I have never bought anything from e-bay before but now I really want a Tickle Me Elmo doll. Well I don’t want it, Mr. Baby wants it, actually I want it for Mr. Baby. You can’t buy them at any stores anymore and e-bay has a bunch of them that are still in the boxes.
I guess I am mainly looking for the best way to go about the whole e-bay experience. Any tips and advice would be very appreciated.
I Thank you and I’m sure Mr. Baby will thank you too.
That is, you will notice that most items up for auction have several days left to bid on them, and often, VERY low prices.
Look at the price five minutes before the auction end time and see how that can change. Many people who are otherwise planning to bid wait until the last minute to do so in the hope that they can outbid the current high bid by just a small amount of money, usually by entering a small amount over the current bid, then refreshing the screen to see if they were successful. If not, they try again until they either are successful or have reached their upper limit. Unfortunately, this activity makes you end up paying a lot more if you are the high bidder.
Case in point…just this morning, I was going to bid on a cable descrambler that for 8 of the 9 days was at $20.50. One hour before the auction ended, three people and myself fought for it and it ended at $121 (I dropped out at $95).
Accept right now that this sniping behavior can and does usually happen in most auctions because no one wants to tip their hat they want the item until the last minute since no one wants a bidding war (accept the seller of course!))
Also, check out the ‘completed auctions’ to see what this item has previously gone for. If the final price at the end of the auction is well beyond what you would be willing to pay, IMHO I wouldn’t even bother placing a bid. Sometimes you are just better off finding a retailer on the Web who is trying to unload their Elmos because auctions can sometimes get out of control
Check out the seller’s feedback. If they have an excessive amount of negatives, don’t bid on their auction. I wait until the last few minutes of the auction to bid, but I think it is important to think to yourself “What is the most I am willing to pay for this?” and do not go any higher!
I forgot a few things…read the seller’s terms before you bid (some only take certain forms of payment), and I have made it a personal policy to only bid on auctions where the seller states the shipping charges in the auction. I got burned when I won an auction and paid ten bucks for shipping and when I got it the postage stamp on the box said $4.40. When I asked the response was “boxes, bubble wrap, gas to the post office, my time, blah, blah, blah.”
Absolutely read comments about the people you buy from. Make sure they are reputable. And if they do complete your transaction satisfactorily, post positive feedback for them (and request that they do the same for you). Reputations go a long way on Ebay.
I have calculated that I’m actually ahead on the shipping of the items I’ve bought. I only bid on items that have reasonable s&h charges. The amount I’ve paid for s&h on the dozen or so items I’ve bought is slightly less than the amount the sellers have actually spent on shipping. My results are not typical, and are skewed by one heavy item whose shipping I was vastly undercharged for.
It’s also a good idea to do a search for your item in “Completed Auctions.” (Let’s see if this link works: http://pages.ebay.com/search/items/search_completed.html )This will let you know what other people have paid for items similar to yours, and give you an idea of what you’re likely to pay.