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new france based website in english for selling unwanted items


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I have found this site www.flogit.ws recently, it is France based, english, & works along the lines of ebay, very new with not a lot on offer at the moment, have bought a couple of things & the whole procedure was very easy.   

no personal interest or otherwise ,    joan

 

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[quote]I have found this site www.flogit.ws recently, it is France based, english, & works along the lines of ebay, very new with not a lot on offer at the moment, have bought a couple of things & ...[/quote]

Thanks for that joan could be very useful.
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I'm an Ebayer and have had a look at this site which is quite good and I wish them well.

However, (and there always is) if you intend to use this site then please keep in mind that it does not offer the same protection to the buyer as Ebay (by this I mean paying and the goods don't arrive).

There are laws and rules about selling second hand and new stuff through auctions in France and I would strongly recommend that you visit www.ebay.fr and read what they have to say as it lays out what the sellers responcibilities are to the buyer. The same will apply to this new site as well.

Happy bargain hunting.

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(Reply written as a forum user, not as a moderator)

Maybe I'm missing something, but I really don't see the point. People who want to sell things will surely use an established auction site which is known to have loads of potential buyers (and vice versa) - so please somebody tell me what this site offers that the more active auction sites don't? It doesn't seem to be users, when I looked there was just one bidder on the whole site, who had bid for two videos. Hardly Ebay, is it, though it does seem to be modelled largely on Ebay.

I wish it well though if it can find enough members.

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Well it would not take me away from Ebay but I can see that it would appeal to those who don'y read French. My French is not that good and I use a PC based translation program some of the time to fumble my way round Ebay and it works for me. We are seeing more none Brits turn up here now and they show little or no inclination to speak or read French neither now or in the future so this sort of site will work for them.

Ebay is great fun and my wife (like many others) makes a living from it, I guess her CV now reads Proffesional Ebayer. She can work from home and I can send stuff by post for her, it's easy. I don't think this new site is big enought to support such a enterprise. Plus you can't buy on one site and sell on another like with Ebay. I still however wish it well.

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Well, I suppose that's a reason for its existence. My French isn't exactly fluent but I've bought things off French Ebay, in fact the first thing I ever bought through Ebay was on the French side. Using Ebay is not really like reading Sartre or Proust.

Not wishing to reopen an old debate, though I probably will, I just cannot leave this without wondering about why people come to live in France yet they can't be bothered with learning even enough of the language to buy stuff over the internet. It rather saddens me that something like Flogit should be necessary.

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Quillan, just me being nosey , does your wife trade in the UK or France?

I have a client with a UK EBay business and to be honest some of the items he sells would go down even better in France than they do in the UK, so I just wondered (not that I have time for much more than wondering at the moment - all bidding for work which seems to take longer than actually getting it but the sun has certainly bought the work out ).

Thanks

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[quote]She trades all over the world. Once you have a Ebay login on one site you can use the same login for any other Ebay site. What you have to take in to consideration is shipping costs and different laws...[/quote]

I too find E-Bay intersting, but you have to be aware that sometimes the things you are successful in bidding for may not come as you would expect.

I collect a particular sort of china and won an auction to add to this. However, when the china arrived, the Scottish seller had packed it in tissue paper and it was all in smithereens! If I was to go onto E-Bay and give the seller negative feedback in protest, I would open up myself to negative feedback myself. So what I did was fire off an e-mail to this guy and ask for a refund, this has been met with serious hate mail in return. I would not dare post negative feedback now! I would prefer to lose the money!

My advice to anyone wanting to buy something expensive from this site or any similar is to look where it is being sold, arrange an appointment and go and see the proposed purchase AND more importantly the seller!

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I couldn't agree more about Brits who can't be bothered to learn French.  A couple and small child arrived in our village last July.  Last week the woman (who does not work and therefore has all the time in the world to learn) called my husband and asked him to cancel a doctor's appointment for her because she did not know how to explain herself!   They even go back to England to do a lot of their shopping.......   Their neighbours say that they try to get involved with them but just can't make themselves understood.  The child is bullied at school because his friends think his parents are weird.   Why do people go to live in another country if they want to behave as though they never left their own?   I really don't understand it.
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Sorry Athene, but you had a bad experience, I too have sold extensively on eBay (and bought too). Most sellers take a pride in what they do and as a seller of ceramics myself I can tell you that the packaging takes a significant amount of time - polyfoam, double boxing, polychips etc. There are ways in ebay to complain - safe harbor for instance.

If you are looking to buy again check out the sellers feedback.

PS My French is abysmal but even can hack my way the listings - come on - its not that difficult !
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[quote]Sorry Athene, but you had a bad experience, I too have sold extensively on eBay (and bought too). Most sellers take a pride in what they do and as a seller of ceramics myself I can tell you that the p...[/quote]

Hi Gay,

yes I know you always pack your items well, I have already bought from you! Remember? You probably don't as you sell extensively. However, this awful guy will never get bad feedback as he would only turn round and give you bad feedback in return. At the time, I e-mailed another guy who had also bought from him and he had had a similar experience but felt, like me, that with E-Bay, some you win and some you lose.

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[quote]I couldn't agree more about Brits who can't be bothered to learn French. A couple and small child arrived in our village last July. Last week the woman (who does not work and therefore has all the t...[/quote]

As a French speaker it is easy to be critical of others! Give them time and they will probably absorb a certain amount of French by 'osmosis' At least they are trying to be sociable and that is a start! The child will probably speak French ages before his parents and that maybe an encouragement to get them going on their learning of the language. Speaking as an experienced teacher, it is generally not language barriers nor parents that will cause a child to be bullied.
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They are not trying to be sociable, that's the problem.   It's the neighbours who are making the effort.   They are simply depending on us to help them through everything - we even have to write their cheques for them because they can't do it after 10 months!   When we moved to France my husband didn't speak a word but hemade the effort to learn and to interact with the neighbours, even if they couldn't always understand him.
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[quote]Hi Gay, yes I know you always pack your items well, I have already bought from you! Remember? You probably don't as you sell extensively. However, this awful guy will never get bad feedback as he wou...[/quote]

I agree with you Athene, re E-bay ( oops, sorry if this has gone off at a tangent). I too bought an item, it was badly packed and arrived in many pieces. When I complained by e-mail, the seller said it wasn't her fault. I wrote to e-bay, just an automated reply. I gave the seller negative feedback as there was nothing else to do -but- yes, she just turned round and gave me negative feedback!!! Very unfair, but c'est la vie

 

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To be honest it's six and two threes with broken/damaged goods. My wife offers a 5 days buy back if not satisfied and insures all her items that are sold. The cost of course is borne by the buyer but they have the satisfaction of knowing that if there are any breakages they will get their money back. The thing about insuring the item is that it makes certain that the seller packages it properly as all insurances will look for a way not to pay.

If you are buying, before you bid, contact the seller and ask how much it would cost to send the item insured to you. If they decline to answer or won't insure it don't bid.

I had a person bid on a item then when they won I told them the postage they refused to pay. Now considering it was on sale world wide and this was clearly displayed on the item description. Not only had I stated that but I also stated that as such I could not give shipping costs until the auction had finished. With regards to the location this is automatically displayed in the item details automatically by Ebay.

There is a proceedure for this which is to contact Ebay, they will then contact the buyer as it clearly tells him that when he bids he is entering a legally binding contract. After 5 days I offered it to the last but one bidder who bought the item. If they had not done so Ebay would have paid me the money and then started proceedures to reclaim from the buyer.

Negative feeback is not a real problem because if you get in first the reply from the othe person will show them up for what they really are. All you have to say is "Arrived broken, badly packed" and nothing else, there is no logical answer, if they get abusive Ebay will pull the reply.

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[quote]To be honest it's six and two threes with broken/damaged goods. My wife offers a 5 days buy back if not satisfied and insures all her items that are sold. The cost of course is borne by the buyer but ...[/quote]

I had a buyer, who did not acknowledge any of five emails until three weeks after she won the item which I was selling. Meantime, I had offered it to the "second chance" bidder, who accepted, and then the original buyer wrote saying that she had been unwell. Checked her details, and found that while she was "unwell" she had bought and paid for three other items. By that time I had given her  a negative feedback. Later, bidder number two retracted, bidder number one paid and I despatched the item, offering to retract the negative feedback. That was just over a week ago, and I have heard nothing since.

I am now expecting a negative feedback from the buyer, but what the heck. It's complicated, isn't it, but it's the first bad experience in around 100 eBay transactions.

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I bought a graphics card from a German seller. To cut a long story short, my order accidently went for 2 separate orders for the same card. The guy had everything automated, including a third party to process the order and all his emails. I notified him and the company 3 or 4 times, no reply. Went through with the purchase of one card and was happy with it - sent him positive feedback, thinking it over. Then I started getting warnings about not paying for the other card, emailed him again, no reply, then Ebay said I risked some sort of punishment, I forget what it was called, I appealed to them, all there responses were automated, and the result was .......I got a discredit from Ebay and the guy gave me negative feedback - which wiped me out as I only had two feedbacks, the German guy had thousands. I guess Ebays' decision was automated too.
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Fumanzoku - that sounds complex and I couldn't sort out a hic cup like that in another language, however luckily I have friends more fluent who help if I get stuck.

My worse experience was winning a Quimper plate by a particular artist (Laget) which was a fairly 'good buy'. The seller posted it with 1 sheet of cardboard round it and then had the nerve to say I hadn't asked for insurance when I complained it was broken, my reply to that was that in France to claim on insurance you have to prove that your packing was not to blame for the breakage......I got my refund !

I well remember the dissapointment as it was a really nice plate from about the 1930s, it had survived all those years and I felt quite unreasonably affronted that someone had been so careless with it!

Sadly the estimate for restoration was more than the value of the plate, but it will make a wonderful mosiac one day !

Athene - I haven't ebayed for a while - I really must get back to it !!

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I can’t believe the arrogance of some people on this Forum. Do they honestly believe that because they speak French, that gives them a god given right to live in France?

 

There seems to be lot of generalising by the “last days of the Raj” set about people moving to France who don’t speak the language. You can’t judge everyone, by a few bad examples.

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You couldn't be more wrong with your 'last days of the Raj' analogy.   The colonials in India was didn't integrate with the local population (they used them as servants) and in most cases didn't speak the local language.   No-one has the right to live anywhere else just because they can speak a language - but if people choose to go another country, they should make an effort to integrate and be accepted by others.   I'm sure that most people do, if only because it's much more satisfying to be able to communicate.  But being able to make a simple phone call or write a cheque without assistance after 10 months of living full-time in a country is just not trying.

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[quote]I can’t believe the arrogance of some people on this Forum. Do they honestly believe that because they speak French, that gives them a god given right to live in France ?

You have completely missed the point.

I came to France several years ago and did not speak French. There was a posting well before your time and since lost due to the change in forum software where a person asked about moving here and the fact that they did not speak French and did the members think it would cause a problem.

My reply was along the lines of the fact I didn't speak French and that I saw no reason why I should bother to and I had moved here. I was taken to task and was somewhat arrogant in my replies. If I was asked the same question today or saw the same post now my answer would be different. You cannot live and work in a country if you don't speak any of their language. By that I mean the ability to even make civil comments like good morning, yes, no, I am sorry I only speak a little of your language.

France, unlike the UK, does not provide the translation services that you can get in hospitals, tax offices etc. If you can't speak the language it is for you to sort it out at your expence. The problem lies particularily in France with beurocracy. If you can't understand what it being said you can get in to a lot of trouble. I have seen this at first hand where people have nearly had their house taken away from them or have had to sell up and move back to the UK.

So no you don't have to speak French to move here but without it you can end up with all sorts of problems and there is no way you can reap the beifits of moving here (unless you are a hermit with your head in the sand).

As to the bit about the English Raj I am at a loss, I must be thick because I really don't know where you are coming from with that statement.

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