I have some questions. I’m very nervous because I just bid on my first item. It’s a Madonna painting and I have the money for it, but I don’t have a credit card or check. The auction said money orders are fine, but I’ve never gotten a money order before. How fast was the shipping on your order? Did it arrive in good condition? What did you order from E-bay? Is it recommended? Thanks to all who respond. 
I’ve been ordering from eBay since 1995 - and I have never been disappointed. And I usually send a check or use payPal. The times I have used a money order have gone smoothly.
Always check the seller’s references. If they don’t have much good feedback, then stay away. What ever you’re buying is not worth the risk of not getting anything.
Have them insure the item, shipping will depend on where it’s coming from and such. I’ve purchased clothing, books, CDs, toys and I’ve never had a problem. eBay is addictive, though and the best piece of advice I can give is this: you should ALWAYS ask the seller any questions BEFORE you bid.
Like anything else, buyer beware… it’s been good to me so far
crosses her fingers
Most eBay sellers are happy to get money orders. If you’re in the US, you can get them at any post office for a nominal fee, or a lot of grocery stores or convenience stores. If you need to send money internationally, you can also use an international money order available at the post office.
Shipping time is totally up to the seller. Most try to get things shipped promptly, i.e. within a few days. Some take up to a week or two. And, of course, it depends on where it’s being shipped from and to.
Just watch out for exorbitant shipping charges. Some sellers do try to gouge you by charging three or four times normal shipping charge as a way to make an extra profit without paying eBay their cut of the final sales value.
The best way to find out about a seller is to read their feedback. Generally, if a seller has much negative feedback, they should be avoided. It’s hard to avoid getting ANY negative feedback (although I’ve been selling on eBay for a year now and so far have stayed at 100% positive – but I’ve had to bend over backwards a couple of times to fix problems with customers), but it’s possible. So an occasional negative is okay, but tons of them aren’t. And people will comment in the feedback on shipping speed, excessive shipping charges, etc.
On most (all??) Money Orders, there is a way to contact the company that issues them, to verify that it was cashed. I had to do this one one Ebay transaction. The seller didn’t ship my item for 6 weeks. I verified that he had cashed my Money Order and told him about that. The item was at my house within days. That seller has positive feedback in the thousands. I believe it was simply a mistake on his part. Other than that one little mistake, I’ve had over 200 great transactions* on Ebay. Most people are great, but “Buyer Beware” is a rule to live by.
One other transaction that was not so great was not really on Ebay. A guy had a diecast model car that I couldn’t live without. It was a “Buy It Now” auction and I offered him a few bucks less by e-mail. He ended the auction and sold it to me “under the table”. It turned out the car was a piece of shit. Since the transaction didn’t take place on Ebay, I couldn’t turn to them to set things right. I was just screwed to the tune of 133 bucks. NEVER do a transaction like that!!!
If you are in the states use a United States Post Office Money order. It runs over 1/3 the price of other money orders, and is often seen by sellers as really secure.
These auctions end on Christmas Eve so I’m worrying that I won’t be able to go to a post office or place to get a money order. I’d have to wait the 24th and 25th since they are holidays and go o nthe 26th to get a money order. I don’t want to delay the sellers nut does anyone know if post office have normal business hours on chritmas or around that holiday?
This thread is better suited for In My Humble Opinion. I’ll move it for you.
Cajun Man ~ SDMB Moderator
Most sellers understand about the holidays, and won’t mind if you have to wait until the 26th to send out a MO.
Now that you’ve already bid, just be careful you don’t get into a bidding war. Set your max price in your mind, if you haven’t already bid it yet. DON’T go above your max price. I always wait until the end of an auction to bid, just for that reason. Getting outbid is a bummer, but it is worse if you pay more than you wanted because someone else wants it too.
I’ve never had much of a problem with eBay. The worst I had was when I won an auction for a new item that was being offered by many suppliers. I didn’t notice that the one I won had not posted a cost of shipping. Everyone else was charging $10 - $12. This seller asked for $25. She did come down to $17 on negotiation, which still left me ahead as I’d won the auction at a very good price.
I’ve been buying things off eBay since about 1997 or so. I’ve only had a few occassions where things went less than ideally.
I had one seller rather excessively overestimate the condition of a CD.
Another seller took about 6 weeks to ship (paid within hours of winning the auction through PayPal), never responded to my e-mail, and screwed up the address. Seller had a lot of similar complaints in their neutral/negative feedback, so I wasn’t terribly surprised.
Actually, the last few things I’ve won had had address problem because, thanks to the miltary, I have about 3 extra lines in internal mail routing information. A lot of sellers like to leave off that, and my rank, so it ends up sitting in the mail office for about an extra week. I’ll usually note it in feedback, but still rate it as positive.
I agree with Mama Tiger on the USPO Money Orders. They’re generally better received and less expensive.
Also, look at sellers’ other auctions. It’s not uncommon for there to be several auctions for a given product by the same seller, only one of which has been getting a bunch of bids pushing the price up.
Another also, Be wary of auctions where the pictures in the auction are obviously not pictures of the actual item being bid upon.
Ok I have more questions.
I signed up for ebay a long time ago with an email address I use alot. I never used that anem and forgot it. I tried getting ebay to mail me the password and user name but it doesnt work. So i signed up with a different email name and im on aol so i have to switch over email names to check my mail. The ebay site says i can merge emails so i followed their directions and still couldnt find the meail merger.
When ebay asked if I wanted to bid on a 10 dollar item i thought that i would bid 11 dollars for the time being. I didnt know this was a max bid. So am I screwed if they bid 12 dollars? I really want to be able to change it if they bid higher.
I’ve never had any problems, not even with paypal, which is what I use.
Oops, forgot to mention, as others have stated, I always check the seller’s comments section. If they have too many negatives, forget it.
And read the negative comments too, you can usually tell from what they said if the seller was really negligent, or if the buyer was just being fussy.
Good bidding!!
Yes, you can change your bid upwards (place another bid in a higher amount) anytime before the end of the auction. You cannot change it downwards (well, you can cancel, but that is not good).
Think of the total maximum you would pay for this. That should be the most you will bid. Take shipping costs into account, too. I prefer to wait until the end of the auction to place any bids, but if you will be gone or busy you might want to bid this now. Yes, people who bid higher can win it, and you’ll lose. But like I said before, I’d much rather lose an auction than pay more than an item is worth.
I have found many items (Watches, Sweaters, Barbie’s & Barbie Stuff, Toys, Wonder Woman Stuff, Movie Stuff), needless to say I have bought alot of stuff on Ebay, but it is stuff I can not find. It is addictive though. And I always pay with a Money Order - which I have no problem getting, but I do not buy any item that will not take a Money Order. I haven’t had a problem with shipping, I always E-mail the seller when I send the Money Order, usually when they recieve, the item is sent the nect day, so I usually get pretty quick. I always check with the Sellers Comments, if it is Negative, I won’t bother, even if it is something I want to buy. I always get the item I purchased insured.
One thing I get pissed off about E-bay is, I may be the high bidder for like 6 days and the hours until the auction ends some Dick has to outbid me.
There are software programs that do this (snipe) for you. Ideally, proxy bidding should fix sniping, but most people don’t know the true value of the item and just bid higher than the highest bidding person.
I think sniping makes good business sense for the buyers since it prevents a price war from occurring until the last minute, literally, so prices are not as high as they could be.
I love sniping an item, and I laugh when I get sniped on something I wanted. If somone sniped your bid, they were just willing to pay more than you were on the item.
I both buy and sell on eBay. I’ve had great experiences for the most part. A couple of times I thought I wasn’t going to get my item, but it turned up in the end. Very good experiences overall.
I’m with you **DeadlyAccurate[/n], in my opinion, sniping is just smart business in an e-auction.
Ugh…someone outbid me. I don’t know how much I should pay for this painting. It’s an original painting and the size o a piece of paper…roughly 8 1/2 x 11in. I bid 10.00 but now this girl nid 15.00. Yikes. This sucks! So I bid 15.50. I don’t know how far I should go. Should I just wait until the end of the auction and bid the last 5 minutes? It’s frustrating when you think you’re going to get something and you don’t. :mad: