My eBay Experience (ebay.co.uk)

Member Name: campb3ll

Product:	ebay.co.uk
Date:	09/02/02 (99 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very easy to use, Low charges for sellers

Disadvantages: Relies on trust, A trust system isn't 100% con-proof

I have been fascinated by eBay for a long time, by the concept that quite ordinary individuals can enact trades with complete strangers to their mutual benefit. It seems to me that a good deal of trust is involved in such transactions and that there's a lot of scope for things to go wrong. However, eBay has become a household name with a good reputation for honesty. So, a couple of weeks ago, I finally bit the bullet and signed up.

STEP ONE: Registering
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You must register with eBay if you want to buy or sell anything (feel free to "window" shop though if you don't want to trade anything). Simply choose a username and fill in some personal details and you're away. You may also want to set up an optional "about me" page, as this helps people to trust you if you're a new user. The whole "trust" issue is a big thing on eBay. Every username has a little number in parantheses after it, indicating the number of comments/feedback a user has received. You can view the feedback to find out whether it's positive, neutral or negative. This is very helpful to established users as people are more likely to trust them if they have 50+ positive comments in their feedback. It does very little for the newbie though, as people will have to decide whether or not to trust you and sell/buy depending on such trivial factors as your username, "about me" page and possibly email contact.

As I was rather wary of eBay, I decided my first experience should be selling. The logic being that this presented the least amount of risk to me and the greatest gain. So, I selected a rather nice health encyclopedia CD-ROM and embarked on the daunting task of listing it for sale. There seems to be a myriad of confusing sales options. I was offered the choice, among other things, of setting a bid price, a reserve price, placing my ad in bold text, adding a picture, selling worldwide or just to the
UK, and specifying postage and payment options. Hmm. I decided that the simplest and easiest method would be to sumbit a basic product description (you're allowed to use HTML tags) and ignore the fancier options. "Excellent," I thought, "this should sell no problem ..." (But more about that later.)

STEP TWO: Selling/Bidding
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Once you've engaged in listing a product for sale or bidding on an item for purchase, you are committed to following through with the transaction. The winning seller and buyer/bidder must follow through with the transaction on pain of having their membership revoked. Fortunately, this isn't as troublesome as it sounds. Firstly, sale prices tend to be fairly low and you don't have to continue bidding on an item if Joe Bloggs decides to outbid you by a factor of 20. Secondly, there are no addition fees to be paid if you are buying an item and the fees charged for selling an item are very low. (Listing an item costs from 15 pence and selling an item costs from 5% of the sale price.)

I initially decided to sell my CD-ROM for an ambitious £4.99 and pay the postage costs myself. This cost me a grand total of 15 pence. (NB: You will be involved monthly and must pay any balance over £1.00, although you do have an "overdraft" of £15.00.) You receive a daily email update on all transactions you are involved in, telling you whether people are bidding on your item or whether your bid is still winning your chosen product. To bid on an item, you need to be logged in and you then enter your bid and wait to see what happens. The minimum bid is decided by eBay depending on the starting price of the product. For example, an item starting at £1.00 will have a minimum increment of 20 pence so your minimum bid would be £1.00 and the next bid would be £1.20 then £1.40 and so on.

STEP THREE: When the fish aren't biting
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As eBay has a large member base, you can well imagine that sometimes you will be outbid by another member. If that happens you can either tell eBay to continue bidding for you up to a fixed maximum or you can simply log on and re-bid yourself. The flip-side of this is that, even though eBay is chock-a-block with members, sometimes no one will be interested in your sale offering. In that case, you can simply alter your sale price and conditions to be more favourable in the hope that this will increase bidding interest.

This certainly happened to me. In my foolish newbie frame of mind, I supposed that people would prefer to buy something at a low cost and avoid paying postage charges themselves. After browsing through several other offerings, I noticed that everyone was either asking for buyers to pay the actual postage charges or a fixed postage charge. So, I logged in and altered my sale price to a meagre £1.00 and set a fixed postage charge of £1.50 - this didn't incur any additional charges. After altering my sale conditions, I immediately attracted a bidder. So, there's a tip to anyone hoping to sell on eBay: pick a low sale price and charge a fortune in postage costs. I don't know why but it seems to work.

STEP FOUR: Completing the deal
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Once the sale ends, somewhere between 1 and 10 days depending on what the seller has chosen, eBay will contact the winning seller and buyer/bidder telling them that now it's time to follow through with your trade. You can then log in and obtain the email address of your seller or buyer and contact them to arrange exchange of money and goods. You must do this yourself within 3 days of the end of sale - eBay will not arrange this and will be rather cross if you run away.

As I'd managed to attract a bidder for my little CD-ROM, I immediately contacted him to exchange addresses and confirm costs. This was all new territory for
me. Obviously, I hoped that the buyer was a nice honest person willing to place by the rules and ... admittedly, somewhat to my surprise, he was. A few emails later, I was the proud recipient of £2.50 and he was looking forward to the delivery of my CD-ROM.

STEP FIVE: What happens next
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Now that you've sold or bought your chosen piece of tat (or delightful item of value) you can submit some feedback to your seller or buyer's feedback profile. Obviously, you don't have to but this is what keeps eBay honest so to speak. The trail of positive or negative comments on your profile marks you out as either a reliable user or a veritable con artist. Like Dooyoo, you can't edit comments, so do be careful and comment honestly and accurately.

Now that I've experienced eBay for myself, I can honestly say it is extremely easy to use and I would definitely use it again - whether to sell or to buy items. Admittedly, my profit on my CD-ROM came to a grand total of £2.35 less postage but I have learnt a lot about using eBay and will now feel a lot more confident about buying and selling. Plus, I even made a friend as my winning bidder turned out to be a rather nice email correspondent. :)

So, in conclusion, I would say that eBay is definitely worth visiting and does live up to its reputation. Give it a go! I'm sure you'll pick up a few bargains and shift some of the junk lying around your house (it may be junk to you but it's worth something to somebody). You may even make a few friends along the way ... and that's always worth something. :)

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