Always looking to buy your unwanted "Chalet School" books for my collection. Leave a messa...
Always looking to buy your unwanted "Chalet School" books for my collection. Leave a message on my GB if interested, I'm happy to offer cash or a trade for my other surplus books. Let's save some trees and recycle reading matter!!
Member since:04.05.2001
Reviews:44
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Ebay started in the USA around 1996. To begin with it was intended mainly as a venue for collectors of TY ‘Beanie Babies’ to buy and sell their wares. People soon realised that Ebay was a great forum for buying and selling all kinds of other things as well, and the site really took off from there.
Background To The Site ----------------------
These days most people have heard of Ebay, although not everyone has actually been there. To describe it as an ‘auction site’ is perhaps somewhat misleading. Many find the concept of an auction very intimidating, a fear probably fuelled by countless tales of those who have visited salerooms and inadvertently bid for items they cannot afford by the simple act of scratching their nose, fanning themselves with the sale catalogue or waving to a friend. In addition, anyone who has ever visited a car or cattle auction and been bewildered by the fast paced ‘patter’ and the speed with which items are bought and sold may decide once and for all that auctions are just for people who ‘know what they’re doing’. Ebay blows all these preconceptions right out of the window.
Provided one is careful to bid only what one can afford, the Ebay auction experience is no more dangerous or complicated than buying any other item online. Sales are of a fixed duration, usually 3 days, 5 days, 7 days or 10 days, so there is usually plenty of time to view the item on sale and to compare the condition and price with similar items being offered by other sellers. When you first view the auction, there will usually be a countdown timer showing how long until the auction ends. This tells you if you have hours or days to decide if you want the item and whether you have enough time to contact the seller or do some external research before actually making a bid.
How It Works ---------------
Ebay prefers to call itself ‘a venue’ for buyers and sellers to come together, and now that not all items listed for sale are necessarily auctions, it is perhaps more appropriate to refer to it as a ‘marketplace’. A recent innovation has been the advent of ‘Fixed Price’ items and ‘Buy It Now’ sales. This enables potential buyers to make instant purchases of items they particularly want without having to worry about waiting for the auction to finish or being outbid.
‘Buy It Now’ is usually an auction format where the seller provides the option for a higher bidder to secure the item immediately. For example, a CD is offered at auction with a starting price of £1.99 and a ‘Buy It Now’ price of £5.99. The bidder can either bid £1.99 and hope that other bidders do not drive the price up further, or select the ‘Buy It Now’ option and secure the CD immediately at £5.99 without other bidders becoming involved. The ‘Buy It Now’ option disappears once a lower bid has been placed and the sale reverts to an auction format. The danger for the bidder ignoring the ‘Buy It Now’ option is that they could ultimately miss out on the sale if outbid by another buyer, or could end up paying more than £5.99 if other bidders drive the auction price beyond this level. The dilemma is ultimately decided by the bidder’s desire for the item multiplied by the price he/she is prepared to pay.
The ‘Fixed Price’ format is exactly what it says. A buyer searching for a copy of the latest DVD finds one on sale at Ebay as an unwanted gift for below shop price. And as the sale is a ‘Fixed Price’ the first bid at the price stated secures the sale. Unlike ‘Buy It Now’ there is no option to bid a lower price and have the sale revert to an auction format. Confusingly, both types of sale are referred to on Ebay as ‘Buy It Now’.
You can check out Ebay without ever registering as a buyer or seller. Browsing the site is free and open to everyone. The best place to start is at the Ebay UKhomepage, by using the search bar to type in the name of something you are looking for, say for example, ‘Elton John CD’ or 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road CD'. Alternatively you have the option to search by category, with the various categories listed down the left hand side of the homepage. Advanced users also have to option to search by seller, although in order to do this you will need to know
a particular seller’s email address or userid.
Bidding And Buying On Ebay ----------------------------
Once you have found an item you are interested in, it is probably advisable to compare the current bid price with similar items on sale elsewhere on the site as prices can vary enormously even for the same item. The number of bids will also give an indication as to interest. If an auction has a few hours to go with no bids, the likelihood is that you stand a good chance of securing the item at the opening price. It is also possible to search closed auctions to find out what similar items have fetched in the past.
One tip to bear in mind is to avoid placing bids on items which either have no picture or a very fuzzy one. If a seller can’t be bothered to provide a picture, you have only the description to rely on and no comeback if the item is not as expected. A good picture usually indicates an organised seller who will care about making your transaction a happy one. Beware also of sellers who do not state postage charges or who state excessive postage charges in relation to the item being sold. It is not unknown for a seller to charge £2.50 for postage for an item that costs 19p to send, pocketing the difference and souring the transaction.
If in any doubt about an auction, look for the seller’s userid and checkout the number in brackets shown beside their name. This is the seller’s ‘feedback rating’. Clicking on the number allows you to view the comments made about that seller by other Ebay members who have been involved in a transaction with your seller, and will tell you a lot about how trustworthy and efficient they are. Don’t be afraid to contact the seller if you have questions about the item and would like these answered before bidding. Provided there is adequate time before the sale ends, use the ‘ask the seller a question' link within the auction. Ebay privacy rules mean that email addresses of buyers and sellers are not disclosed until the end of a transaction. This protects everyone involved and prevents spamming.
In order to place a bid you first have to become a member of Ebay. This requires the use of a credit card to confirm identity and to discourage frivolous registration and bidding. At the time of registration you will be asked to select a ‘username’ or ‘userid’ which will used to identify your bidding and selling activities on the site. Your userid should not be the same as your email as it provides protection against spam by restricting access to your email address to only those users who are actively involved in a buying or selling transaction with you.
Although there are charges for sellers (more of that later) there are NO charges associated with bidding at Ebay. Do bear in mind that by bidding on an item you are entering into a contract with the seller and if your bid is successful you will be required to pay the sum you have bid plus any postage charges. Ebay does offer the option to retract a bid before the auction closes, but once the sale has concluded there is no option to change your mind unless there are circumstances in which you and the seller agree not to go ahead with the sale.
Once an auction has finished you will be advised by email if your bid has been successful and told how to contact the seller by email. The first thing to do is to contact the seller to confirm the total price (including postage) and agree a method of payment. Usually it is advisable to wait for a seller to contact you, but as buyers and sellers are required to contact each other within 3 days of an auction closing, don’t be afraid to email the seller if you haven’t heard anything after a couple of days.
The methods of payment a seller accepts will normally be stated in the auction. Most sellers accept cheques or postal orders but may stipulate that payment must reach them within a certain time, i.e. within ten days of auction close. Be aware that sellers may wait for cheques to clear before sending an item, so even if you send payment immediately it could be a week before your purchase arrives in the mail. Try to avoid harassing sellers for non arrival of a purchase as (particularly for items paid for by cheque) postage times both ways must be allowed for as well as clearance time for the cheque. Some sellers will email you to advise that payment has been received or an item has been posted but this is not always the case. If in doubt a friendly email enquiring as to the status of your transaction will usually clarify matters.
If you are in a hurry for your item, it might be worth considering signing up for an online payment service such as Paypal, NOCHEX or FASTPAY. Most sellers accept one or more of these forms of payment and will often post your item the same day payment is received. Paypal allows payment using a credit card in a variety of currencies (useful if buying from the USA), NOCHEX is Pounds Sterling only but allows the use of debit or switch cards. FASTPAY involves the use of credit, debit or current account payments and can also be accessed through a mobile phone. Charges for these services vary, but are somewhat offset by not having to buy a stamp to post your payment and by their usefulness if you ever branch out from merely buying on Ebay and decide to become a seller. More of that later.
Once you have received your item, it is usual for buyer and seller to ‘leave feedback’ for one another to indicate how the transaction went. The ‘help’ guide for new users on Ebay provides a step by step guide on how to do this. If the seller has been particularly helpful you can also let them know by email that you have received your purchase. Sellers don’t always have time to check their feedback regularly and many are genuinely concerned to ensure that the item has arrived safely.
How Things Used To Be ---------------------
When I joined Ebay in 1998, it was very much American dominated and the UK, German and Australian sites hadn’t even taken off. Everything was valued in US dollars and if you wanted to bid on an item, you had to email the American seller first to make sure they would a) accept your payment and b) ship to the UK. I could get around the shipping problem easily enough as I often had goods shipped to friends in the US who would then keep them for me until I flew out to visit some months later. But it was very frustrating having to wait so long for my purchases!
When I became a seller, I was quite happy to post things all over the world because as a part-time bookseller and stamp dealer, I had already been doing this for years anyway. But the problem of accepting payments still remained. Most of my potential customers were Americans, and as Paypal and other forms of electronic payments were still some years in the future my buyers’ preferred methods of payment were:
a) US dollars in cash (which was fine by me, as I could use it for my forthcoming holidays in the States. Unfortunately cash payments had a horrible habit of going missing in the post!) b) US dollar checks and c) US dollar money orders.
The solution for me was to open a US dollar cheque account in London where I could pay in any checks and money orders by post and avoid the delays and hefty conversion charges often levied by local branches of the regular high street Banks. I could also build up a stock of money which I could then withdraw from a US ATM (again, without incurring any charges) next time I was in the States. The account also came with a chequebook denominated in US dollars, and to this day I have continued to use this as a means of settling payments with US sellers without any problems.
These days any potential buyer or seller logging on to the UK site might be forgiven for wondering where all the Americans have gone. The past few years have seen an explosion of interest in online auctions and it is now possible to pick up all sorts of bargains from sellers close to home and dealing in one's own currency. The biggest Ebay site is still Ebay.com in the US, but Ebay UK (Pounds Sterling) Australia (Australian Dollars) and France and Germany (Euros) are all doing big business and buyers from each of these sites can continue to buy from other sites provided the seller is willing to ship to their country. At the time of writng Ebay has global sites in no less than 20 different countries, including Singapore, Argentina and Canada. In many ways this is an advantage, because it makes the processing of a transaction so much simpler. Very few Ebay sellers need worry anymore about currency conversions or customs forms, and the advent of sites such as Paypal mean that international payments are now possible at the touch of a button. What it does mean that Ebay has lost its international flavour and the various country specific sites tend to operate pretty much in isolation of each other. I still have buyers from USA and Canada, but it is mainly for highly specialised items.
Selling on Ebay ----------------
If you have been buying on Ebay for a while, you may have already considered taking the plunge and becoming a fully fledged seller. If you have been buying on the site for a while and have built up a respectable feedback rating, this is probably a good time to start out as potential buyers will be able to see you are trustworthy and will be inclined to buy from you.
The first thing to consider when selling on Ebay is that there will be fees involved. These are levied both when you list your item and at the end of the auction when a ‘final value fee’ is charged.
Listing fees are based on starting price and are as follows:
£0.01 - £4.99 £0.15 £5.00 - £14.99 £0.30 £15.00 - £29.99 £0.60 £30.00 and up £1.25
Obviously if you have a £5.00 item it makes sense to start it at £4.99 and save 15p on the listing fee.
Ebay final value fees are added to your account when the auction ends:
£0 - £15.00 5.25% for the amount of the current high bid (at the auction close) up to £15.00 £15.01 - £600.00 2.75% for the part of the current high bid from £15.01 up to £600.00 £600.01 and over 1.50% for the balance of the current high bid greater than £600.01
Therefore if you start an item at £1.99 and it fetches £10.00 you will be charged 15p listing fee plus 52.5p final value fee. Total cost 67.5p. This sum is billed to your registered credit card at the end of the month. If the item does not sell you do not pay a final value fee but you will have to pay a listing fee if you list the item again, although a listing fee is refunded if an item which was previously unsold is relisted and sells the second time around.
As a seller, it is probably advisable to be registered with at least one form of online payment mechanism such as Paypal, NOCHEX or FASTPAY, as the more flexible you are about accepting payments, the more buyers you will attract. It is also a good idea to invest in a digital camera or scanner, if you do not already have one, so you have some means of photographing your wares. You can basically sell anything you want on Ebay so long as it is not pornographic illegal or alive. A full list of guidelines as to what is and is not allowed can be found on the site. Ebay allow one free photograph per auction to be uploaded to their site, alternatively you can use any webspace provided by your ISP for homepages (if any) to host images of auction items for sale. The most common file format is now .jpg and you should regularly delete images of items already sold in order to free up space. ISP homepages will normally provide ‘help’ sections detailing how to upload images to personal webspace, this can either be done over the web or using an ftp utility such as ‘wsftp’ (which is free).
Other items which are worth investing in if you are considering becoming a seller are return address labels (such as those provided by ‘Steepleprint’ of Earls Barton), a digital weighing scale for calculating postage charges and a selection of bubblewrap, envelopes and boxes. Start out by recycling all your packaging and saving all packaging items you receive in the mail from companies etc. and ask friends if they can also save things for you. Some workplaces will also let you bring home previously used jiffy bubble bags or loose fill foam chips if they would otherwise be thrown away. Later, as you become a more advanced seller and start making more money, you will discover that quite a number of sellers on Ebay sell packaging materials very cheaply, and the cost of these can be built into your starting price. It is also worth stocking up on free stationery available from your Post Office. This includes ‘signed for’ and ‘special delivery’ labels, green customs forms and certificates of posting. Airmail labels are also helpful if you intend to post abroad regularly. A copy of the Royal Mail’s booklet detailing current postal rates is a must, particularly after April this year when charges are due to go up. You can also check postage rates, customer addresses and track parcels online at the Royal Mail website.
Other tips for getting organised as a seller include setting up special folders with your email program to keep emails relating to auction sales and puchases separate from your other emails. This allows you to quickly identify and prioritise emails which are auction related. Remember that friends may not care if you do not reply to their emails for a few days, but ignore potential customers at your peril as they will soon go elsewhere. You can set up standard email templates which cover most type of situation. By far the most common email is the one you will send out to a successful bidder at the conclusion of an auction. Often known as the ‘Congratulations’ email, this contains details of how much is owed, postage charges and where to send payment.
Deadbeats ----------
From time to time you will get fleeced on Ebay. This happens as a buyer and becomes increasingly more common once you become a seller. If a seller takes money off you for an item and then never sends the goods, be sure and report them to Ebay and also leave negative feedback, although make sure that the feedback is left only after all attempts to contact the seller by other means have failed. Do always give the seller the benefit of the doubt and try to gauge their reaction. If they reply promptly to your emails and either offer you a refund or try to help with a claim for an item which has been lost in the mail, then it is still possible to part company amicably with no need for negative feedback to be exchanged. If they refuse to contact you or reply with words to the effect that ‘all sales are final’ then negative feedback may help to avoid other buyers becoming involved with this person. Above all, never transact high value items with sellers with whom you have had no previous dealings. That way, if you do lose money, you can mark it down to experience and it’s not the end of the world.
As a seller, if you do encounter an unresponsive bidder with otherwise excellent feedback, do try and contact them by email, from different email accounts if necessary (AOL accounts sometimes block emails from certain isps). I sometimes send anonymous online ‘greetings cards’ with return receipts (123 greetings is one of the few sites who still do not charge for this) and this normally tells me if a bidder is reading their mail. Other things you can try include trying to contact the bidder through Ebay, pulling their contact details and trying to phone them, getting another member on Ebay to try and contact them or sending a payment reminder through Ebay. Above all, do not leave negative feedback unless this is a last resort. One otherwise excellent repeat buyer of mine was suddenly rushed to hospital last summer. She never had time to tell anyone of her illness. Fortunately her husband found the phone message I left on her answer machine a week or so later and contacted me. I was able to email sellers from other auctions his wife had bid on, so she was able to make good all her purchases on her return from hospital and emerged relativey unscathed Ebay-wise. Had I left negative feedback without bothering to investigate, other sellers might well have followed suit and the poor woman would have returned from hospital to a suspended account.
With experience, you will be able to quickly spot the time wasting bidders, deal with them appropriately and move on. Do not think I am in any way lax about leaving negative feedback where it is warranted. If a bidder already has negative feedback or tries to wriggle out of their commitment without offering to make good my fees I have no hesitation in placing a warning on their account. Excuses such as ‘I never bid on this auction’, 'somebody else bid on this auction’, ‘my kid bid on this auction’ or ‘I changed my mind’ are completely inexcusable and violate the entire spirit of Ebay. Do not hesitate to report these people.
Conclusion -------------
This opinion is already far too long but I hope has given you a flavour of Ebay. In later opinions I hope to be able to go into more depth about the electronic payment methods (Paypal, NOCHEX and FASTPAY) referred to above and to offer suggestions for successfully selling ‘hard to sell’ items, shipment to foreign countries, arbitration of disputes, bulk posting software, alternative auction sites, avoiding negative feedback and getting negative feedback removed from your Ebay account. I'd also like to mention some of the bargains I've picked up at Ebay, which include brand new designer name childrens clothing. My daughter now dresses better than I do for a fraction of the price! I also haven't had time to talk about the 'Ebay Community', the various chatrooms and bulletin boards on Ebay where you can meet other sellers, help out needy causes, exchange tips and tricks and get assistance with your auctions. Ebay is like Ciao in many ways in that it is so much more than a place to make money. It is also a community.
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Comments about this review »
Jaynestep 14.02.2005 17:53
Great review, loads of info in there,i had to take a break and come back to finish it, lol. Jayne x x
tonya121 27.07.2003 00:01
Great op! I personally recommend 'auction tamer' software if you list a lot of auctions.
dobieg 26.06.2003 01:43
Phew - you don't leave much out do you? - come to think about it, you don't leave *anything* out! I suspect it is possible to buy and sell literally *anything* on EbayI just wish I could make enough deals to give up the day-job!
Feb 10th, 2003
very helpful by (100%):
