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TOBLER GLASS CREATIONS
Thank you for looking in on my auctions! Many people email me with questions and I always take the time to reply as thoroughly as possible. Since I often get no acknowledgement of my efforts, I decided to use this page to answer some FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS.
DO YOU HAVE A WEBSITE? - Yes! Please visit my work at http://ToblerGlassCreations.com or http://ToblerGlass.com or http://WendyTobler.com
ATTENTION FELLOW SELLERS: As you know, as of May 19, 2008, we are no longer allowed to leave neutral or negative feedback for buyers, no matter what they’ve done to us. HOWEVER, please check out the website, http://afterthegavel.com. This site is for sellers only and allows us to leave negative or neutral feedback for buyers. Negs and neuts are all we can leave, thus, this site provides a quick reference for buyers with bad performances.
In addition, the website http://toolhaus.org lets you see all the negative and neutral feedbacks of any eBay registered user, saving you from having to sift through all the positives. Unlike afterthegavel.com which gets its feedbacks from sellers who've registered with them, toolhaus.org gets its info directly from eBay, so everyone's on there.
To address the new problem of positive-feedback-only, toolhaus also gives you the option of seeing FALSE POSITIVES. False positives are what sellers are proposing to leave for non paying bidders (NPBs) or other bad apples. You do this by starting your comment with the captitalized words FALSE POSITIVE, NPB, or NON PAYING BIDDER. Thus, although eBay will count it as a positive, your negative feedback will be eye-catching. By the way, toolhaus.org has been around for awhile and is a great service.
WHY WON'T YOU ANSWER MY EMAILS? - I'm TRYING, but eBay won't let me!!! If you've written me through eBay, you MUST make sure that I have YOUR email addy. If you don't UNcheck the box which says your addy will be kept secret from me, I'll get your email with eBay's BLASTED "UseTheYellowButton@ebay.com" as the only return address. This is a DEAD END address if I hit Reply. It doesn't bounce back to me, nor does it go to you. How lovely of eBay to let us both think that we're refusing to reply to eachother!
Moreover, I CANNOT REPLY to you even if I DO click on eBay's infuriating "yellow button" because their INSANE "verification code" that I must copy and submit DOESN'T WORK for either my Netscape OR Internet Explorer browser. I can sit here copying new code after new code after new code and eBay will never submit my email to you. So, either UNCHECK THAT DAMNED BOX or, better yet, just write me directly at w*tobler@tobler*glass.com (remove both asterisks).
EBAY'S "FAVORITE SELLERS" FUNCTION IS A MESS!: If you watch my auctions by using eBay's "Add to Favorite Seller's" link, DON'T rely on it! It's just one more function of theirs that regularly goes wrong (and ruins my sales in the process). My customers often tell me that my listings on their favorite sellers page show up as having been ended early, as in, I've pulled them all, which is NOT the case, or they don't show up at all, or they show my ended auctions as being my currently running ones, etc, etc! Writing eBay about it always proves futile. So PLEASE, just bookmark my seller's list yourself or at least do so as an additional reference to eBay's problem-laden "service"!
EBAY'S SELLER LIST PAGE WITH GALLERY PHOTOS IS UNDEPENDABLE PLEASE bookmark my TEXT ONLY seller list page. That's the only page that comes up the second my auctions begin. The list with thumbnail photos is a search result and often lags behind my auctions, thus, it occasionally says I have nothing for sale when I DO!
WHO ARE YOU? - I'm a middle aged, artistic, animal loving farmwife (with a Bachelor's Degree in Animal Science from Cornell University) who discovered lampworking by accident on eBay in 1999. At that time, only a handful of ladies were selling their lampworked beads in what was then eBay's only bead category and which included mostly commercial strands (wow, how we've grown!). I bought one book (Cindy Jenkins' "Making Glass Beads" - still one of the very best!) and found a local stained glass shop owner who showed me how to make a simple round bead, pull basic stringers, and handle a torch without blowing up the farm. That 4-hour afternoon was my only instruction, and she remains the only other lampworker I've ever met in person! I've never been to a bead show and I'm completely self-taught.
I'm very honored to say that my work has been featured in several books and magazines, and I'm regularly asked to teach in studios throughout the United States and Canada.
WHAT IS LAMPWORKING? - It's a centuries-old term for working hot glass in a torch, which, back then, was called a lamp. Most people think of what we do as glassblowing, but that's an incorrect term unless you literally blow air (through a long tube) into your piece to make it hollow. None of my work is hollow. It's all solid glass, properly annealed in a 970F degree kiln and ramped down over several hours by a computerized instrument which I've programmed to best release the stress in my particular type of glass.
DO YOU USE MOLDS? - I'm always flattered when someone asks if I use molds to make my sculptural pieces. The answer is absolutely not. I fashion each piece completely freehand in the torch. I'm self-taught and my designs are my own. Even my V-beads and U-beads, which I make with the use of a tool that I designed, are created freehand.
CAN I BUY YOUR "TOBLER TRIANGLE" LAMPWORKER'S TOOL? - Yes! I'm now selling it for the first time since I designed it in 1999, when I did sell a few. Please see my auctions or my website's V-Bead page.
WHAT'S A MANDREL HOLE? - I work with soda lime glass, which is usually referred to as soft glass (as opposed to borosilicate or hard glass) because it's very droopy when molten and difficult to use for sculptural pieces. Consequently, it's necessary to build my work on a skinny stainless steel stick, called a mandrel, which I remove from my bead after the piece comes out of my kiln the next day (with careful wrenching and followed by reaming out the bead release with a diamond paved file). The resulting channel is what defines a piece as a bead, whether it's a simple round shape or an elaborate sculpture. And, like any bead, it allows the item to be strung with cord or wire and hung for display or, of course, worn as jewelry, although many of my customers display my free-standing pieces in curio cabinets.
My paperweight style buttons don't have a mandrel hole, but my sculptural buttons do. However, for buttons, I use an extremely thin mandrel and I build the button off the end of it, so the hole doesn't go all the way through. It's only at the bottom and it's not visible from the front.
ARE THESE PAINTED GLASS? - No, I never paint my glass. Every color you see is the glass itself.
DO YOU TAKE SPECIAL REQUESTS? - Yes and no. I don't accept private orders because forced work takes all the fun out of what I do. However, I do take everyone's requests into serious consideration for making and listing on eBay. I welcome hearing what you'd like me to make, so please feel free to email me at w*tobler@tobler*glass.com (remove both asterisks!).
IMPORTANT: I do have one request in return for making your bead. I'm not talking about when folks give me much appreciated, general new ideas; I'm referring to specific requests. PLEASE, IF YOU LIKE WHAT I'VE MADE, HAVE THE COURTESY TO BID ON IT BEFORE THE LAST MOMENTS OF THE AUCTION. I've spent considerable time and effort on your behalf, and I've started the bidding at a far lower price than I would've charged for a private sale. Thus, to watch my labors stagnate all week without a bid, having to worry if you didn't like what I made or if you're going to email me after the auction to complain that you weren't home in time, that your computer booted up too slowly, that your internet connection was too slow, etc, makes me extremely grumpy! If you enjoy the thrill of last minute bidding, then please just place your early bid without a proxy. If others bid during the week, you can still have your fun on Sunday night bidding again. And please don't complain that bidding early only raises the price. That's NOT true unless you bid with a proxy. I'm not trying to invoke a bid war, I'm only asking that you respect me enough not to torture me all week with a bidless bead that I made at your request.
I WANT A BEAD IMMEDIATELY. WHY WON'T YOU LIST IT AS A BUY-IT-NOW? - I only run true auctions, and they’re always for seven days. While I truly appreciate the “name your price” offers that I receive, it does no good to threaten me when I refuse to make a bead to sell privately, as a Buy-It-Now item, or as a one day auction. Here’s why my selling policy is staunch:
I lampwork for fun and I have no assistants. I’m not a factory and I can only make a very few items each week. eBay is my venue to show my work to the world. This exposure is my foremost concern and it's why I’m not interested in laboring over an item only to have it disappear from eBay within moments of my listing it. I have cherished fans who tell me they enjoy watching my work every week, and, of course, I'm always hoping to catch the eye of as many new people as possible. Therefore, I want my work to have an entire week to be viewed.
WOULD YOU MAKE A DONATION BEAD FOR MY ORGANIZATION'S UPCOMING FUND RAISER? - Although I'm always very flattered to receive these requests, usually from dog and horse breed associations, I'm sorry, but I no longer will accept them for two reasons. First, I don't have enough time to fulfill them. But, in addition, I've discovered too often after the alleged event was to have taken place, that my bead, which cost me time and money, was neither auctioned nor raffled as promised, but instead kept for someone's personal use.
I'D LIKE TO SELL YOUR WORK IN MY STORE. WHAT ARE YOUR WHOLESALE PRICES? - My wholesale prices are my starting bids. My sculpturals take me so long to make that I couldn't possibly crank them out in numbers necessary to fill a retailer's order!
HOW LONG DO YOUR PIECES TAKE TO MAKE? - Most of my sculpturals take 70-95 minutes of uninterrupted concentration in the torch, with a rare project taking as long as 2 1/2 hours, plus 20-30 minutes beforehand for pulling my necessary stringers. Add to that my pre-torch design time or subject research time and another 20-30 minutes for post-kiln procedures and you've got an idea of how much goes into every piece that I make. Even my buttons average nearly an hour because they're as detailed as my full sized beads, which is difficult to accomplish.
BIDDING ON MY AUCTIONS - If you see something you like on auction, please remember that I can never exactly reproduce another one. So, if you like it, please bid on it. If you think the bidding is going too high, remember that each piece is a unique work of art which takes me considerable time. In addition, each piece reflects the accumulation of my own money, time, and skill development in arriving at my personal style of art.
Emailing me during an auction to ask if I'll be making more of that item puts me in a spot. Please remember that I'm not just the artist, I'm the seller. I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot and essentially tell you not to bother bidding because I'll make more. If you're deciding whether or not to ask me that question after the auction's end, this may help; if the item sold quite a bit higher than my starting bid, I have the incentive to make more some day. If it didn't sell well, I have no incentive, although I may make another one out of the sheer joy of doing so when the mood strikes me again.
And, finally, when I get post-auction emails from folks who are angry about being outbid, again, remember, you're asking the seller to console you for bidding less on her work than someone else did, or for not bidding on time. PLEASE use eBay's proxy system and place your bid EARLY for the highest amount that you're willing to pay. Or, place a conservative bid, think about it during the week, and raise it with another bid if you like (although this seems like you're bidding against yourself, you will not raise the item's current bid; you will only raise your proxy). This is the only way to assure yourself of not losing out at a price that you would have been willing to pay.
HOW TO USE PAYPAL WHEN PAYING FOR MY ITEMS - Relative newbies to eBay have only known PayPal since eBay bought it from its original creators/owners, and this sometimes causes confusion with my customers who've only run across sellers who use its modern automatic payment option.
PayPal was begun as a universal electronic payment service, not as a personal tool for eBay. You used it by logging into your account via their homepage and paying your seller (who could be anyone, not just an eBay user) by going to the top of the page, using the Send Money link, and filling out the resultant screens’ fields. It was easy as pie and you were in control and knew exactly what you’d done.
After eBay’s acquisition of PayPal, they encouraged sellers to use an automatic process which leads you, the buyer, through the payment procedure directly from the ended auction, not having to know or understand what you’re doing. It’s a terrific convenience for the customer, but it’s a pain in the neck for sellers like me who have more than one option for my customers to choose from when paying via PayPal. This makes the automated process not possible for me to offer, and this confuses my newer customers who think that all sellers have to use it – it and the other umpteem services that eBay/PayPal endlessly comes up with to do our work for us, none of which I use. Some customers then send me the eBay-link email that asks for their invoice (another infuriating eBay "service" that I don't want and which only serves to further confuse my customers) even though they’ve already received my winner’s notice. All of this wastes time emailing back and forth and, if you end up paying me past my Monday noon deadline for shipment that day, you’ll lose the chance for me to ship to you right away.
Thus, when you win my auctions, you have to use PayPal all by yourself, just like we ALL did in the good old days! No Uncle eBay holding your hand and doing everything for you. You wait for me to send your winner’s notice (written and generated by ME, a real person, not an automated response from an eBay computer) with your total due and detailed instructions for using PayPal, including a clickable link to their homepage (I send within minutes of the auction’s end), and then you pay me without anybody’s help! The only skill you need is literacy.
DELIVERY CONFIRMATION MISCONCEPTIONS - My customers sometimes ask me to forego my required insurance on their packages, and buy Delivery Confirmation instead. I won’t do this because DelCon is useless. It does NOT reliably determine if the recipient did or didn’t receive his package.
When I buy from sellers who require me to pay for DelCon, I tell them that I will not honor what the PO claims was my delivery date unless the seller requires my PO to get my signature upon arrival (which, of course they won’t do). In fact, be aware that sellers who work off the USPS website can give you a DelCon number, but never ship your pkg.
DelCon is a money maker for the PO that can put sellers and buyers at each others' throats. Because the PO only scans the pkg at either the final PO or, at best, the mailbox, which, in rural areas such as mine, can be out of view of the house and subject to theft or vandalism, the PO will honestly say it delivered while the recipient may honestly say he never got it. The PO has no further obligations. Not to trace it, not to refund its value, nothing. In their own words, "The only information provided for services that confirm delivery is the date and time of delivery or attempted delivery. Delivery confirmation services do not provide tracking information for an item in route."
On the other hand, I require at least basic insurance on all of my pkgs (both as a seller and buyer) because the PO has to trace the pkg if it's not delivered, thus keeping both sender and recipient honest, and if they can't cough it up, they have to pay for it (obviously, limited by one's coverage). But, more importantly, I want that “insured” stamp or sticker on my pkgs in order to deter postal theft. Without it, the theft rate of my incoming and outgoing packages skyrockets.
In short, I require basic insurance because it's the ONLY legitimate proof that I've shipped and that my customer has received.
A Word About Me
I hope that my love for animals and nature shows in my glass art, and I thank eBay and every one of my wonderful customers for providing me with such a fun outlet for my creative impulses!
In loving memory of my fabulous Saddlebred, Thud (in photo with me aboard), who tragically died on 8-17-02.
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