egafd.com

Prompted a bit by Steve56's "Paypal/Nochex" thread

Just thought I'd put in a good word for eBay actually.
Spent many happy hours trawling,buying and selling on there -and,yes,I probably should get out more. !grin!
Unfashionable to be positive I know,but I think it's great ! So......

Accepting that the fees could always be lower,any useful,sensible tips for a better eBay experience ?

Some basic ones to start off..........
--if you think you've recd a dodgy email,fwd it to spoof@ebay.co.uk (or spoof@paypal.com for Paypal)
In my experience,they always respond very quickly to let you know if it's genuine or not.!thumbsup!

--don't encourage sellers who charge exhorbitant p+p by buying from them.!thumbsdown!

--and if a seller uses a lousy photo and simply puts "vgc" or the equally meaningless "good condition for its' age" either click on "ask seller a question" or walk away.!oops!

I've only had one bad experience buying on ebay but they paid up under the compensation scheme. It was potentially embarassing for me because the vendor in error (?) sent the goods by a very slow route and wasn't replying to my emails so I assumed that I had been conned. ebay came up trumps with their compensation then the goods arrived...oops....but they weren't complete as per description. I fronted up to ebay and they still paid me the compensation. And a further complication was that the vendor in Germany would only accept payment by bank transfer which I couldn't do but which a fellow Yahoo group member in Finland did for me and I paid him via PayPal.
One very strange thing about ebay's search engines. If you start from ebay.co.uk and try worldwide search you find much more than if you start from ebay.com
That means people in the US don't know about a lot of stuff so aren't bidding for it.

Mart

But how does it work?

If you are a seller you want to get as much money as possible for your item. If you are a buyer you want to get it as cheaply as possible.

Jacques wrote:

> But how does it work?
>
> If you are a seller you want to get as much money as possible
> for your item. If you are a buyer you want to get it as cheaply
> as possible.


Hence it is an auction.

(certain items, marked 'buy it now', may be purchased at a fixed price)