Buy and sell pretty much anything you can think of! (ebay.co.uk)

Member Name: cognition

Product:	ebay.co.uk
Date:	26/05/09 (234 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Paypal buyer protection, you can find pretty much anything you can think of there

Disadvantages: 10% final value fee for sellers

DEFINING eBAY
eBay is an auction web site that allows people and businesses to put their belongings up for auctions. Both businesses and individuals can put items up for sale, and there is no limit to what can be put up for sale, witin reason. Obviously, anything illegal is not allowed, but beyond that your imagination is more or less your restriction.

HISTORY
eBay was founded under the name AuctionWeb in California in 1995. The name didn't become eBay until September 1997. The reason the name 'Ebay' was chosen was because the site originally belonged to Echo Bay Technology Bay, and at the time the domain name echobay.com was taken, so the name was shortened to eBay. In October 2002 the company purchased Paypal. eBay has established localized websited in several countries, United States being the first one in 1995, followed by United Kingdom and Australia, both in 1999. The following years a lot of localized eBay sited have followed, and at the time of writing there are 32 localized eBay web sites.

TYPES OF AUCTIONS
eBay offers a variety of auction models for their sellers to choose between. There is the traditional timed auction format, where a startng price is set, and the auction runs for a set amount of time. When the time runs out, the highest bidder at that time wins the auction. Only bids equal to or higher than the starting price are accepted. Another format is the 'But it now' model. Consumers can not bid, instead a set price is given, and the consumer can committ to buying the item in an instant, at the click of a button. There is a variation of this where a price is given, but it's possible for the consumer to bargain on the price by making a lower bid. An offer is then sent to the seller, and the consumer commits to buy at that price provided that the seller accepts the offer.

SELLER FEES
Several fees are incurred for the seller of items on eBay. There is the insertion fee. For a private seller, if the starting price of an item is £0.99 or lower, there is no starting price. If the starting price is higher, there is a fee involved, and how big it is depends on how much you want the starting price to be. It ranges from £0.15 to £1.90 for the most common types of items. There are several optional marketing fees. For instance, if you want to have one picture on your auction, that is free, but for every additional photo, there is a fee of £0.12. Similarly, there are fees for adding a sub title to your auction title, for listing your auction in more than one category, etc. However, all the fees mentioned so far can be skipped if you choose to go with the default auction settings and set a starting fee of £0.99. The one fee that can not be bypassed, though, is the final value fee. This is 10% of the final sale price, up to a value of £40 that has to be paid to eBay.

PAYMENT
A variety of payment options are offered. The most popular method, which comes highly recomended is Paypal. Paypal is a separate company, but is owned by eBay. Paypal basically allows buyers and sellers to register their credit card details on a secure web site, which links their credit card information to their e-mail address. This allows people to send and receive money to and from their e-mail addresses, without any sensitive information being known by the other party. It allows anyone with a Paypal account to receive credit card payments. There is a small fee involved for the party receiving the money, however, considering the ease at which money can be sent and received, I would say it is worth it. Paypal also offers buyer protection, so that if you don't receive the item you have paid for or any other unforseeable fault happens to the transaction, you can open a case through Paypal's web site, and your money will be returned. I have myself done this on two or three occasions, and in each case I got my money back within a couple of days. Hence, when I buy with Paypal I feel protected, should anything go wrong.

Other possible payment methods include cheques, postal orders and direct bank transfers, although these are less popular and are usually not recommended because payment is difficult tor recover in case of fraud.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
I've been using eBay, both as a buyer and as a seller, for about four or five years now. As a buyer, I enjoy being able to search for just about anything I might want on eBay. If I want an item and I don't know exactly where to look, eBay is my go-to place. I often compare prices of CDs, DVDs and books between eBay and Amazon. I'm always hunting for a bargain, and as a buyer, I really enjoy hunting out what seems to be a good offer on eBay. As a seller, it is annoying having to pay 10% of the money to eBay, but where else can you sell your junk and gain mass exposure? I have successfully sold books, CDs and DVDs on eBay, and although it's usually small amounts of money I gain in each auction, I highly enjoy getting rid of items I don't need any more, and all the small auctions add up to decent pocket money.

eBay is not for everyone. It will be faster and easier to go to a shop and buy what you want, or to order from Amazon, or similar, but in certain cases, if you look around, you can find yourself a real bargain on eBay.

Summary: Sell your junk... or have a look for that [insert name] you always wanted!