Buying on eBay might
be very rewarding, either in terms of being able to pick up items cheaply or for hunting for hard to find items. Although generally the knowledge is great, there are instances where things might
go badly wrong. These tips, based on experience over the last seven months, should help to avoid some of the potential pitfalls.
1. Make make use of
of the various tools provided on eBay to ascertain the target price of items you are interested in. A simple way to do this is to search for completed items.
2. Always check that there are no hidden costs associated with your potential bargain. These can may include unspecified unspecified postage costs, or paypal fees chargeable to the buyers. If in doubt e-mail the buyer and if you do not
get a response then do not
bid. Remember that when buying from overseas postage costs might
be significant compared to the price of the item and also for more expensive items you could be
liable to customs fees.
3. Check out the sellers feedback. You should be aiming to buy from sellers with feedback of at least 98 per cent - if it is less and you are interested in an merchandise
read the feedback comments to satisfy yourself that the buyer provides a grand service. In particular, read the neutral and negative feedback posts to try to work out what might
have gone wrong with previous transactions.
4. Do not
get carried away and finish
up bidding more than absolutely need or want to. Some items appear very frequently on eBay and it could be
worth setting yourself a limit and waiting for the next one to come along.
5. If you find you are commonly being outbid at the last moment, consider using a sniping software which you can make use of
to automatically submit a bid in the last few seconds of the auctions.
6. Where possible, make use of
Paypal to pay for items on eBay. The sellers get their payment quickly, and there is a degree of protection for buyers if things go wrong. eBay (via My eBay) provides a number of tools for monitoring progress on your transaction.
Stephen Reynolds
