Well I am a single guy, 28, living and working in Edinburgh. I would love to hear from anyone so dro...
Well I am a single guy, 28, living and working in Edinburgh. I would love to hear from anyone so drop me a line.
Member since:24.01.2002
Reviews:16
Members who trust:9
Does anyone know where I can buy a thingummybob, or a wotsitsname? The ever elusive item that you need but, just can’t find it in any shop! Or what about the pile of junk you collected just in case one day....
I’ve been there, have you?
Well try Ebay, the online auction service that has just about everything.
I joined Ebay as I was searching for some new CD-Rs. I saw through browsing that some one was selling them cheaply. I sure enough signed up for the service, learned easilyhow to place my bid and I won too.
I have had many other bargains from the site too. I write this op to let my fellow Ciao friends see the advantages of the Ebay site. I also decided to add details of the disadvantages too, as there is unfortunately, some right lowlifes lurking on Ebay.
Buy and sell just about anything and everything. I have seen small items on sale such as key rings and very big things such as houses, in fact, you could buy the house and then buy the
key ring for the door keys!
Find the ever elusive missing piece from your collection of collectables, locate that thingummybob for the wotsitsname, it’s probably at Ebay! You can set up a search for something your after or browse the site for it. Even better, Ebay allow you to save searches so you don’t have to keep browsing the site, they will email you with possible matches, even if it’s months later as they search constantly until you delete the search.
Sellers can add photographs to Ebay to help sell their wares faster and they do generally give good descriptions.
There is a choice of payment methods including secureonline systems.
Buyers and sellers can give feedback on each other, which helps when deciding to buy or sell with someone.
You can choose the length of your auction, up to 10 days then watch the bids come in with their easy to follow system. There is also the same easy view tracker for items you have bid on.
The Ebay site does really well with its account facility. You can easily, keep track of your balances for bought and sold items and the descriptions of transactions are really good.
Setting up an auction of your own is very simple. Ebay provide a step by step guide to which you can manipulate the cost factor to your own preferences. For example, you might be selling a DVD that falls into more than one genre and so you can choose for this one item to be displayed in two sections.
You can also choose how to display the auction with things like a BOLD heading which will stand out to prospective buyers. You can choose to have no pictures or choose to have various amounts of pictures presented in different styles to help enhance the sale.
The website itself is a little daunting at first as there is so much info to look at, but, I have to admit, you soon get the hang of the site and navigating becomes easier.
A great advantage to Ebay is that they allow you to place a bid for an item based on the highest price you are willing to go up to. You could set up a maximum bid of say £10.00 but only end up paying £5.00 depending on how others bid. That way you can budget yourself and save a few pennies. Even if you lose out due to a higher bidder, some one else will probably be selling same item again another time.
There are charges for buying and selling items on Ebay. Normally with an opinion I would go into the costs in detail, but, the items you sell, the way you sell them and the end price all contribute towards the overall costs.
There are a few lowlifes too, who make the site an awful place to buy and sell from. I have spoken with other members of Ebay who kindly pointed out the things to watch out for. One of the biggest scams are where people use free email service addresses such as hotmail or easy.com to have messages sent back and forth. I myself have a free email address from easy.com but, I do have an email address from my ISP too. What these lowlifes do is use these addresses for contact, have people send them cheques etc and they cash the cheques at a cheque cashing place. The buyer never sees the goods or the money ever again.
Ebay do offer compensation but, as you can imagine this is nothing compared to what has been lost. One Ebay friend informed me he, and another seven were stung like this for a computer. They each ended up £700 out of pocket. Be warned there are nasty people out there.
The other main disadvantages are some people take a long time to respond to emails when auction have ended, some take ages to pay out for goods they have bought, others take time sending the goods.
Also be aware of people who exaggerate the descriptions of their goods on sale. New should be new and not sort of new. Good condition should not mean broken bits, scratches, missing or non existent parts.
On the whole, the balance of good and bad things evens out. After all as you know, the site is only as good as its members.
I would recommend all my Ciao friends to use Ebay as most people are honest and there are just so many bargains out there.
I would also remind you as Ciao members you have an advantage too. Think about it, say you wanted to buy a copy of a movie from Ebay, you find someone selling it cheaply and think about placing a bid on it. Well check out your Ciao friends ops. See if there is an op about the film. The op might help you decide if you really want to make a bid for it, and how much you are willing to bid for it.
The basics to remember, if a sale sound to good to be true, then it probably is!
Give it a try anyway, you could make a few quid out of it and treat me to a nice pressie!
I said, you could treat me to... oh never mind!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
I liked using but then got hit real hard by a 'con-man' and haven't bought anything since
rachpauljack 07.07.2004 19:50
I have just starting using ebay and am yet to have any problems great op.
Love Rach xxx
pizz 22.07.2003 01:20
I enjoyed this op, as an e-bay member i have bought quite alot and luckily i haven't had any trouble with any one, yet! it helps to look into whom you're buying from and e-mailing them for answers helps too if they're genuine. Like everything, eyes open is always the best way to go lol, great op, especially for new e-bay members. martine x
May 25th, 2002
very helpful by (100%):
