**EDITED ON 12/28/12!**
LBB has changed so much, this may not be 100% accurate at this time. I will be trying out the new changes on the site and updating accordingly in the near future!
LBB has changed so much, this may not be 100% accurate at this time. I will be trying out the new changes on the site and updating accordingly in the near future!
After weeks of answering pretttty much the same questions every day, several times a day, via chat, I thought it would be a good idea to make an unofficial FAQ for LBB. :) Hopefully you already read this entry...this one will be to answer all those darn questions that always pop up.
So let's begin!!
Q: When are new items released on the site?
A: There are new items put out frequently! The first of the month at 10am PST is the biggest release of new items, and it is when the most people open their bag, since monthly subscribers are eligible to pick their bag for the month. (NOTE: you can pick your bag BEFORE the month starts as well and have it count for that month so long as it ships on or after the first!)
There are also new products on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays of each week at 10am PST. They releases have a preview on Facebook on the LBB page the day before at 6pm PST.
Q: I want to open a bag. What do I pick??
A: There are several ways to approach picking your first item, and it really comes down to your comfort and experience level with LBB. Essentially, it breaks down to these two ideas:
1. Pick something you love and stick with it.
This is for the inexperienced, or if there is just something you can't live without and there aren't that many available. If you're new and you love a handbag, just make that bag your first pick and play around with the extra items. This way, you are sure to end up with something you love and a LBB that's worth the $50+ you paid for it!
2. Pick something everyone ELSE loves and trade it for multiple items/awesomeness.
Hopefully, by this point you have been watching the news feed for awhile (or in my case, for several days). You can tell what trades well, what people really like, and if you jumped on chat, you can find out what people are on the hunt for. What is important here is to make sure you trade WHILE THE ITEM IS HOT. A recent example is the $58 gold Koret shimmer bag...when it first came out a few weeks ago, it was trading as high as 4 items or $80+ handbags. A week later, you could get it for a decent 2 item or even something around the same value. Sure, some things go up in value, but most things drop because people are wanting the newest and hottest things. Strike while the iron is hot!
There are also a few extra factors that determine what I pick and when I pick. Once you make something your pick, you can refresh the screen to get a rough idea of what else they are putting in your bag. This changes depending on what is available in the gallery, so if you don't like what they are putting in there, keep trying throughout the day to see if starting bags improve. BUT. If there is only one of that must-have hot item, don't let someone beat you to it! Pay attention to the countdown of how many items are left. :)
Q: Okay, my bag is open! Now what??
A: Now its time to check out and make offers!
Checking offers: At this point, I only take really good offers. You should be able to tell by now what is considered "good" if you have been diligently following the news feed. If someone offers you a multi item trade and it seems like a good one, take it. (A multi being where someone offers you more than one item for your one item.) Always better to have multiple items moving up than sitting and waiting for the ONE good item you want. You can always trade those 2 items for what you really want later anyway.
Making offers: When you first open, do not make multi item offers!! I don't put multiple item offers on anything until at least day 4, since I would rather build up my bag to more items first, then get what I want. Of course, if there is only one of something you like, it may be better to get it quick just in case the person who has it is shipping soon...but if there are plenty of what I like, then I try to wait.
Q: What is the "buy" option? (Add to my bag for $xx)
A: Its exactly what it sounds like, you can buy items for usually half the retail value to add to your bag. Usually, people buy these items to add to their bag when the items are very difficult to trade for or if the item is not plentiful in the trading gallery. Sometimes though, they have a sale that heavily discounts the older stock and then sometimes those are worth adding to your bag to help you trade for things you want! The sale items do go quickly, though, so if you see something you want on sale snatch it up. :) I saw $50 items going for $10 in real-life money (which is, of course, very different from LBB money).
Q: HOW do you have so many items?!
A: Easy - I started with either return credit or referral credit. The blind items added to your bag when you start with credit change drastically depending on stock, btw, so definitely refresh your bag frequently. Or I may have gifted to myself (see Gifting Q:). Then its just a matter of taking multi-trades until I have a lot to work with.
Please note: at the beginning of the month, trading dynamics are somewhat predictable, where people who open want to get good multis....so sometimes opening right on the first is NOT the best way to go. I like to open before to build up my bag so I can make offers on the new things I like. But to each their own!
Q: Should I take this offer??
A: LBB is a lot of instinct. If it seems like a good thing and you know the approximate trading value of an item (vs it retail value, which can be very different), then by all means, take the trade. Asking on the chat usually means you will miss the offer if its a good one! Offers are sniped allll the time. I try not to think about it too much, honestly. I believe in trading fearlessly! Everything can trade if you put the offers out there. Everything. So even if the trade isn't quite as good as I thought, at least I learned something. The more items that come through your bag, the better a picture you have on how well something trades.
Q: I placed an offer I don't want to make by mistake! Help!/ How many of an item are there?
A: These two questions can be answered together. On your "My Bag" page, if you click the item you are offering and scroll down, you can see all the offers you have made with that item. There, you can cancel your offer, as well as see how many items there are available for trade. You can also see how many people have passed on your offer. Sometimes, it is a good idea to cancel offers (that are decent!) and resend the offer. You never know if someone passed on it accidentally. Doing this at least once a day is recommended...once every 10 minutes, not so much.
Q: Why don't people pass on my offers!!? It drives me crazy, I don't know if they like it or not.
A: There is a VERY good reason why some people won't pass on your offer. If you cancel out alllll the offers on something you are absolutely sure you are going to keep, and then you get a SECOND of that same item, you won't be able to see any of the offers you had already passed on. This happens all the time to me, I almost always have 2 of the same item in my LBB. Therefore, I only cancel offers that I would never accept...anything reasonable stays. :)
Q: Oh no! I have 2 of the same item. Does that mean I'll lose both if I try to trade it?
A: Short answer: no. You can not accidentally trade both away when you make offers. If you make offers with an item you have 2 of, the offers DO show up for each item, but when one of the items trades, the offers you put out disappear. This way, you only trade one. This is great if you want to keep one, but not so great if you want to trade them both, since this means you have to put out all new offers again, haha.
Q: Does anyone know how big/red/shiny/well-made this is IRL? (in real life)
A: You can always check the makeuptalk LBB discussions under the Picture thread to see if someone has any IRL pics, or try to google the item. If its a bag try to find a picture of someone carrying it. LBB is notorious now for having pictures that are not quite representative of the actual item's color or size, so some extra side research is never remiss. The other thing I do is I keep a ruler next to my computer to give myself a rough idea of how large or long something might be. :)
Q: What is this gifting I keep hearing about?
A: I just tried this out for the first time myself, but basically gifting is getting an additional week of trading for $5. It was originally put in place so that you could send an item or two to a friend to have them try out the site for just the $5 fee, but people used it to extend their trading time. It is especially useful if you have so many items (in my case, 25 items) that you can't manage to trade them all for things you love, or there just aren't enough things you love on the site. I ended up shipping just 6 things to me and then gifting the other 19 items to myself so that I can for another week at a later time of my own choosing. LBB actually gives you about 18 months (!!) to open your gift, so there's no rush.
**Gifting may be unavailable soon, LBB may instead implement a fee to extend trading!! Gifts that have already send will still be openable within the 18 month expiration**
Q: But how do I gift myself?
A: Easy peasy. You click the "gift my items" button on your "my bag" page (near the ship your bag button) and then select the items you want to gift. Then you fill out the name and the email of the account you want it sent to. You can send it to the current account you're trading with if you want. Once you gift, you will be charged for your bag plus the additional $5 for your gift. This $5 pays for shipping for your gift. That means if you choose to open your gift on its own later, it will be free. You already paid the $5.
You can also add the gift to an open bag. What you want to do HERE is make sure the bag you want to add it to is open FIRST. That means picking your first item and opening the bag. Then you can click the email that contains your gift and redeem your gift to add it to the open bag. You CAN NOT add a LBB to a gift. You can only add a gift to a LBB. Hopefully that makes sense! It can get extra complicated if you have multiple accounts, I really think sticking with one account at a time is the way to go so that you don't accidentally gift to the wrong account!
Q: The chat drives me crazy sometimes. How can I make the most of it?
A: First off, pop the chat out of the item page!! In the top-right corner there is a small white icon (almost invisible on the light grey, right?) Click that and the chat becomes its own window. When you go to log in, if you choose to be a guest, you can change your user name. Click the "guest ##" and type in whatever you want to be called. Much nicer to be called your name than Guest 519.
A big thing people use the chat for is to show their profile so that others can see what you have to trade. To do that, you want to hover your cursor over "Connect" and click "My Profile" from the drop down. Once that window is open, copy and paste your link, which should look something like this: http://www.littleblackbag.com/user/profile/138494 (this is my profile).
When you have an item and you would like something specific or a multi-item trade, it helps to not be TOO specific in your request. Saying you have bag A and you would ONLY accept bag B + item C can discourage other people from putting offers on your item...which may be even better than what you're asking for! ONLY holding out for specific items means you could be waiting a very long time for someone to meet your request. That is time you could be spending trading a decent multi into the item you want. You never know what the person who has the item you want may want....some people want a bag for a bag, some people want to split their bag into several smaller items.
If you ask about how something is doing, it is nice to thank the person who helps you. Niceties go a very long way. It is also nice to return the favor and help people who are wondering about how an item is trading or how many are left or what is offered on it. Looking out for your fellow chat members can be very beneficial, they will help you find items you want and give you advice on your trades. Make friends!
Finally, people have a tendency to act...less appropriately than they would in real life. Be polite on the chat to other traders. There are community mods who can block you, and if people associate your poor chat behavior with your bag, they will be less willing to accept your trades. In general, pushy trading behavior is not appreciated. The more you push your item onto the others, the more people will resist, especially if its trading value is already questionable. Pressuring people makes them want to say no, don't get too used carsalesman-y in the chat. :)
Q: My bag is GREAT! I have everything I want...but I still have 4 days left. Should I ship?
A: My answer will always be no. Always. You never know what will be released between the time you open and the time you close. A full week of trading means you will see all 3 releases (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday). I'd rather wait and see what comes out instead of having to open a whole new bag.
Q: I received my LBB and I don't like an item/it is damaged. :( What can I do?
A: If you don't like an item and you would like to return it, you can ship it back to LBB and get a return credit for it. Fill out the back side of the packing slip and affix the return label on your box/envelope. YOU are responsible for any return postage for items you don't like. I have only returned small jewelry pieces via USPS to LBB for credit, which works out to less than $2 plus the cost of a bubble envelope. So not bad at all! I use my Paypal multi-order shipping to print my shipping labels, and a small scale to weigh it.
If the item is damaged, be sure to take pictures of the damage and then email them to LBB with information about your shipment (order number, or just use the email associated with your account). I have had very good customer service experiences with their team and they will offer you credit or a coupon code for your next bag, depending on the severity of the damage.
Minor damage is sometimes fixable, as well! I love "frankensteining" my jewelry and it comes in handy if I'm missing a jump ring or something is a little bent. Also, sometimes your bag may have small black smudges on it....most of the time, it is glue from the assembly and you can very gently remove it with a kneaded eraser. I just lightly rub/lift the smudges off and the bag will look much better.
To be successful on LBB, be patient and have good luck and timing! I hope this FAQ was helpful and would love any feedback/additional comments you may have to add. :) Good luck trading! Also, please consider using my referral link if you're new to LBB! And share this FAQ. :)
