I am an eBay addict, so what am I doing writing about a rival auction site?

In case anyone reading this does not know about eBay either, both sites are on-line auction sites where you can buy and sell almost anything - from a pencil to a car, and from a pair of knickers to a stereo system. You have to register to bid or sell, and the URL for ebid is www.ebid.co.uk or www.ebid.tv. They have recently launched in the USA too, so you may see some international auctions on the site now.

•• Look of site ••
Like ebay, eBid has a busy looking home page. Each page has a white background with orange headings and blue links where relevant. The main headings from the home page are: a list of busy auctions (often with only 1 or 2 bids on them), a list of new auctions, a list of front page featured auctions, a list of categories and various search facilities and most recent sales. Considering the complexity of auction sites, I think they have managed to lay each page out very well. There are a number of icons on the auctions which denote if it is a new auction, Buy It Now, etc. but I can never remember which one is which, and so tend to ignore them.

•• Signing up ••
To sign up for bidding/buying, simply click on 'Register' and choose a user ID. Enter your e-mail address and contact details, and then you will receive an e-mail to validate your membership. You will be given a password, but you can immediately change it to something familiar. If you want to upgrade your membership (more later), you can also enter your credit card details on a secure page. If you wish to sell on eBid, they have recently introduced a 'Security Subscription'. These fees are as follows:

•• Buying ••
Buying is very similar to eBay. If you decide you want to place a bid on an item, you simply type the amount you want to pay in the relevant box. Like ebay, ebid will bid the minimum amount needed to let you have the winning bid, so you don't have to keep on going back and bid again if someone outbids you. For example, if you decide that you are prepared to pay £10 for a DVD and the current bid is £5, you can bid £10 and ebid will only bid £5.50 if that will beat all bids on the item. If someone subsequently bids £6, ebid will automatically up the bid to £6.50 and tell the latest bidder that they have been outbid. You will also receive an e-mail notifying you if your proxy bid has been activated, unlike on ebay. On some auctions you can also 'Buy it Now!' which basically means the auction ends when you click the button and you will generally be responsible for the postage and packing costs of any items you buy. There are no post-sale tools (e.g. checkout), unless you use their payment method of PPPay.

•• Selling ••
To sell an item, you click on 'sell. Unlike eBay, you can only list the item under one category. To get a photo, you can either type in the URL of the image if you have it on a website, or load a photo on your PC to 'My Gallery' and use that. I like this idea, as it means you have a gallery of photos to use in the future if you have more than one of the same item to sell. The maximum photo size allowed is 500k.

There is also a useful looking facility called 'My Bulk Upload' that allows you to download an Excel spreadsheet and fill it with your auctions to send it back to them to post. Great if you are an avid seller. You can set a reserve price, a Buy It Now price and a minimum level of member allowed to bid on your item, if required. Another nice feature is that you can choose your own level of bid increment, whereas ebay automatically does it for you and raises it as the price goes up. I often reduce the increment on my auctions to encourage bidding, as I am more likely to bid on an item if I can bid 10p more rather than £1 more. You get an e-mail advising you the first time someone bids on your item, but you can disable this option, and you also get a chance to preview the listing before posting.

••My eBid ••
This is your own page to watch auctions you are bidding and selling, closed auctions, items you are watching, etc. It is always the first place I go to when I sign on to see how I am doing. It also features:
� My Interests - get e-mailed with new auctions that may interest you by recording keywords for selected categories. Not something I have used myself, but it could be a useful feature if you were a collector of a particular item/artist, for example.
� My Stats - this is a running total for successful auctions you have sold. Unfortunately it does not tally successful auctions you have won.
� My Blackball - here you can add members that you don't want to bid on your auctions and view the list.

•• Advantages over ebay ••
� Free selling for normal auctions once initial fees paid (no listing OR selling fees)
� Not many bidders so you could get a bargain
� Very quick individual responses to queries from Customer Services
� You can leave auction on the site for ages, with the countdown only starting when the first bid is made
� You receive an e-mail when someone makes a bid on your goods
� You can easily delete or close an auction at any time prior to a bid being made
� You can choose your bid increments
� You can set auctions to automatically repost if an item doesn't sell

•• My thoughts ••
I have now bought loads of items from this site and have found the sellers to be generally excellent (although one item got lost in the post and I was never refunded). I have also sold loads of items on the site, as I use it as an alternative to ebay now. Payment and feedback was generally received quickly, although I have had more non-paying bidders than on aBay. They do offer an Escrow service too (money put into the charge of a third party until such time that the transaction is completed), but I have not investigated this.

I am concerned that their recent introduction of 'Security Subscriptions' will put buyers off (it certainly would me!) and therefore the number of items will not increase, which means the number of sellers will not increase. It is still an excellent place to get a bargain at the moment and definitely worth a look for all you auction addicts out there.