qxl.com

I’ve always been a fan of auctions as you can pick up some real bargains, and I’m always buying stuff online, as it cuts out the hassle of shopping of which I’m not a lover. So when a mate of mine recommended QXL I thought I’d give it a go.

QXL is an online auction in which anyone can sell anything (anything legal that is!!!!). Sellers are both individuals and companys so there is a wide range of new and used products available.

Selling – To sell anything on QXL you must be credit card registered, this means that when you register to become a member you must give your credit card details. The reason for this is that they charge you listing fee of 30p when the auction closes and to make sure you a legitimate seller. You can then create an auction. You are taken through step by step where you have to the following:

a title for the auction (something eye-catching)
the categories you want your product to appear in
a description of the product
top 5 features
whether you want to insert a picture of the product
start date of auction
duration of auction
auction start price
reserve price (the lowest price you will accept)
quantity available
option to set a buy now price which means you can have a price that if someone agrees to pay the auction will close and they can buy that item.

Once you have done all this, your auction will be ready to go.

Buying – There are 2 ways of finding products of interest. You can either search through the categories (which are quite in depth) or you can do a keyword search to find products/descriptions that contain words of interest. When you get to the product you are after, you will find all the info the buyer has entered (as explained above). It also tells you how long is left in the auction and the current highest bid. You can enter a bid in two ways. You can either increment the current bid by a small amount or you can enter the highest you are prepared to go. If you do it the later way, the site will keep incrementing your bid to just a pound above the current bid until your max bid is reached. If the bids do not reach your max bid then you won’t pay that much.

Once the auction is complete and you have won or sold what you want then you deal directly with the buyer seller by e-mail/phone to arrange payment and delivery

A good feature of this website is that once you have completed the transaction, you get to rate the buyer/seller. You give them a mark of either +1 (for a good transaction) or –1 (for a bad one). You can also post a comment, which means future buyers/sellers can get a idea of the efficiency/reliability of the person they are dealing with.

This is a great idea, it is well run, well laid out and more importantly a great place to get bargains.