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FREQUENTY ASKED QUESTIONS What is Bear Pile? Bear Pile is a website dedicated to the world of adult bear collecting where artists and collectors alike can advertise new or used bears and bear-related items for sale. The various sections are easy to navigate and show the available bears under headings including Orphans and Just Born. Those looking to adopt a bear can pose questions or place an order directly with the artists or collectors. How many bears will I sell on Bear Pile? This question is impossible to answer as it is different for everyone and depends on what level of membership you purchase, how many bears you have listed, your quality and style of work, your prices, demand for your products, the competition and timing of catching the right buyer at the right time. That said Bear Pile has over 3000 visitors a day to the site and many transactions take place daily. To give you an idea of how well the system does you can look on the Adopted page and see some of the artists the have recently sold their items on the system. Also, if you are still unsure if you want to risk advertising on Bear Pile, you could always email a few of the current artists on the system and ask them their opinion of how well the system works. I am not a store or bear artist, but a collector. Can I sell on Bear Pile? Yes. Bear postings will show under the Orphans section if they are One-Of-A-Kind. Your bear listings will also show in your own private bear pile gallery (https://bearpile.com/yourname) and one bear a day will also be listed in the Just Listed Section on the front page. If you would like additional promotion for your bears you can also purchase credits to post your bears under the Showcased Bears section. What is the Orphans section all about? The orphans section is where a collector (not the artist of the bear) can list their bears for sale. Items listed in this section are displayed in the order of listing with the newest ones being shown first. Members can list one new orphan bear each 24 hour period (which enables all members to get good exposure on the page). What is the Showcased Bears section all about? Bears listed in this section are bears that all have been hand-picked by their owners to be displayed in this section at the cost of 1 credit ($1 USD). This section is a way for members to get additional exposure above and beyond what a normal or featured artist Bear Pile membership provides for. What is the Bears for Adoption section all about? The Bears for Adoption section contains one bear from each artist or collector that is currently a member on Bear Pile. These include new bears that are made by the artists as well as those who have come from the Orphans section and remain available from collectors. Bears are rotated in this section daily for each member of Bear Pile. How do I sign up to sell on Bear Pile? To sign up, Click the 'Create your Shop' button in the upper right hand corner of the page and follow the instructions for signing up. Once you have signed up you can then start adding your bears to the site which will instantly appear in your Bear Pile gallery and on other sections of the site (one per 24 hours). MEMBERSHIP QUESTIONS How do I cancel my membership? There is no need to give any notice or do anything to cancel your membership. You simply do not renew and your membership will become inactive and will be considered "cancelled.". Your account will still exist on the system, just it will not be active for the public to see (and buy) your bears. If you ever decide to renew your membership or want to sell bears again, just pay the membership fee and your account will become active again. If I pay for 1 month the membership is from the 1st till the 30-31st of a month, or it's 30 days? It is 30 days from the day you sign up. So if you sign up on Aug 25th, it will go till Sept 24 (which is 30 days later) Will I be auto billed with Bear Pile? We currently do not any sort of auto billing option set up with Bear Pile. Once your membership expires you will have to manually renew your membership if you wish to continue to have your bears actively showing on Bear Pile. YOUR FIRST SALE I received and order for a Bear, what do I do next? When you receive an e-mail from Bear Pile confirming an order for a particular bear you should sign into Bear Pile and update the status of the bear to 'Reserved' . If you are not using the PayPal instant payment option (which is offered to you when you post the bear), you should send the buyer an invoice (via email or via PayPal) for the total amount including postage costs with payment instruction. Once you have been paid, you should change the status of the bear to Adopted (and consider moving the bear to an Adopted Category that you have created in your account) and ship out the bear to the customer. After you have changed the status of the bear to Adopted the bear will show in the 'Adopted' section of Bear Pile. Should I ship before I get paid? For your own protection do not ship your bear out until you have been paid in full and any funds such as checks (or e-checks) have cleared PAYMENTS FOR ITEMS The customer wishes to pay with Pay Pal. Do I have to link up my Pay Pal account to Bear Pile? You don't need to link your Bear Pile and PayPal account. To collect payment from the buyer you just need to give the buyer your PayPal email address and tell them to send you the amount including shipping costs or tell them how they can pay you otherwise. But most sellers do link up their paypal accounts to make it quick and easy for the buyer to pay you at the time of checkout. Do the payments I receive via PayPal clear immediately so that I can access the money right away or are some restrictions in time ( as on Ebay )? All payments via Bear Pile are done outside of bear pile directly between the buyer and seller. We offer the option of allowing you to hook up your PayPal account to your Bear Pile account so that payments can be made immediately at checkout on Bear Pile, but these payments are not done through Bear Pile so we have no control on how quickly funds are deposited into your PayPal account. All funds will sent via PayPal will be deposited into your account depending on the type of paypal payments you allow and/or how the buyer has paid. Often times payments are deposited instantly, but if, for example, the buyer has paid you with an e-check, it could take up to 1-2 weeks to clear. It is up to you to set your PayPal settings for the kinds of payments you allow and/or that you accept from a buyer. How are buyers and/or sellers protected from fraud? All transactions take place directly between buyer and seller and each party is responsible for ensuring the other party is trustworthy. That said, Bear Pile does not knowingly allow fraudulent sellers to sell on Bear Pile and such sellers found to be committing fraud are removed and banned from the system. Also, PayPal offer fraud protection and transaction dispute services. Therefore it is recommended that all payments be done via PayPal to protect yourself as much as possible. LISTING QUESTIONS On Bear Pile can you choose a selling price, a reserved price, can buyers come with their own offers? Our system is set sale pricing, so there are no auctions on Bear Pile. If as a seller, you choose to set up accepting direct payments on your items via PayPal, a buyer can not make an offer, they can only pay the amount you have it listed for. But it is always possible for a buyer to contact you via the system and make you an offer or to ask you questions if they wish to. What are the guidelines for adding bears that were previously listed on Bear Pile? All bears that you post will be shown in your Bear Pile gallery and show in the Bears for Adoption section. If a bear has been listed previously on Bear Pile (by yourself) it however will not be shown again in at the top of the main sections of the site (i.e., Just Listed, Orphans, or Bear Related, etc). This keeps the listings on Bear Pile fresh and also keeps members from re-listing bears to gain extra exposure for their listings which would not be fair to other Bear Pile members. How do you block certain countries from ordering? Currently there is no way to select on the system to avoid shipping to a certain country. The best work-around way to accomplish this would be to state in your shipping information area that you don't ship to which ever countries you don't want to ship to, and follow up by not putting down a shipping price for those countries in the shipping grid. If you do this, they will still be able to order from you (if they don't read your shipping information section), but it will not result in an instant PayPal payment to you, nor will the item being marked as reserved. You can then simply tell the would-be buyer that you don't ship to their country and decline them. |
