Ebay Selling Hints and tips please

Be aware of the fees. IMHO there is no point in selling anything only to find that the fees and other costs mean you make a loss. Not only is there a "listing fee" there is also a "final value fee" when the item sells. Then of course fees for payments like PayPal, NoChex etc and postage not forgeting any packaging. For the UK I use a formula to calculate the postage charge: actual postage cost + =A31 rounded to the =

nearest 25p, this is for smallish items. Large/heavy would require a bit more thought.

Be aware of American bidders, if you think the Great Unwashed of the UK are dim, wait until you encounter a US e-bay bidder... You can restrict your auctions to be viewed only in UK but that still doesn't stop forgien bidders, IMHO it should.

Presentation is important. At least one good quality picture. Simple but well laid out description, not just a solid block of text. The basic HTML tags for this are easy to use, paragraph/line breaks, bulleted lists, bold, larger font etc.

Fairly sure that only people you are actually doing business with can get your address etc, you are not doing business with ordinary bidders. Even then if/when they pull your details you get told who has and I think you get theirs as well.

Take a look at the UK e-bay FAQ:

Or wander over to uk.people.consumers.ebay, though that might put you off the idea completly, but remember people only complain about the bad.

I'll second that request, I still have the residue of many years of radio collecting to dispose of.

As long as you are careful of spoof emails asking for you to do something with your account on-line, there are not many pitfalls.

We haveb been on ebay since 1998 and have had only a couple of so of auctions where the bidder hasn't paid up, and they tend to be overseas buyers.

As far as putting personal information up, you do that all the time for other things so why not ebay and PayPal.

The only thing I won't do is give our bank details to either PayPal or Ebay, we deal with them through our credit/charge cards only. That way you have at least half a chance if something goes wobbly. If you don't use CC's then you're into giving your bank details.

Being honest and open with buyers and sellers works best we have found, ducking and diving may get you a better deal one day but you'll lose out on others in the long term.

Feedback is important, we have maintained 100% on all our family accounts (Rita and Philip have their own accounts) and good communications pays off, especially if you have a problem with delivery or payment.

Overseas opportunities exist, we have bought quite a bit in Europe and USA/Oz. Delivery costs can be relatively high, but in a wider market you can often find some bargains that are not available here.

In general it has been a good experience, but you MUST be vigilant and watch out for deliberate fraud (Shill bidding is rife)

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

PTFE is into that stuff....

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

(Shill bidding is rife)

Sounding a little naive what's the above mean.

Martin Perman

Martin, I agree with Peter above, use a credit card if possible. I tend to start my auctions a good bit lower than the price I want (you can always put a reserve on) as I think this gets people interested. I always try to be honest with my listings and this shows when you get feedback from others. Make sure you select the best catagory, people will not find an engine if you put it in ceramics for example. Include as many keywords in the description, I think ebays search engine picks it up quicker. If you only want to sell to the UK only, make sure you state this in the item description. And most of all enjoy it, it`s great fun really

Cheers, MartinH

Some one has something up for sale and either uses another account to bid on that item or gets a mate to do it. A means of artificially raising the final price. If they end up "buying" their own item they may well still pretend it was a valid sale by leaving, effectively false, positive feedback.

The seller sets up another ebay account and artificially bids the price up, making sure that he (obviously!) doesn't win the auction but the price is higher than it otherwise would have been.

We have nailed a few over the years, but they are always there.

Things to look for are:

1) Low feedback although the bidder has been with ebay for a number of years. 2) Only bids on auctions from the seller that you are looking at. 3) Recently joined ebay, like the day the auction started.... 4) Has bids associated with one seller or maybe two only.

Experience will tell you what to look for, don't assume that what you see is necessarily gospel, ALWAYS query things that look a little bit strange, especially if it is an engine you are bidding for, these seem to attract some bent bidding.

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

Gentlemen, What some of you may not know is that I have never sold anything but bought plenty. Now is the time I think to sell a few things.

Martin P

Everyone should be aware of that and *NEVER* *EVER* click on a link on and e-mail unless you are absolutely 110% sure that the source is genuine. Remember that the text you see in a link, even if it looks like a genuine URL, can actually take you anywhere else on the net.

Good advice, the CC issuer is jointly liable with the "merchant" if the goods fail to turn up. You can simply dispute the transaction with your CC company and get a full refund. The CC company then goes after the "merchant".

Can you transfer money out of your Paypal account to a CC? I thought it had to go to a bank account. Remember the OP is more into selling than buying...

Aye, this goes with communication as well. No one likes sending of some money to the great unknown and then getting silence for a week. Even if the goods arrive and there are no problems it still leaves a nasty taste. Sending a quick, thank you for your purchase, your payment has arrived, your goods have been dispatched, etc, email simple.

And the source of much discussion as to when it should be left. As a buyer I leave it when I have got the goods and I am happy (or not...) as a seller I leave it when I know the the buyer is happy with the goods/transaction.

But don't get to worked up about negatives, there are plonkers out there and you will come across one sooner or later. I've got a retalitory neg from a US buyer who bid and won on a film stills camera (sold with film, the word film mentioned 5 times in the description) thinking it was a digital camera. I guess I could have not negged him but as I think peoples ought to be accountable for their actions a buyer who doesn't read descriptions should be highlighted.

I like to ensure the description is as accurate and clear as I can make it and I check it several times for clumsy sentence structure, spelling and grammar. I repeat the description in the text, highlighted in red and expanded in content in the hope that people will read it! I've already rattled on about Terms of Business, but I repeat that having ToB sets out clearly what you expect and ensures that bidders know what you will and won't do BEFORE they bid. AFAIK, they have never got in the way of a sale yet.

There is nothing wrong with a little hyperbole when selling, but don't overdo it or be in any way inaccurate in your description. If there is a fault or the item is incomplete in some way, say so.

There is no doubt it is fun, and I disposed of a lot of my clock and watch stuff on e-bay that would otherwise still be cluttering up Hazel's kitchen!

Regards,

J. Kim Siddorn,

Hi Martin, Its a good job you didn't omit the comma! 8^)

-- Dave Croft Warrington England

Try: alt.marketing.online.ebay

Including a FAQ:

BugBear

Probably heavly US dominated... There is a uk group uk.people.consumers.ebay and a UK FAQ