I’ve recently been looking into purchasing a new 30G Ipod, and the first place I looked was on Ebay.com. I immediately saw several “Class A Refurbished 30G Ipods” auctions with a few hours left and 0 bids starting at .99$. The offers seem way too good to be true. I don’t understand why a seller would want to sell a 200$ mp3 player for one dollar, leading me to believe the auction was some sort of scam because the shipping was over 30$. The only problem is the sellers had 99% positive feeback and appear to be 100% legit. If anyone has any ideas, I would greatly appreciate them. Thanks
It’s an auction. The whole point is to start much lower than what it’s worth, and bid up to what the buyers consider a fair price. It’s safe to do so for popular items such as iPods, because there’ll always be enough bidders to drive up the price. For more special interest items it can be risky, in which case you want to set a reserve price or a higher starting price.
Also, eBay’s fees depend partly on starting price, so the seller saves a few cents by starting at $0.99 rather than $30 (or whatever).
ebay doesn’t charge fees on the shipping/handling, so jacking them up is a way of scamming ebay, not the buyer, assuming the shipping fee is disclosed in the discription, and the buyer isn’t so careless as to ignore it when deciding how high to bid.
If the total charges (bid price + shipping) are under $50 the seller can make 10-20% more that way.
Another thing is that now and then, eBay will run specials for new listings, and I think they did just recently have a discount on 99¢ starting price auctions.
Another thing sellers will do for cheap items is list them for .99, but the shipping is like $10. Last I checked Ebay didn’t take a cut of shipping costs, so that’s why you get stupid shipping charges like that. Ebay squeezes and sellers squeeze out from under them.
I bought a 1/5 oz. roll on vial of Prada Perfume, The Divil Wears Prada, stuff for $0.01 with shippng at $4.49 First Class Mail. Total $4.50
Supposedly a fancy perfume but my wife and daughter both turned up their noses!
Like so much “fancy Designer stuff” it is over priced, over sold, and the house brands are as good if not better, much better!