Best Online Auction Site (ebay.co.uk)

Member Name: Qaliq

Product:	ebay.co.uk
Date:	03/12/08 (8 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Secure, easy to use

Disadvantages: Difficult to know how much things will cost if people bid late

I have had an ebay account for many years now and I have used it to both buy and sell everything from egg cups to a snowboard.

The website is incredibly easy to use and the ebay university section and the tutorials are excellent if you're just getting starting or you want to learn about effective selling. The selling procedure is really easy and there are 2 options of forms to use, one which only takes about 3 minutes to list an item. Just pick a category, a title for your item, a starting price, the length of auction (up to 10 days), a reserve price (if you want one), postage costs, description of your item and a picture. The postage calculator is very helpful too and helps you price your item correctly. The fees for listing are reasonable and you can reduce these by setting a low starting price.

Buying is just as easy, you just put in your maximum bid for an item and ebay bids on your behalf when other people bid. You can set up email alerts too so you know if you've been outbid. You can get pretty much get anything on ebay, it has saved me countless times for gifts, fancy dress etc. Checkout is easy especially if you use PayPal, ebay's very secure payment scheme.

One thing I particularly like about ebay is their feedback and complaints scheme. I sold a mobile phone a few months ago and the winning bidder didn't pay or respond to any of my emails. I contacted ebay and was refunded all costs and although it was annoying that I had to re-list the item they did all they could to help and the buyer's ebay account was closed down.

The only disadvantage I can think of is the way that people bid quite often an item will have a low price for 6 days and then people won't bid until right before the auction ends. This means you quite often it is difficult to tell how much something will cost (until you actually win the item) as the price is really cheap all week and then jumps ~100 times in the last hour!

Summary: You can get anything on Ebay and it's so easy!