Well by now EVERYONE must have heard of ebay, if not where have you been. Everyone must have at least looked at ebay, even if you havent bought anything.
Ebay is a well known by all and well respected internet auction site. A registered Ebay member can buy and sell anything from Ebay.
If selling is something that you would like to do, then you must enter a credit/debit card and sometimes needs to be verified before selling can go ahead. This service enables users to see that ebay have verified there sellers, and a kind of sercuity check as to prove you are who you say you are.
Registration is fast, easy and you can more or less bid striaght away. The details which are asked are the normal registration details, name and address, DOB and email address.
Items are usually sold in an auction-type format, but can sometimes be found for a Buy It Now price to save you having to wait to find out if you've won the item.
I feel that the layout of ebay is very clear, and easy to understand. You have a search option, to browse through different sections.
Buying on ebay is quite straight forward. You can bid on anything you want, but only with the intention of paying for it. When bidding on a product, you need to enter a maximum bid. This is the highest amount you are willing to pay. So if an item was currently at £1.50 and your highest bid was £5.00, other people can still bid, but you are the highest bidder until people bid over £5.00. If you was to be "outbid", ebay will send you an email to say you have been outbid, and give you the option to bid again. You can also watch a bid. So if you was browsing through, and something caught your eye, and you was just intererested in how much it went for, add it to your "watch list" and ebay will watch it for you, and notify you by email when this has ended of how much it went for.
When selling an item on ebay you have to give a good desciption of the product your wanting to sell. Also include as many pictures as possible. As bidders prefer to see what there buying. When listing the product, its best to give as much information as possible, what condition the product is in etc.
You can also add extra features, but you will be charged a fee for this, which is shown before you add the features. Such as adding a subtitle is 50p. Once you have entered your description, you then add a starting bid.This means bidders start the bid at that amount or higher. You can also add a reserve price. This means if you want to recieve a certain amount for your item. For example, if you want to get £50.00 for your item, it will not be sold not unless people bid over the £50.00.
The costs involved with ebay depend on what you do. To register it is completly free. Buyers all youhave to pay for is what you have bought, plus any p+p if the seller states the buyer pays. Sellers get charged a fee for selling items, depending on what they sell. And the fee will always be a different amount.
One of the great things about ebay is the feedback option. After you have brought or sold something, feedback is left. Feedback is about how the transation went. This is good so other buyers/sellers can see how good or bad that person is. The higher the posstive feedback, the more trusted the person is.
The types of feedback which can be left are as follows...
Neutral feedback, which means the seller/buyer wasnt to sure if there were postive or negative about the transaction. This can be due to lack of communication.
Postive feedback, which means the seller/buyer was really happy with the transaction and recommends that person to other ebayers.
Negative feedback, which means the buyer/seller was not at all happy with the transaction. Normally due to timewasters not paying, or maybe even faluty products being sold, or even sometimes the item that has been sold is not what the description of the product was.
I have used ebay for sometime now, both bought and sold on ebay. And on a whole ive had all good experiences, except once when they decided to take £25.00 out of my bank account. I got in touch with my bank, who got the money back and when i contacted ebay, they did apoligse and said it was an error. This is the only problem i hae direct with ebay. I have had the few "non payers" / time wasters, but you have to becareful, as there are alot of them out there.
I feel ebays security is very good, but as any well know site, there are people on there that they to get what they can. IE fraud. So like any site, be extra careful as to what information you give and who you give it to.
So on a whole, i have to rate ebay as a very good site and would defianatly recommend to others.
So happy bidding as they say!!!!