Abstract
From the 13th of May to the 4th of August, I was in Bristol, a town from the South West of England. From the beginning, I knew that I wanted to go to England because it is the nearest country to learn English and also because I was interested to discover its culture its system a little more. My strategy to find a work placement was to choose the city before the company. I really did not want to be in the countryside, far from the city centre. London was the first town which attracted my attention, most of all thanks to its potential regarding companies. After a few researches about accommodation and the cost of life, I changed my mind because it was really expensive. I chose Bristol because it is one of the biggest cities of England and also because a lot of people who have been there were pleased about their stay.
I heard about OXFAM GB in the IUP because there was an offer in an Oxfam shop in Oxford. I decided to apply to Oxfam in Bristol: I went to the Oxfam website and found several Oxfam shops in Bristol. I sent an e-mail to all of them, explaining why I wanted to work in Oxfam. Two managers of two different shops in the same street replied because they were interested in my application. I had to choose between a bookshop and a more general shop (selling clothing, “bric-a-brac”, fair trade food…)
Extract
[...] It is frequent that people ask questions about an item, the shipping costs or about payments methods. That is why messages have to be checked everyday during our listings. We believe that, to take advantage of this service and be as much professional as we can, we have to enforce ourselves to answer promptly to every enquiry and as detailed as possible. There is also an interesting option which allows making our answers visible to everybody on the listing, so that all potential buyers can see them and be informed. [...]
[...] - Review and submit The final stage of an eBay listing is 'Review and Submit Listing' which allows looking over the description as it will appear to the customers, before confirming the listing by clicking 'Submit'. It often allows realising when we have made mistakes, forgotten details or when our pictures are not suitable. Here are the most important things to check before submitting the listing: ? the item is 'eBay for charity' selecting 'Oxfam GB' and donating 100% of the sale ? the Oxfam interests are clearly explained ? the item is available worldwide ? the PayPal e-mail address matches the Oxfam bank account ? [...]
[...] Afterwards, we sent back the cheque with the parcel. ? Refund It has never happened that buyers were not satisfied with the item and claimed their money back, but it is a thing that we can expect. We remind readers that we offer a refund policy in the only case that the item was misrepresented. So if there would be a problem of taste or simply that they changed their mind, we would have explained to them that we would not be responsible for this. [...]
[...] After a lot of researches, we knew that it was an exceptional donation. At the beginning, we decided to employ the first pricing strategy, putting the starting price to £99.99, which was the minimum we would accept for it. After a few days, we saw that many people were watching the item, proving a big interest, but that nobody bid. So we decided to experiment with a new strategy, using the 'reserve price', which is another eBay paying option. In fact, we decreased the starting price to the minimum, £0.99, but we put a reserve price of £200. [...]
[...] It presents exactly the same functionalities as the original one and also offers additional services like extra fonts, new colours and refined listing options. My manager was used to use the original form for her personal using but, even if eBay still gives the possibility to use the ancient form, I preferred to begin with the new one. It turned out that it was not really ready to be used, because we met some problems with it, that my manager never met with the original one. [...]
