Ebay is pretty popular now worldwide and its especially taken of here in Ireland with not just buyers but sellers realizing the benefits of a fast, efficient and great deal laden system. Heres a few things you should look out for though:
Buyers
You’ve come across an item either by search or browse and you have to have it! Heres some things to look at on the listing:
- Is the price just too good to be true – no-one gives away iphones for €50!
- Look at the sellers feedback section top right of the listing, the % should be pretty high.
- Its also safer if they are an experienced seller. You can tell this by looking at the feedback ‘score’. A score is basically the amount of transactions they have been involved with (buying and selling) which has resulted in them getting a positive rating by the other person. A 100% feedback rating is not great if they have only been involved in 1 transaction!
- You can click on the feedback score to see the actual comments people have left the seller and to see how many negative or neutral comments they have received if any.
- Underneath the Feedback section is the Paypal buyer protection section. If protection applies to the item you are thinking of buying then you will be protected by paypal up to about €1000 if something goes wrong with the sale and you get screwed. This is why I never buy anything that costs more than the amount that paypal covers.
- Feel free to contact the seller through the links in this area too. Emailing them lets you know that they are real and how good their customer services is which is a good indication of how much you can trust them. If you don’t receive a reply I would recommend moving on because anyone selling on ebay should be prepared to answer potential customers emails fast and efficiently. Be wary of emails that go missing though and people being out of the office!
- Look for professionally written listing descriptions. Sellers who bother to write proper descriptions of items they are selling are likely to be more professional in their approach than people who can barely string a few properly spelled words together.
- Be VERY aware of the postage costs. Its an old trick on ebay for sellers to offer items at a very low and tempting price then charge you a fortune for postage on checkout. Know exactly how much its going to cost you for Post & Packing to YOUR country of residence.
- I always say to avoid sellers who don’t provide postage costs to all possible areas they ship to. Too often sellers say they ship worldwide on their listing but they don’t provide postage costs to any country other than they one they are in forcing you to email them to ask which is just way to much hassle.
- Look for any small print in the listing that might mention any other charges like tax and insurance that will be lumped on to your bill without you realizing it.
Sellers
Sellers don’t need to be as careful as buyers on ebay but theres still a few things that can go wrong:
- When you are listing an item you can restrict buyers based on certain criteria such as their low feedback or buyers who have a certain amount of unpaid item strikes in the last month.
- You can also block people from certain countries to which you don’t post.
- Blocking buyers who don’t have a paypal account or credit card on file is also an option.
- Be aware of potential buyers contacting you and asking you to accept payment using methods you don’t use or havn’t heard of.
- Don’t ship anything paid for by cheque untill the cheque clears.
- For people who don’t pay and never reply to emails just move on, don’t give them negative feedback or they might give you some in retaliation. Just open an unpaid item dispute to get your ebay listing and end of sale fees back.
- Don’t agree to a buyers request to transact outside of ebay as you wont be protected by ebay.
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