Tell Me All About eBay

In My Humble Opinion
21

The reason they did it was loss of buyer confidence - apparently they interviewed a bunch of buyers who had left eBay after bad experiences and they came to the conclusion that there was an unacceptable level of feedback abuse being perpetrated by sellers (this is probably true - there certainly do seem to be a lot of sellers who have been bullying their buyers into either withdrawing negs, or not leaving them at all, when in fact the sellers truly deserve them, or just leaving retaliatory negs). Ebay took the decision as a business to make a bold move to try to win the trust of buyers by offering them blanket protection against this.

I’ve suggested this myself - it would need to be a bit more complex than that to avoid causing brand new problems, but apparently this option was considered and rejected, as it is already in place at some other site in which eBay owns a non-controlling stake - and apparently it doesn’t work there in a way that they consider suitable for eBay

Personally, I think the new regime is morally repugnant, as it stands - being told that you can leave feedback, but only if you say something nice, is just wrong - skirting the Orwellian. They shouldn’t call it feedback - If it must be changed so as to prevent some people saying nasty things, then perhaps they should just scrap feedback and replace it with hard facts - number of transactions completed, number of strikes, number of disputes lodged (broken down to open, upheld and denied), number of disputes received (broken down similarly).

But I also think it will cause problems. Seller feedback ratings will inevitably settle toward a lower average - and this could affect newbie buyer confidence just as badly as the problem that is supposedly being solved.

Also, there is already a low-ish level of buyer fraud - I would expect the activity of this contingent to grow - immune to negs, they can make all sorts of unreasonable demands of their sellers (free postage, or I neg you; partial refund, or I neg you; I’ve broken this and I want a refund, or I neg you, etc).
eBay says than in the absence of seller’s ability to neg, they will seriously investigate any reports of bad activity and deal with such abusive buyers - but based on their track record with that sort of thing, I have absolutely no confidence that they will actually do it.

So yes, it will probably nail one category of crooks on eBay - the big, bad sellers, but I think it will cultivate a different category of crooks to replace them.

22

Thanks for all the advice so far.

Sadly, I have no digital camera. I’d been planning to take pictures with my webcam or simply scan the items on my flatbed scanner.

I plan to start selling with small items in hopes of building up feedback so I can sell the high end stuff.

23

Buyers are going to find you using the search function. Make your stuff easy to find.

Make sure you spell the keywords in your listing correctly, but you might also include some common misspellings in invisible text in your listing. As a buyer I have picked up some great deals on vacuum equipment by searching for “vacu*” and even “vack*” and being the only bidder because the seller escaped notice of potential buyers due to poor spelling.

Before you list an item, put yourself in the buyer’s place, try some searches that you think your buyers might use, and see what kinds of items pop up. If you get a bunch of items totally unrelated to what you have to sell, maybe you need to re-think your discription.
I agree with the comments about “YOUR BID IS A CONTRACT…I WILL SUE YOUR ASS” type warnings in the listings. I have never had an issue with ~50 ebay purchases, but would avoid a seller with such a hostile 'tude.

24

Remembered some more. I will not buy if:

If the Seller types in alternating CaPs AnD lOwEr CaSe.

If there is a reserve (just start the bidding at the price you want.)

If there is no picture.

25

Being that you’re selling toys and collectibles, I HIGHLY recommend investing in some sort of digital camera. If you were selling books, stamps or baseball cards then scanning would be enough. But toys and collectible collectors are highly detail-oriented.

People want to see cracks, rips, tears, dirt, smudges, manufacturer’s stamps, relative sizes, etc.

If nothing else, get yourself a disposable digital camera at the drugstore so you can see how your eBay life goes before making a larger investment.

I’ve passed over several auctions myself because of lack of photos or crappy/small/non-detailed photos - and I am not a collector of anything.

26

Will not buy if the seller has a low opening bid but an outrageous shipping/handling price listed. If the seller doesn’t have S&H listed I give both of these an :dubious:.

If the seller is using cutesy terms in the header and the body such as “OOAK! RARE!!111!!!” with sparklies and all sorts of assorted visual decoration that’s a dealbreaker for me as well. Call me crazy but I prefer sellers that don’t do that.

I’ve also passed over auctions that only have stock photos or nothing. I want to at least try and get a look at what I’m getting for my money.

(on further reading: What **SilverTygerGirl ** said. )

27

I never buy from people who cannot be assed to spell correctly, punctuate or who use bad grammar. Nothing worse than buying from a lolcat.

28

These lists of pet peeves are very useful. But I need more. eBay is full of FAQs and lists, but there are too many. I need basic how-to information.

29

Do NOT, whatever you do, listen to disgruntled Sellers.

You must have pics.

You must take Paypal.

Make your S&H no more than actual + a buck+ round up to the next dollar.

For basic how-to, get Idiot’s guide or eBay has courses.

30

Yes, I know. The new rules (coming some time from now) have been proposed that Sellers can no longer leave Retalitory FB. Big deal. I suppose if the gov’t passed a law you could no longer cut off your nose to spite your face, that’d be and Orwellian interferance also. :stuck_out_tongue: Dudes- you don’t want to leave bad FB for your buyers, it’s just a plain bad idea. So now eBay has said you will (in some quite future date) likely no longer be able to do something that few do and fewer should.

FB won’t get any lower- in fact it should get higher. The Number One cause of undeserved NEG’s by Buyers on Sellers is stupid newbies who don’t know better. In theory, those should go away once the Buyer gets NARUed (No Longer a Register User, ie canned from eBay) . And, that NEG you got 3 years ago and you’re still obsessing about ( I use “you” here in the generic)? :stuck_out_tongue: It will go away after a year.
And all those instances of buyer fraud? *They can already do that. *Why would a fraudster give a rats ass about your possible NEG? They apparently don’t care about possibe legal issue or having eBay NARU them, so why would they care about a NEG- something that doesn’t hurt a buyer? :dubious: And if it did, they could just open a new account.

You have a good point about the fees, but the upcoming changes to FB will just protect sellers from shooting themselves in the foot.

31

Click on the “sell” button and follow the instructions. The form is pretty easy to use.

Basic HTML is fine if you don’t want to fuss with a template.

Use photobucket for your image hosting.

Choose auction or Buy It Now depending on your item based on the advice above.

Seriously, dude, dive in and buy some stuff first. You’ll at least have a buyers perspective.

32

That’s not actually what the change is though, is it? They’re making it so that sellers can’t leave any negative or neutral feedback, for any reason - that’s not the same as what you said above, is it? Honestly?

I don’t even know what you’re talking about here - is this argument by irrelevant analogy or something? The reason I called it *skirting on * Orwellian is that it’s a system where you can say whatever you like, as long as it is in accord with the party line.

Not usually, no, but it is important to be able to tell the truth - and in some cases, that will simply no longer be possible. As I’ve said elsewhere - It isn’t the buyers in the past I’m concerned about - it’s the scammers in the future.

It’s happening in May - so it’s neither ‘quite future’, nor only likely.

[/quote]
And all those instances of buyer fraud? *They can already do that.
[/quote]
Yes, but they can’t make a habit of it, or the negs start to pile up. They could now do it invisibly.

The fraudster may not care- but in those cases, a few fresh negs at the top of the pile would warn the community about a pattern of behaviour - and this would effectively shut them down (at least on that account) probably faster than complaining to eBay would.

I’ve already agreed that the FB changes will probably achieve the stated goal of curtailing retaliatory feedback - which I agree was unacceptable. But I simply don’t believe they will just achieve that.

33

Some flatbed scanners are pretty good at this - I usually managed to get fairly decent pictures of anything that was flattish or blister-carded on mine at home.

But webcam pictures are really going to do your listings a disservice. Your items will simply not fetch as high prices - I know this from actual experience* unless you can display and describe them as beautifully as possible. If you’re not in a tearing hurry to sell any given item, then taking pictures with a film camera, then scanning the prints would be vastly preferable.

*(I’ve been seeking out and buying items with poor quality images and sketchy descriptions, then reselling them).

34

What do you search under? :slight_smile:

35

It’s mostly just a case of legwork - slogging through the listings and looking for likely ones. In my case, I was looking for cheap old laptops - so I just searched for ‘laptop’ (I also used a ‘not in title search’ at Goofbay for items in the laptop category, without the word ‘laptop’ in the title.

Then I’d scan down the list - most of them were no good to me - charging far too much P&P - and any that were due to end during the working day would usually rise to a price I wasn’t interested in paying. Occasionally, I’d find one with either no photos at all, or some fuzzy webcam image and no gallery pic. Typically, they’d just have a one word title - ‘laptop’ and the description would be something like ‘this works but i dont have a psu for it sorry i dont know the spec’

When I found anything that looked promising, I’d add it to my watch list and come back later in the day to plan my bids.

I never made a massive amount of money out of it - typically, I’d pick up an old laptop for £10 and resell it for something like £50 - obviously the postage charge coming to me needed to come out of that profit too.

Some people have told me they think it was unethical to do this, but I won those items by being the highest bidder - if I had not placed the bid, they would have sold for even less.

36

On what planet would this be unethical? I was told basically the same thing about getting $80 for a Win 98 desktop computer at our rummage sale. That I ripped off the customer. Nuts to that, I didn’t make them buy it. If the price was too high they could have made a lower offer or walked away.
Same with what you’re doing. No-one is making them auction off the laptops. You happen to be the highest bidder and you know that if you re-sell the item properly you can make a few pounds. Win-win for all, is the only way I see it.
Don’t ever feel bad about doing this!

It would only be unethical if you walked into their house and said that their laptop was a fire-hazard-piece-of-crap and that you’ll take it off their hands for 10 pounds, knowing that they could have gotten more if they would have made the sale public.

37

I recommend downloading eBay’s Turbo Lister; it’s a big help if you’re going to be listing a lot of items, particularly if they’re similar. You can set up templates for common elements in all your descriptions (like payment, shipping, and return policies) and it can save you having to constantly check the same boxes on the eBay listing form.

38

Dunno - it’s just what some people have said - I can kind of see why it feels that way to them - it seems like I’m making money for nothing or exploiting naive sellers - but even that isn’t really true - I’m taking the time and trouble to market the item, plus in this particular case, I’m taking a risk that the sketchy incomplete description doesn’t conceal some fault.

39

I’d like to relate a similar story:
I was in a thrift shop during lunch one day, and I saw they had an oxygen-tank-breathing-gizmo (for old folks who have lung problems). It was marked $50. I thought to my self “Hmmm… medical equipment, that’s always expensive (and valuable)”, so I went back to the office and did a search on ebay and found that similar items were selling for hundreds of dollars. I drove back to the thrift store, and bought it, and listed it on ebay. It sold (after quite the bidding war - it even got the ‘hot’ icon) for $550.

Now, some may say that I “ripped off” the thrift store, because the item was worth way more than they had it priced. Others have said that I was taking advantage of old folks, who may have needed this device and could only afford to pay thrift store prices.

I say the thrift store got exactly what they wanted, and if they had done their research (or learned to use ebay), they might have sold it for more.

40

Maybe you could find one on ebay :smiley: