Living in a backward society, we don’t even have daylight saving I have only recently discovered eBay.
In three days i have made 20 bids and already have bought 5 items; as Doreen says it is like Aladins cave.
What do others think?
Has abyone had any bad experiences as i am already in dispute over freight in one area!
Regards ian
Ian, while ebay is the golden land of opportunity, it has its pitfalls. Shippng is one of them. I had a buddy by some silver statue for $0.99 US. but shipping from china was $86.00 US. I always look at shipping costs, if not posted I write and ask. Also I look at complaints and while I don’t go by the number of complaints, I read what other wrote. Many send negative feedback if you give them negative feedback. Also read the descriptions carefully, as in the beginning I missed some key words. What I got wasn’t what I thought I was going to get. But at cheap prices, good bargins can be had. Just be a smart shopper, and don’t get caught up in winning.
Good luck and good hunting.
Tim
Yes you have to watch the shipping charges.Its one way a seller can squeeze a little extra profit.
However some things are just expensive to ship.Like the truck I bought (A real one)
I bought a 1941 ford off ebay cost 1600.00 to ship it .Had to contract a motor carrier.
Went 3000 miles from California to Indiana
Ian
I have been in Ebay heaven ever since I got into G Scale.
I mostly buy train related, have even sold some surplus bits. But they are right. Here in the UK, postage charges by vendors are creeping up so they can make a good profit.
£3.50 for a DVD in a jiffy bag with a 95p stamp on it.
Always check the feedback of the vendor. If his negatives are increasing, he is on his way out.
Ebay is also contagious. Some people will keep on bidding as they cant take losing and then find they have paid more than the store/mail order price. Also buy DVDs. Very careful as some are copies but don`t advertise as such. One fellar I dealt with has been thrown out of Ebay[(-D]after I and few others complained.
You soon get to recognise the regular good sellars. I have bought several G scale items from the same person.
All the best
Ian P
As both a buyer and a seller, I’ve had some nice ebay experience. Only 1 bad.
As a buyer, here’s what I look at before I bid:
Does the seller have lots of positive feedback? If so, don’t worry about it.
If the seller doesn’t have any positive feedback, can you contact him? Can you look him up on something like switchboard.com? If not, skip it. If so, don’t worry about it.
Of late, it seems bidders have been getting crazy. Hmm, wonder what I have laying around that I can sell[:-,]
Torby,
I’ve bought loads of things off e-bay but never sold.Is it easy,or a pain?
Troy
N0.1 rule on e-bay, “shipping” be wary of this nice term. most sellers are pretty good and will try and save you a buck, others try and earn big profits by charging enormous fees for shipping AND handling, I only use U.S. postal service, cheap, reliable, a little slower than private----- I don’t live in the U.S.–never had a problem. and ask the seller ANY question.
After being burned once on ebay I learned to pay very close attention to the item
description.
Seams there are a few sellers that like to play in the grey area,if you know what I mean
Selling on ebay isn’t hard. If you want to do much of it, establish a paypal account.
Ian,
EBay can be a good thing, or in can be what the devil has spawned. My suggestion is start off with how much you would pay for the item minus what the shipping is ( ask if they don’t specify) if you can get the item for that amount Huzzah!! if you can’t someone else did good for them [8D] Plezse don’t get caught up in the bidding hype. I say that in conradiction of being a seller and hoping for the last minute bidding frenzy. Bid what you think it’s worth and no more.
Later.
Jack
I have about 111 positive feedbacks on ebay as both a buyer and seller. i have had no negative transactions at all. I have been involved in G Scale stuff, antique radios and computer stuff-yea I can’t quite decide what hobby I should really be in!!!
I too ask about shipping and make a point to post shipping costs in my actions. I dont try to make a profit on shipping and combine when I can but sometimes when you have not packaged something up before you list it you can make mistakes. My problems have come when I post too little and pay the difference out of my profits
All that being said, I don’t really play on ebay tmake a profit. My limited transactions come when I find a good buy and can get several so I buy several and put what I don’t want on ebay.
People who get stung on shipping usually don’t leave positive feedback[;)]
Ian,
I have bought a couple of things on e-bay.
The two reasons I stopped looking recently are:
Most people list as “will sell to USA only”
When you do find someone who sells international, then you find out they only use an expensive postal company. So although there were lots of cheap items I would like, US$40 postage for 1 turnout that cost $10 item was not worth it.
Before you bid you need to contact the seller and find out who they will post with and weight of the item. You can then get on the internet and find the freight rates of that company. Surface mail on US postal service takes about 6 weeks and is cost effective. Anything else is prohibitive unless you have a really expensive item. In the end it is such a hassle to go through all this for something you don’t even know if you will win. I just gave up.
The much better solution for us living Down Under is find yourself someone in the USA you can use as a forwarding address. Get the seller to post to them. Then get your contact to post it to you using the US postal service.
Glen.
Ian,
Ebay has its pitfalls, as everyone here has stated, SHIPPING…especially overseas!
When I bid, the second thing I look at is the shipping costs. I try to figure out…
If new, can I buy this via mail-order? how much would this item be new with shipping?
How much would I pay for this item if it is used, how much is it with shipping?
If no shipping cost is listed, ask, if they refuse to quote you, skip.
If the overall asking price plus shipping is greater than mail-order (which I do see alot) I skip.
If its a used good condition item thats no longer avalible, I might bid a little higher.
But one I figure out how much plus shipping I am willing to spend, I set that as my Maximum bid and walk away. If I win, I win, if not, someone else payed too much for it.
In your situation the shipping costs (or whether the seller is even willing to ship international) will be a big determining factor.
Also check those feedbacks, they will tell you oddles of info about the seller and how that seller respondes to problems. Some are really good other are shameless!
Good Luck, and NEVER get into bidding war, Its never worth it. The same item invarialbly turns up again. Patients IS a virtue on Evilbay!
[2C] The transactions that I have had (mostly good) that were bad, I have nothing but good things to say about the folks that sold it to me to try and work something out. Just last week my aristo train engineer came and it didn’t work.
The seller had ups pick it up and my new one should arrive sometime today. I generally look up what I am bidding on first so I know the cost with shipping prior to bidding. Got burned once. life-lke walking people (Gscale) I paid 22 -23
dollars found out they are like $7 apiece and they are 1:32 scale. I am 1:20 - 1:24 Oh well live and learn. Thanks - Greg
As someone who’s been on eBay and even made a living for awhile, for what it’s worth, here’s something from the seller’s point of view.
You may not know this but eBay charges huge fees just to list an item on their servers. They get a cut no matter if it sells or not. They get a cut when an item does sell. If someone has an eBay store, they get a larger cut there as well. Then to top it off, if the item is purchased through PayPal, you guessedit, eBay gets another 3%+.
When selling a $10 item, the profit is somewhere around $5USD, and that’s assuming the seller got the item for free. On a more expensive item, there is a bit larger “wiggle room” for profit. I quit selling full time because I just wasn’t making money on my sales.
You add all of this up and it’s no wonder that sellers add on extra charges. It always gets passed on to the buyers in the end.
From my point of view, I always spell things out. Condition, shipping, etc. I don’t want an upset customer because they didn’t read the description.
Above all, know what you’re buying. Know how much the item has sold for in the past. (do an advanced search for "completed items.) Set you limit and don’t go over. It is always easy to say, “Just a little more.” Always leave feedback, even if the other guy doesn’t. Last but not least, always pay for an item! Dot renig on your bid. If you find out something won’t work after you won it, do the right thing, buy it, then turn around and resell it. Don’t be a jerk.
Hope that gives you a different perspective. One that most buyers never see. Good luck either way.
Chris
(*The above figures are not exact, just off the top of my head, so don’t quote this as gospel)
Recently e-bay offered three fee free postings to sell items. I got charged fees anyway and brought this to their attention. They dismissed the fees BUT they charged another “automatic monthly fee” for carrying an unpaid balance over a dollar which was on the fees that were not so to be charged in the first place. It was only a $1.65 but just think if a 100,000 people got sucked into this. Beware of free offers to sell on e-bay.
Ebay is a really good service.However the people at ebay are hard to deal with.There have been several times I have emailed them about an issue and got no response.
There was one time that when I was selling some stuff i didnt pay my fees right away (my fault I know).They sent me an email stating that my account was suspended til I paid my balance.My account was paid in full and ebay still refuses to reinstate my account ,like they said they would.I have sent them a copy of my credit card statment showing them that they got the money,and they have never responded,I had no choice but to establish a new account.I guess they thought they would make an example out of me.[:(!][banghead][2c][soapbox]
I’ve never sold anything on eBay, BTW, what does EBAY stand for? I know that the payment structure has become pretty complicated lately, but can anyone give me a simple explanation of what I’d have to do to sell something on eBay?
I’ll probably be selling some B’mann freight cars, maybe 10 or so, and about 30 1:24 scale plastic auto kits. The actual value of these items is $500-$600. How much will it cost me to sell these items on eBay? And I probably wouldn’t be selling anything else there for a very long time.
Thanks
Walt
I’ve sold and bought a few items on eBay. So far it’s all good.
I’ve found one instance where the ebay shipping calculator really goofed in the shipping charges. It said it would cost like $17 to ship via USPS Priority to Canada. Well, two issues here. First you can’t ship USPS Priority to Canada. Second. it only costs like $5 to ship normal to Canada. I refunded a bunch of the the buyers money. I thought he was going fall over from shock. He was very gratefull for the refund.
The key to eBay is communication. Both ways.