Be-warned once entered there is no going back. (ebay.co.uk)

Member Name: bexxie

Product:	ebay.co.uk
Date:	14/09/01 (75 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Bargains galore,good way of making some money

Disadvantages: Can be infuriatingley slow

E-bay is so far the best and most interesting auction site I have encountered. You can literally sell anything from your old clothes that you longer want, to yourself for a date;-)

When you first go into E-bay, you can take a tutorial tour which takes you round the site with lots of FAQ (frequently asked questions!) With every question under the sun so you can be sure you won't get stuck.

For the seller:

If you have products that you want to sell then there is a easy catagory page where things are listed with an easy to find search facility. So if it's clothing you want to sell then the search would be under
Everything else>Clothing>Children>Girls (for example) so you can't go wrong.

Once on the selling page then E-bay will ask if you want to submit a photo (as this really does help the item to sell if people can see what they are buying), to do this there are some boxes which once clicked on you can drop and drag from your p.c files,such as "my documents" which is the easiest. The first photograph is free of charge and any additional (different shots of item for example) are 10 pence each. E-
bay do have a listing fee which is usually a minimum of 10p right up to £1 depending on what you expect for your mimimum bid, but generally for clothing and such like it is 15p per listing but with offers they have on like bold-lettering, etc and high exposure on the site,it can go up.

You have a choice of keeping you item up for bid from 7-10 days,for the one price and when/if your item sells E-bay do take a percentageof the price but this is so little that you don't really notice.

So how do you pay E-bay then?

Well there are several options and the most popular being,keeping your credit card on file (which is encrypted and a very secure site anyway), to getting a monthly invoice via your e-mail. This you can then pay in the same way as a posted letter.

So how do the
people who buy off me pay me?

This is done by whoever is the highest bidder at the time of auction closing. They then send you payment and when you have the funds clear then you dispatch the goods on. As the seller you can stipulate who pays the postage and packaging fee's, usually it's the buyer which is always included in the item's auction price (additional to the amount you get as a final bid,just added onto the cheque) E-bay do not get involved with the monentry transactions but will step in if there is a dispute that cannot be solved. There is also a system which is known as feedback. This is something that after you have either purchased or sold goods, you leave either positive,neutral or negative feedback about the other person so it helps you/them, by this you can kind of check a person out by seeing there previous records and level of which they have behaved with others in the trade and it helps you decide if you think they are worth doing trade with them or not.

Registering.

This is is if you have an e-mail address which is not anoynomous eg: Non-hotmail etc, as you could run multiple accounts and fraudently use it against e-bay,the only way round this is to put your credit card on file,then e-bay will let you register under your hotmial etc,account with complete confidence. You need to supply a user-name, a pass word and give your full residential address.

So how do I keep track of my bids/auctions?

This is made exceptionally easy as E-bay give you what's known as "My E-bay", this function enables you to, see what bids you have made and keeps track of how you are doing,green for winning, red for behind. What items you have for sale and how many bids you have and for all these functions there is atimer so you can see exactly how long each auction has left to run. Also on "My E-bay" you can check on your accounts to see how much you owe E-bay and when your next invoice if pa
ying that way is next due. There is a feedback facility which even lets you know who you have got to respond to after they have left it for you. The "My E-bay" is a ingenius facility that without it I personally do not think E-bay could function as successfully as they do.

As with all auctions there is a very high level of seriousness for making and honouring bids and these rules have no exception. Thye do take it very seriousley and if you are to bid you must make sure that you are not going to pull out at a later date. There is however a facility that lets you retract your bids but there *must* be a valid reason for doing so and this will go against your record for the lifetime of memebership.


There is a chat facility on e-bay which I have to say I haven't used but it does sound good. the only draw-back that I have found to E-bay is sometimes it can be frustratingly slow but I guess that si teh sheer volume of users that are on it so evenings are best avoided if you can.

There isn't much else I can really say about this site, apart from the fact that I wish I had found it years ago! But beware it can be addictive and you could end up bankrupt. But anyway have fun and happy bidding.

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