stores that carried them would be completely sold out. During spring break I probably acquired around 200-250 of them or so. More than enough to 'test the waters' first hand.
As I sold more of them and became more known as a seller of them and got a nice amount of repeat buyers coming back often, I needed to be able to get larger quantities more easily. Preferably, also at a lower price than the various retail outlets I was acquiring them from up to that point. I was able to find a couple sources from which I could buy them by the case (36 of the same webkinz per case) for a much more reasonable cost than retail so went with it. I didn't buy anything and everything though as some sold much better than others. 36 of the same webkinz for certain styles could take awhile to sell through and/or have very slim profit margins.
Things went well and that meant more and more inventory coming in and accumulating as well. Things got even better with Webkinz when a lightbulb finally clicked on. My previous primary seller was selling neopets virtual prize codes and then typing/emailing the codes. Well...with webkinz, the code is the primary draw and many people have more than enough plush toys as it is. Thus, many would rather bypass getting the plush, saving the shipping costs, and just having the codes emailed. That helped grow sales on Webkinz all the more as I would list them both as plush with unused code included and also as code only via email.
Now, that was all well and good...or so I thought. I must have missed or overlooked an eBay rule or policy change or something at some point. On December 4th, 2007, I received an email from eBay which started as follows:
"Dear menoknow3,
Your eBay account has been suspended for a minimum of seven days due to a violation of the eBay Copyright Violation - Unauthorized Item policy. We suspended your account after carefully considering each violation and verifying that the correct action was taken."
and the following primary bits of info...
"eBay prohibits the sale of virtual items or related software that violate copyrights."
"All of your current listings have been removed from eBay."
"You are not allowed to use eBay in any way during your suspension."
Timing obviously couldn't be worse...3 weeks before Christmas and in the middle of the holiday sales rush. Also didn't help that when all that happened, anybody that had bought from me within the past day or two which didn't get their order shipped yet...well....my eBay items awaiting shipment was wiped clean. However, I was first informed by phone by someone from eBay that my account was getting suspended. While on the phone, I asked if I'd be able to access my eBay account to fill currently existing orders and was told that I would not be able to access my eBay account in anyway, only paypal. So, I made sure I had the phone call last long enough for me to print off all my 'items awaiting shipment' list on eBay so I could use gmail's search for those users that I had unshipped orders for and see if they still wanted me to ship or if they preferred I simply refunded instead. I had over 50 orders awaiting shipment so that was no quick/easy task even with a 'cheat sheet' so I knew who I all had to contact. Especially being that at the time I was a senior in college with the 1st semester in it's last couple of weeks with multiple group projects and such I was in the middle of. It appeared as if my Christmas wasn't going to be as merry as planned :-(
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