| Product: |
ebay.co.uk |
| Date: |
21/08/02 (160 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: anything you like, nice layout, helpful staff
Disadvantages: addictive
It is official; my whole family is addicted to Ebay, the Internet auction site!
Maybe I should tell you a little bit about Ebay before I talk to you about my addictions!
The first thing to tell you is how to get there. Simply write http://www.ebay.co.uk or if you are America, http://www.ebay.com
When you go on the link, you will come to the home page. Here you will find links to all the sections on the website: Antiques & Art, Automotive, Books, Coins, Collectables,
Computers & Gaming, Consumer Electronics, Dolls, Doll Houses, Film & Television,
Jewellery & Watches, Music, Photography, Pottery, Glass, Sports, Stamps, Tickets & Travel, Toys & Bean Bag, Plush and Everything Else.
You will find links to the Global Ebay sites in Argentina, Australia,
Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Mexico,
Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and United States. Of course you can buy from all of these sites, but it helps if you can read the languages so you know what you are buying. You should also be aware that buying from abroad means you have to pay customs!
You can browse your region, a theme, look at the top 10 searches, and for sellers who pay lots; you can see the featured auctions.
What I particularly like is that some auctions are to raise money for charities- and there is a link to these on the home page, too.
The most important thing to do if you want to bid on auctions or sell your own lot, you must register. Once you register, you will be able to buy, sell, and take part in the community.
Ebay is the world's largest Internet auction. It has over 10 million items for sale at any one time and 42 million registered users, Ebay is your place to find the things you want, to sell the old things you have, and to make friends while you're at it.
There is fraud protection for buyers on items up to £120.00; the
world's leading community watch and investigations programme, and a fraud investigations department makes Ebay the safest place to trade.
Of course, the aim of this website is to bid on items you have found that are of particular interest to you. I tend to look at baby clothes, because they wear them for no time at all before they grow out of them! I am always able to pick up some real bargains! As I have shown you already, there are lots of areas to search through, so you can find practically anything! You can even sell/buy your house!!
If you are fortunate enough to win the auction, you need to pay the seller. They will send you an email saying how they would like to be paid. Usually this is in the form of concealed cash, postal order, banker?s draft, and personal cheque, Nochex, Billpoint or Paypal.
If you do not know about the last three options, allow me to tell you:
NOCHEX
This is a form of online payment. You have to register with www.nochex.com. You put in your card details and then you can load money into your account. You can use all major cards, including solo- NOT ELECTRON. To load money into your account unfortunately will cost you 99p per transaction, so put in quite a lump! You can access your account to see whom you have paid, and who has paid you. You do not have to pay to receive or send money, only to load it. You can also load it back onto your card, but this will take 3-4 days. A lot of people take Nochex payments on Ebay, as it is a very quick and easy way of paying for your lot. Not everyone advertises that they take Nochex, so you have to ask them. A few cunning people charge 99p extra for using Nochex.
BILLPOINT
This is another form of online payment, also known as Ebay payments. It basically works in the same way as Nochex, but you do not put money into the account, it takes it straight from your card. Again it takes all major cards and solo, but still no Electron. This is a
slightly unreliable way of paying as sometimes the transactions say they go through but they actually don?t. They charge you a small amount to receive the money, but I can?t remember exactly how much! I think about 1% but I will be happy to be told I am wrong on that one (?scuse the pun!!). When it works it is great, but I have given up on it after too many mistakes! Your seller will email you with an invoice so you can pay this way.
PAYPAL
This is yet another form of online payments. Takes all major credit cards, and solo and electron! Most sellers will accept Paypal. It is an American site, so you will have to use the currency converter to put £?s into $?s unless your seller tells you the amount in $?s. To use this you will need to go to www.paypal.com.
For all of the online payments you need to keep a note of the auction number and the email address of the seller. You will then be able to pay online, and then receive the goods within two days!! Some sellers may take longer to send you things, some take less time! It really depends on the person.
BUYING ON EBAY
The first thing to do is go to Browse or Search. There are tabs along the top of the page to help you find them.
BROWSE
First you will see the featured items. Sometimes you will find a particular bargain here that takes you off track! Under that is a list of all the categories. I won?t bore you with them again as they are at the beginning of this opinion! On the right hand side there is a column that has fun stuff- links to yet more auctions. You can basically find anything you like this way, but if you were looking for a more specialist thing, a search would probably be better.
SEARCH
This is where I go most often. Say for example, you are looking for a Sierra back window (long story, don?t ask). You can type in those words and all relevant items will appear. I saved myself £45 this way for my window!
You can do a brief searc
h, an advanced search, search by item number, search by seller, by buyer, Ebay shops or by completed items.
So now you have registered and you have found what you want, you need to know how to bid. There is a little box at the bottom, and you type in the amount you are prepared to pay. This is assuming that the price it has reached is not out of your limit.
What happens then, is your bid will be registered. Another seller will then outbid you or you will be the highest bidder.
If you are outbid, you can try again with a higher amount. Again you may be outbid, it really depends on what other people have bid-, as you would expect! You may be fortunate and become the highest bidder. You may not want to re-bid. You can then return to your search and find a cheaper alternative, if you can find one.
If you are the highest bidder? Hooray!
You will then need to keep an eye on your auctions.
To do this, you go to ?my Ebay? which is another tab at the top of the page. Here you can see the items you are bidding on, the items you have won and the items you have not won.
You can then click on the link of each auction and make your bid higher if you need, or want to.
You can retract your bid. There are strict rules though. You must do it within 12 hours, and you must have a valid reason. The fact that you do not want it is not allowed. Say you entered the wrong amount, i.e. 400 instead of 40, you would be allowed to retract the bid. The seller can cancel your bid, if you ask them to, if the item is no longer for sale, or if they have been offered a high amount of money and will close the auction early.
Hopefully you will all win your auctions!
After the auction has ended, you have three days to contact the seller. You will arrange payment terms, pay for the item, and then receive the item. You will then open your parcel (if you live in this house you get many!) and hopefully be
very pleased! You will then go on to Ebay and leave feedback for the seller.
You can leave positive, neutral or negative feedback. I have only once had to leave negative feedback and hopefully I never will again! The only time you can really leave negative feedback is if the item was not as advertised. This is what happened to me. The other time is if you send money and the item is never sent to you Luckily this has never happened to me, but it has happened to my mum! Still on that occasion it was only 65p!
Next to your name on Ebay you will have a number. I use my mum?s name, so I only have 19 at the moment. She has nearly 200. The higher you have, the better for you! People will be more prepared to trade with you. As you get a positive feedback, you go up one number. A neutral number will leave you with the same number. A negative feedback will leave you with one number less.
If you think you have been left negative feedback unnecessarily, you can appeal to have it removed. You can also respond to it, so people will see that the seller is being unreasonable.
If you do not pay within a reasonable amount of time, you will be sent a payment reminder. If you still do not pay, you are likely to be sent a non-paying bidder alert. If you receive three of these, your account will be closed and you will no longer be able to bid or sell on Ebay.
SELLING ON EBAY
If you have lots of things you would like to get rid of that are cluttering up the house, you can sell them on Ebay! Sometimes, I buy things in the sale (clothes mainly) and then sell them for a profit! This is a little cheeky, but a lot of people do it.
Some people I know make their living on Ebay. I had a friend who gave up her job and became a full time Ebay merchant! I was told she earned more money than before and that it was very easy because she got to stay home and look after her children.
Most people simply sell off their old cl
othes, or cars, or books, even music C.D?s. I have bought tweezers and twin sets, videos and violins, so you see, you can sell anything!
If you buy something from ebay that is not quite right, you could re-sell it! My sister (greeneggsandham) bought a pair of jeans last week. They are a tiny bit small around the waist, so she is selling them. So far she has made a nice profit!
You do need to pay fees to sell on ebay. For an article of clothing, or a book and other small things, the fee is around 15p. As the starting price for your item increases, so does the insertion fee. You will then also be required to pay another fee if the item sells. If the item does not sell, you can re-list it, free of charge up to three times.
E.g. if you were to sell your car you would pay £5.00. If the car sells, you will then be required to pay a further £15.00.
Sometimes, ?ebayers? will not pay the money. This is rare and hopefully would never happen to any of you! You can then claim the final fee back, but not the insertion fee. You will remember that I spoke about the non-paying bidder alert earlier in the opinion.
E.g. if you were to sell your car and your fees were £20.00, if after 30 days, your buyer had still not paid, you could claim back £15.00 and they would have a strike against their account.
You do need to register as a seller. You can do this by giving in details of your credit/debit card or by sending in a direct debit form. They will accept all major credit cards and solo, but no electron. If you register by direct debit or with solo (like me) then you will have a £15.00 fee limit. Of course it can go over this if you use up £15.00 worth of insertion fees before you have the final fees on top. You do not have to pay it off with your card; you can pay by cheque or postal order as well. You can also pay off your credit card if you wish. If you are registered with a credit card, you will have an unlimited amount of fee
s you can reach.
On the 13th day of each month you will receive an e-mail invoice. You are then given an amount of days with which to pay. If you go over, your ebay account will be suspended until paid. You can keep an eye on your bill, by selecting my ebay, and then my account. You can follow the links from there, it really is idiot proof- well my mum can navigate there!! Sorry mum!
Of course with all websites, there is an extensive help area. I can tell you from personal experience, that they are very quick to help, and are always polite and courteous! They answer your email within 12-24 hours.
There is help for new people, for people with a whole host of problems, a place to get tips from other ebayers?. Whatever you could possibly want to find in a help area, you can find it here, and more besides!
There is a large ebay community. You can go into chat rooms, read the latest ebay news, leave suggestions for categories, or any other suggestions, learn how to raise money for charity using ebay, and even get a job there!
One downside is that they are closed on Monday mornings between 9-11 am. Not such a problem if you are at work though!
To conclude, I would like to leave you with a warning.
This is the most addictive site in the world! Even more so than dooyoo and ciao! When I go to check my emails, I automatically type in this web address.
Be careful with your wallets!
A wise man with a moustache once said: ?once you pop, you can?t stop?. Hanbag
Hanbag says, ?Once you?ve ebayed, you can?t stop!?
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SueMagee - 21/08/02 I love it. I started as a buyer and recently I've been selling. The money's nice, but it's good fun too! Sue :)
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