Great auction fun (ebay.co.uk)

Member Name: karlg

Product:	ebay.co.uk
Date:	21/10/09 (15 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: sell your unwanted goods

Disadvantages: takes a fee of you

Shoes, laptops, cars, glasses, fake blood, tv sets, make your own beer kit, you name it, you can find it on ebay!
eBay is basically an auction site for anyone in the world, where you can ell your unwanted goods, create a business or buy anything you desire on there.

First of all, setting up an account is pretty easy, click on the sign up button, follow the on screen instructions and within 5 minutes your set up and can be selling or buying along with the millions of people already signed up to the hugely popular site.

Once signed up, you can go to the tab 'my ebay' which is your hub basically, from here you can keep track all sorts:
anything your selling
anything your bidding on
anything your watching and waiting to bid on
keep track of which items you have dispatched
check your selling account balance

just to name a few.

BUYING

If you want to search for an item this again is simple, you can either type in a keyword in the search bar at the top or browse through the different categories which are broken down to try and narrow your search so your not looking through thousands of unrelated items.

Once you have seen an item you like the look at from the list, you can click on that and view the full details, here you will see pictures, specifications of the product, posting and packaging prices, delivery time, and you can see the sellers rating, this is based on previous activity the user has been involved where feedback is left regarding selling or buying of an item.
It will also show the current price of the item, if you can simply buy the item now, and how long is left on the item if it is in an auction so you know how long you have left to place a bid.

If you win the item, you can then proceed to pay for the item now or tell the seller when you intend to do so and how. eBay likes to use a sister company called paypal to pay for items, again this needs to be set up by yourself to use beforehand, this is at www.paypal.com
there are various methods of payment, such as cash, cheque, paypal, western union.
Once you have paid for the item, you wait to recieve it from the seller and once its arrived you can then leave feedback so other users know whether the seller is trustworthy or not. If you dont receieve your item, you can complain to ebay and an investigation willl unfold, through paypal your cash is usually returned if you dont recieve your item and the seller cant prove he has posted it.

SELLING

Selling on ebay is pretty simple, click on the sell button at the top of the page, then start to follow the on screen instructions. These include putting a detailed description of the product, uploading pictures of the item and saying how much postage and packaging will be, how long your item will be on for and how many days it will take to arrive.

You will probably recieve questions about your item so its a good idea to check your emails and reply to them quickly and honestly as possible as to build up a good feedback rating so members will trust you in the future.

Once your item has been sold, you can send an invoice, this is found in the 'my ebay' tab at the top and await payment.

Once that has been recieved it is up to you to post the item to the address given by the buyer and leave feedback to the buyer regarding how quickly he or she paid and how good they were at communicating.

There are fee's to pay, ebay takes a small percentage of the final price, it costs pence to upload more than one picture, and there are other various factors, they can be found on the help page so you know how much will be taken before you choose to sell.

Overall this is a decent auction website and the most popular on the net, its simple to navigate, use and join. I would recommend this to anyone looking to sell items or look for bargains.

Summary: easy to use website to sell and buy bargains and goods