One of the most popular and widely used marketplace online is eBay, utilized by millions of people internationally. Unfortunately, where there are huge number of people in one place, there are also bigger chances of encountering with scammers. There many different stories of people who got ripped off by other members on eBay either as a buyer or as a seller. But there are ways to minimize your chances of being victimized by these scammers.
Here are some tips you might want to try:
Always check member feedback. Ebay provides feedback system as an aide to help tell the reputation of each eBay member. More positive feedbacks given by more fellow members means that such member have history of great, pleasant transactions with other members and is more likely the right eBayer that you want to buy from or sell to. Negative feedbacks says it all, negative, take it as a warning for you. More negative means more warnings for you. If an eBay member have zero feedback, be more guarded and cautious as well.
Too good to be true. Some deals might be too nice to believe. Trust your instinct. Most reliable eBay sellers are not selling on eBay because they feel like they need to give away like a Santa Claus. One way or another, many people try to make some bucks as supplementray income for their family. So if you feel like you are getting such a deal, too good to be true deals, ask the question why? If an item is worth $100 in stores, and you are getting the product for $5, do you think its for real? Do you think the seller will be reliable, worth dealing with?
If in doubt, ask! If seller provides any unclear description, unclear photos, ask seller for clarifications or verifications. That way you will not be assuming and guessing. If you are buying used item, ask seller if there are any flaws or damages to the item, specially if the description seems short and sound shady and incomplete. Conditions that says excellent, great, good, fair, mint tell you something about the actual condition in general about the product, not specifics. So if specific description is not indicated like why is it fair not excellent? Ask the seller before you bid or buy.
For eBay sellers, its always a great idea to require clearing period for any Money Order or Personal Check payments prior to shipment of any orders to make sure that such payment is not fake check or not be cancelled. Since such process will affect the delivery time, make sure that you mentioned the clearing period in your descriptions, specify days like 8-10 work days.
For eBay sellers, having a confirmation or tracking number for any items being shipped will basically tell the seller if the buyer received the item or not. Its also always good to know if the packages are successfully shipped that way.
If you are receiving emails from eBay, make sure that it really originated from eBay site. If you are not sure, you can also login to eBay site directly and use the MyEbay > Messages instead, where all real eBay messages are also sent.
So if you follow some of the tips mentioned above, you minimized your chances of being a scam victim. Remember, its always good to trust your gut feeling, be cautious and be observant.
Written by JAZEVOX. All Rights Reserved.
DISCLAIMER: The author is not affiliated with eBay in anyway, this article is solely based on personal experience and opinion.
This blog is also posted at http://jazevox.blogspot.com/2007/10/avoid-getting-ripped-off-online.html
Making it on eBay is very possible. In my opinion, eBay have changed the way the world do business and trading, its has become a global phenomenom. There are probably millions of users everyday that shop on eBay all over the globe. So if you are a business inclined individual and want to tap in this huge marketplace, its always wise to consider listing on eBay for the possibility of being seen by a huge numbers of global audience.
Having a business on eBay is very promising but at the same time it is also very tricky and very challenging. Just as there are lots of buyers on eBay, there are also a lot of sellers, so expect rough, tough, and high competitions so you wont get disappointed and break right away. But if you have found great product that is in high demand, and there are not a lot of eBay sellers competing with you, then you will really have a great chance of making it big.
But basing on my eBay experience both as a seller and a buyer, listing on eBay is NOT just all about having the product to sell. There are other several factors that make or break the deal. As simple as days of the week, timings, photos, listing categories, product prices, product descriptions, feedback score, customer service, and more are all critical factors that definitely affect and highly contribute for the success or failure of your eBay businesses. So I would highly suggest you provide clear, close-up photos of your products, provide honest and correct description of your products, never lie because they will get you in the feedback anyways. Your eBay feedback is very important to your reputation specially if you are an Ebay seller. A lot of ebayers visit the feedback history of a member prior to buying/selling to make sure that they are dealing with a reliable, and honest person. So if there are flaws, tear, breaks or damage in your products, make sure that you will mention these in your item description as well, and possibly provide photos of these flaws too. When prospect buyers ask questions regarding your products, try your best to answer their questions before the listing or auction ends, that way they will feel assured that you are really there, you are within reach, and it will also help develop buyer trust confidence to buy from you. It is also very important to list your products at the proper times of day, proper day of the week, and proper month of the year. There are not a lot of people shopping for Halloween stuff in the month of January or February because most people are busy shopping gifts and decors for Valentines Day. Listing your product on the right category also affects the exposures of your products. There are several categories on eBay, each category is unique, some categories have a lot of sellers, some have few sellers. If the product you are selling have several competing sellers, meaning there are more listings in such category then your product exposures will lessen and get buried right away, so try to consider availing some eBay listing upgrades like bold text, thumbnails, box ads, gallery.
So if you want your business to make it big on eBay, it sure is very possible, but it will surely take to have the right product and lots of works and efforts from you.
All Rights Reserved. Written by Jazevox
There is nothing as frustrating as wanting so badly something you found on eBay, bidding on it, and found out that you lost the auction. Based on my eBay experience as a buyer or bidder, here are some of my tricks to make sure I have bigger chances of winning the item I want:
Bid on an item and then also place your maximum bid, so that eBay program will automatically increment your bid for you if someone else is bidding on the same item. Mostly bidders set their maximum bid according to how much maximum price you are willing to pay for the item.
Turn on your outbid message alert in your MyeBay preferences. Bid on the item that you want the moment you see it, and if other eBayers will bid on the same item, eBay program will automatically notify you by your eBay email address that you been outbid, that way, you can place another bid.
Sign-in to messenger alert that is incorporated with eBay website, so that you will be notified by eBay thru your messenger if you been outbid or not.
Some auctions are listed as dutch auctions, where the seller have several similar items available and the seller is listing them as one single auction with multiple availability. Example of a dutch auction is a seller list an auction as dutch with 10 pieces available, if you bid on such auction listing, you will have 10 chances of getting a winning bid because all top 10 bidders of such auction listing will ended up winning one (1) piece of item.
Turn on your second chance offer setting in MyeBay preferences, so that if all tips above fails and you still didnt win the auction and you have decent maximum bid, the seller will possibly offer you a second chance offer if they have the extra available items. A second chance offer is an optional way provided by ebay that a seller can choose to offer to those who bid the item but didnt win. Second Chance offer price will be based on your maximum bid of the item you didnt win. Seller have the choice who she/he want to offer the second chance among the non-winning bidders, your chances to get this offer is bigger if you have decent maximum bid.
Good luck on your treasure hunting on eBay!
DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated with eBay in anyway, this article is based on my opinion and experience related to the topic.
All Rights Reserved. Written by Jazevox.
One of the most popular and widely used marketplace online is eBay, utilized by millions of people internationally. Unfortunately, where there are huge number of people in one place, there are also bigger chances of encountering with scammers. There many different stories of people who got ripped off by other members on eBay either as a buyer or as a seller. But there are ways to minimize your chances of being victimized by these scammers.