There are two ways to buying on ebay or other auctions the easy way or the hard way! I prefer the easy way and leave the hard way alone altogether, as it is not required.
First of all you have to be a member of ebay or other auction so if you are not and would like to be a member then Visit my site at the URL in the Resources Box. Once you have become a member you can browse through the categories that you wish to by using the search box provided by ebay or other auctions.
It is fairly easy to use just type in what you are looking to buy e.g. Car then go to the right of the search bar and scroll through the categories list make your selection and then a new screen pops up with a page of the items for sale.
Browse through the lists or pages until you find what you are looking for and then click on the item that you like.
When inside the sellers description page you will find a description and other details of the item that is being sold and if the seller has more items for sale it usually says this at the bottom of the page.
It also tells you how many people have bid on the item and has a box for you to enter a bid. What you must never do is bid on the item until you have checked the seller out.
You check the buyer’s feedback by clicking on the seller’s feedback details usually in the box at the top right hand corner of the item description page. You must check this out. Normally you will see a figure in % like 100 %, 97.5 % or even less. This is the persons Feedback Score at that moment in time. You MUST NOT go by this Feedback Score
When you select Feedback you will see another page with several tabs and these tabs tell you whether the feedback is for selling or buying. You are not really interested in the sellers buying feedback you are only really interested in the sellers Selling Feedback. Click on that tab and read all of the comments to see what feedback has been given to this person as a seller.
This is what you really need to examine because the comments here should determine whether or not that you buy from this seller. Don’t take all the comments as gospel because what you also have to remember is that most people will put a positive feedback comment on because they do not wish to receive a negative comment in return.
A lot of the comments may be automated and you can tell these apart from the others because of the way the comments are displayed. Automated comments usually have all sorts of characters and patterns before and after the comment.
What you are looking for is the comments by people who are not themselves general sellers on ebay. These people also would not like negative comments returned to them if they had placed a negative comment about this seller. So how do you find out?
What you do is read as many comments as possible and after a while you can tell which ones were happy and which ones were not. For instance if someone puts a comment like this “As good as their word on refunds”. Can be interpreted as the person bought the product and it was not suitable but the seller gave the purchaser a Refund which in it self deserves a positive feedback comment because the seller refunded the buyer. (After all it is great when you get your money back if your not happy with the product or service).
The buyer should also get a positive feedback comment as the buyer bought the product or service in good faith and paid for it even though they got a refund.
On the other hand if someone leaves a positive comment such as, ” Delivery ok but would not buy again”, could be interpreted as “Delivery great but would not buy again because the product or service was not suitable or damaged or mis-described”.
This means that the seller could possibly be over describing the product or service or just plain mis-leading the potential buyers.
This is what you have to read all of the comments for and then analyze them carefully. Only do this to relevant buyer or seller comments depending on whether you’re buying or selling. It does not matter what you are doing Buying or Selling as long as you analyze the correct comments. e.g. Buyers comments from other sellers if your selling items, Sellers comments from other buyers if your buying items.
Once you have done all this work you still do Not want to buy yet. (What after all this work!) :o(
That’s right you still have a little more work to do. DoH!
What you must do now is go back into the items page and see if there are other similar items for sale and see what prices they are going for.
Having done this and done the same checks on other sellers if the items are of a similar price you can then make a more informed decision about buying the product or service.
This only leaves one more thing to do and that is to bid on the item. Do yourself a favour and do not bid on the item if it has days or several hours to go. The reason for this is simple bid early you then have an agonizing wait to see if you win or have to put in a higher bid.
If you wait until the last ten minutes or so of the auction ending for this item you will have a better idea of what the final price will be. If you’re quick (within the last couple of minutes or so) there is a very good chance that you will get the item that you want at the price you bid without having to raise your bid.
You only need to do this if there are several bidders on the item or service that you want to buy. If no one else has put a bid in then you should definitely get the item if you place your bid on it in the last few minutes.
Just a word of caution here though! there are a lot of people out there who wait until the final moments in order to place their bid in the hope of getting it cheap if no one else has put a bid in. So you may get pipped at the post. :o(
There is a name for this type of bidding and they even have programs for it. So that the professional ebayer can put bids on several items at once without even being on ebay at the time the auction ends for these items. This Technical term is called Sniping and if you wish to learn more just look up Sniping in Google or Chris may even have an article about sniping here at EzineArticles ;o)
Don’t forget to leave a positive comment about the item you have purchased if you are happy with it. Leave out the comment until you are satisfied with the item. If there are any problems with the item get in touch with the seller and give them a chance to sort out any problems.
Once the problems are sorted then you can leave a good positive feedback comment. That way everyone will be happy, don’t forget to ask for positive feedback for yourself. You may need it one day!.
If problems do not get sorted then notify ebay or whoever first to see if they can help, if they cannot then give the seller one last try. If you still have no joy then leave a carefully worded negative comment so that other ebayers know what you think of this seller.
But you will have to be prepared to receive negative feedback in return especially if the seller is fraudulent and or deceitful or even just spiteful!
Thankfully there are more good people than bad out there! Just be careful!
There you are and you thought buying on ebay or other auctions was simple! It is really, once you get the hang of it ;o) and it’s great when you get the bargain’s that you want at the price you want without getting fleeced.
Copyright 2006 Author P.D.Evatt
Author P.Evatt has more Tips, Articles, Internet Marketing Tools, Tips, Advice, Resell Products and Ebooks free or for resale at:
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