Buy it. Sell it, Love it, (ebay.co.uk)

Member Name: magenta23

Product:	ebay.co.uk
Date:	06/12/08 (94 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Choice, ease of use, feedback system

Disadvantages: The few dishonest members

Whats on Offer
The one thing that makes Ebay the best place to shop is you can get almost everything on it! Ok, apart from livestock and food that is!

Searching for items
Easy to use, you can simply search for what you are looking for or browse through an endless amount of catergories. After you have a list of items to browse though you can even filter these through many different subcatergories relevant to your item, for example the location, the colour, the brand, size. It really does make searching for items as easy as it possibly make it.


Buying
When it comes to buying your items there are two types of listing on Ebay. Buy it now or Best Offer and auction. If an item is Buy it Now, it works just as buying anything from any other online store.. you pay the price shown and pay the seller. If it's is Buy it Now of Best Offer, you can suggest a lower price you are willing to pay for the item and see if the seller accepts! Auction style listings are what ebay is famous for. Items are listed for a certain amount of time and within that time you can bid for items against other potential buyers. The person with the highest bid by the time the auction closes wins the item and must pay the seller.

Paying
Sellers will put information on their listings as to the payment methods they accept. Some accept cheques and postal orders, but the majority will use Paypal as their chosen means of payment. Ebay now even specifies that items in some catergories, HAVE TO use Paypal. Paypal is a separate website but a partner of Ebay. You have to set up a Paypal account aswell as an Ebay account to buy and sell on Ebay. Both are easy to do and takes a matter of minutes. For Paypal you will need a credit or debit card to link to your Paypal account, and then when you buy on ebay, the money will come for this account and you won't need to enter your details every time, just your paypal username and password. Paypal is a safe, secure way of paying, and it's not just for ebay. Many other websites accept Paypal as a method of payment.

Selling
Of course, it's not just buying you need a Paypal account for, if you want to sell on Ebay this is essential for recieving payments too. When you recieve payments to your paypal account you can use your paypal balance to buy other items or withdraw your funds to a bank account. Selling on Ebay is easy too. For each item you need a photograph (the better the photograph, the more likely your item will sell). You also need a much information on the item as possible. You fill out a quick online form for each item, type a description, add your picture and list for sale! Ebay charges a listing fee for your item and a final value fee depending on how much your item sells for.

Feedback
There is a lot of trust involved in buying and selling on Ebay, how do you know the seller will send the item? What if your winning bidder doesn't pay up?
Ebay has a feedback system that helps buyers and sellers decide who they want to do business with. When you have completed a transaction with a buyer or seller, you rate them and give a comment on their service. All Ebay members can see each other's feedback so if theres a lot of bad comments on there you know not to buy from, or sell to them. Ebay calculate members feedback into a percentage, and also show how many transactions a member has completed. For an honest person, it's easy to get a percentage above 90 and I certainly wouldn't deal with anyone with a feedback score below 70. Obviously a seller with a high number of transactions and a high feedback percentage are the ones to buy from.

There's so much more to ebay than this but as a rough guide this is how it works. There are a number of rival auctions sites popping up, but I think none will compare to the sheer number of items to choose from and traffic it gets. I don't see it being toppled as the market leader anytime soon. Plus with the credit crunch showing no sign of going away it a great place to grab christmas bargains and sell your old unwanted items to make some extra cash. I am aware there will be some bad reviews for ebay on here. I've used ebay a lot and have a had the odd transaction that didn't go as smoothly as I'd have liked, however it's a site made up of the public for the public and there's always going to be one or two dodgy members. I think the feedback system is a great tool to stop this and if you are careful, there's no reason why it can't be as safe and reliable as buying from any big chain online store.

Summary: A great site, that I will use again and again