The UPS Store PLUS The eBay Drop-Off Store Equals…?

(FranchisePick.Com) In the 70’s, a classic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups commercial showed a nun and a normal guy walking briskly, happily, and unknowingly toward a streetcorner collision. Bizarrely (in retrospect), one of them was eating out of a jar of peanut butter and the other was eating a chocolate bar. Hilarity ensued when they inadvertently mixed those two great tastes (You got chocolate in my peanut butter! You got peanut butter on my chocolate!).

A great advertising slogan was born (”Two great tastes that taste great together”) and Reese’s became* the bestselling candy bar in the U.S. … a title it still holds.

Could The UPS Store and eBay auction service Receller be on another such happy collision course? Will “Two Dysfunctional Concepts That Function Great Together” be the next great ad slogan of our time?

“Two Dysfunctional Concepts That Function Great Together”
Franchise owners of The UPS Store claim that they were duped into buying a concept that saddles them with a shipping store concept that doesn’t make money for anyone except their namesake shipping giant. Many franchisees are irate, and are suing said shipping giant (UPS).

Franchise owners of various “eBay drop-off store” franchises, including industry leader iSold It, are fighting for their survival. iSold It has publicly acknowledged that its stores are unprofitable, failing and that the parent company itself could be down the tubes soon. Industry sites such as AmITheOnlyOne.Org and Auctionbytes have questioned the viability of the underlying concept itself.

Now AuctionBytes Ina Steiner reports (UPS – They Did It Again: UPS Stores Revisits eBay Drop-Off Model) the The UPS Store and Receller are testing an eBay consignment model.

According to Steiner’s article:

A search on eBay for List-Pack-Ship in “Title & Description” reveals auctions from List-Pack-Ship, a service with “several retail locations in the Chicago-land area at which you can sell your items on eBay using the easy List-Pack-Ship service.” The About Me page for “listpackship5608″ shows a list of 20 UPS Stores that are participating in the service.

Receller launched a couple of years ago as a service to help consumers sell items on eBay. Consumers could send pictures of items to Receller, and a Receller “Listing Coach” would call and guide them through the listing of the item using the consumer’s own eBay account. Receller charged $9.95 per listing.

How would combining a The UPS Store and Receller work? While Steiner’s calls hadn’t been returned, she guesses a consumer might drop off an item at a UPS Store location. The store staff would take the pictures and send them to Receller, who would list the item using List-Pack-Ship User IDs. Apparently.

The UPS Stores had tried the eBay drop-off model by partnering with AuctionDrop. The UPS Stores sent customer’s items to AuctionDrop’s centralized processing center where it would be listed on eBay. The UPS Store and AuctionDrop, apparently, were not two great tastes that tasted great together. (Know the details? Leave a comment.)

With this new model, says Steiner, “it looks like the item stays in the UPS Store – but still has the advantage of a centralized listing service.”

She concludes: “It’s not clear which eBay drop-off store model may be the winner – if there is one. But what is clear is that companies can’t stop trying to make it work.”

Related Stories:
Will EasySale Reinvent the eBay Drop-Off Store Concept?
Will Auctioning4U Save the eBay Drop Off Franchise?
An Open Letter to iSold It Franchisees from CEO Ken Sully
Is iSoldit a Great Franchise Opportunity?

GOT AN OPINION ABOUT THE UPS STORE, EBAY DROP-OFF STORES, RECELLER OR ALL OF THE ABOVE? SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: LEAVE A COMMENT.

* Not sure if that’s when Reese’s became #1, and I’m out of time to waste on this tenuous metaphor.

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