qxl.com > Reviews (155)

www.qxl.com

QXL is a UK based auction site - although there is the equivalent site for various European countries. The basic idea is you place items you don’t want anymore on the site for other people to bid on, and you bid on items that you want - nice and easy.

Actually it is nice and easy. You have to register to be able to bid, but this only takes a couple of minutes. If you want to sell, then you have to give your credit card details so that payment can be taken (after all they aren’t going to do it for nothing!!).

Bidding couldn’t be easier. Everything is categorised and once you’ve seen something you’re interested in you look at the auction page. The auction page will give you more details about the product, possibly a picture, the nickname of who is selling it and a bidding history. Basically the seller will have decided in the increments on his auction (eg £1) and you can either bid that amount or put in a maximum to bid to. This latter feature allows you to put your maximum bid in and let QXL do all the bidding for you (they will bid the minimum amount everytime you are outbid until you reach the maximum).

To sell an item there is a simple form to fill in asking such details as description, reserve price, bid increment, what types of payment you are prepared to accept, who pay postage and packing, etc. The form is relatively easy to fill in and it only takes a couple of minutes to create your auction.

Throughout the buying and selling phase you are kept informed of what is happening via email. You get emails when you are outbid, when someone has bid on your auction and when your auction closes. You can even have a text message sent to your mobile when your auction closes.

The catch - well there really isn’t one - at least not one I’ve come across yet. Yes you have to pay to put an auction on the site (hence your credit card details) but the minimum is 15p and the max is £1.25 (its 30p for an item between £5 and £15 in value). You also have to pay 5% of the final selling price. This means that an item selling for £10 will have cost you 30p to advertise and 50p as a sellers fee - not that much really to get rid of stuff you don’t want anymore.

There is a rating system so people you have bought from and sold to can rate you to help give others more security about who they are dealing with. You can also get a special rating when you’ve sold more that 100 items!!!

All of this - along with the special £1 start and no reserve auctions and the live auctions go to make a really good site. All the rules regarding settling accounts are set out at the beginning (you receive payment before you sent the item) and there is a complaints procedure.

All in all I think it is an excellent site - professionally put together, not too graphics intensive (so you don’t spend hours waiting for stuff to load) and well run. I have no complaints and have managed to sell several items. Well worth a visit if you want to sell something and you never know what you might see in their special £1 starting no reserve auctions.