Ebay Buying

2006-06-27T16:04:00.000+01:00

Your Ebay Buying Rights

The first few times you buy on ebay can be a bit disconcerting. You have won
the auction. Now you must pay for the goods before you see anything.

Fortunately, Ebay Buying comes with a whole bunch of rights.

The Right to Receive Your Item.

Maybe the seller never sent the item, or maybe it got lost in the post. Whatever happened, you paid for the item. If it doesn’t arrive in the post as described, you have the right to a replacement or a refund, whether it’s the seller’s fault or not.

The fact that you bought something on eBay doesn’t mean that you don’t have the exact same rights that you would have if you bought it in a shop (these rights are pretty much the same all over the world). Plus, under eBay’s rules, the seller isn’t allowed to change their mind about selling you the item: once the auction ends, it becomes a contract – you must buy and they must sell, or face eBay’s penalties.

The Right for Your Item to Be as Described in the Auction.

Sometimes sellers don’t wrap items properly, and so they get broken. Occasionally they write descriptions that are misleading or just plain wrong to begin with, leaving out vital details that would have caused you to change your mind about buying. If this happens to you, you again have the right to a replacement or a refund.

So How Do I Use My Rights?

First, you should take it up with the seller – most will be responsive, as do not want to have their reputation damaged when an upset buyer leaves negative feedback for all their future buyers to see. If that doesn’t work, report them to eBay.

While eBay don’t have many people handling complaints, they do have a relatively effective set of automatic process to handle common problems buyers and sellers have with one another.

Finally, if that doesn’t work, then you should seek advice from consumer groups in your country, and as a last resort from the police. You should never have to get this far, though: problems on eBay that can’t be resolved easily are extremely rare.

Don’t Be Too Quick.

Remember not to get too annoyed and be unfair to the seller: nice sellers have agreed to give me refunds for undelivered items, only for me to find out a few weeks later that they were being held for me at the post office! Always try your best to communicate and think of everything that might have gone wrong: eBay works best when buyers and sellers sort out their problems together, instead of reporting each other to the authorities straight away.

More often that not receiving what they paid for, buyers have an altogether different problem: they knew what they were paying for, but didn’t realise that what they were paying for was overpriced, low quality or a scam.

2006-06-27T16:01:00.000+01:00

How to Bid and Buy on Ebay

Knowing how to bid and buy on eBay has become a world wide obsession. You must have noticed that whenever you open a newspaper, watch the TV or just chat to your friends everyone seems to be talking about eBay?

If you’ve never used it and you’ve no idea what it’s all about, then the chances are that you’re starting to feel a little left out. But don’t worry! This page contains everything you need to know to confidently bid and buy on eBay.

So What is eBay?

eBay is an online auction website – and not just any auction site, but the biggest one in the world. If you know how an auction works the workings of eBay will be no mystery to you.

Someone adds something they want to sell to the site - buyers come along and place bids on it.

The highest bid wins.

It’s that simple.

eBay being an online auction makes a big difference, though. Buying and selling are not reserved for any elite. eBay accept almost any item, no matter how small, and will then advertise it on their sites all over the world. It’s a powerful combination of an auction and a huge marketplace.

Bidding on eBay

Bidding on eBay doesn’t work in exactly the same way as a normal auction. On eBay, your bid is for the maximum you are willing to pay for that item. Ebay places bids on your behalf up to the maximum you declare. That means you could bid $100 for something and only have to pay $50. Ebay only bids sufficiently to beat the current top bid.

It can be a little disconcerting though. You might bid $100 only to see the highest bid change to $105. It's not eBay trying to cheat you - it's simply that someone else has already posted a bid greater than your maximum.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds – the best way to get used to it is to give it a try. First, go to www.ebay.comor the ebay website designed for your country. If you don’t know the address for it, just go to www.ebay.com and it will tell you there. Now, on the front page you should see a big box marked ‘search’: just type in anything that you’d like to buy there.

Wasn’t that easy? Now you should have a list of items for sale in front of you, along with how much people are currently bidding for them and the time when bidding ends for each item. If you click one of these, you can read the description, and then – if you’re happy with the item and happy to pay more than the current highest bidder is – you can bid!

How Do I Bid?

Go ahead and scroll down to the bottom of an item’s description page, and type the maximum you are willing to pay (your maximum bid) into the box. Then simply press the ‘place bid’ button – you will need to sign in once you press the button, or go through a quick registration process if you don’t have an eBay username).

If someone else’s maximum bid on that item is higher than yours, then eBay will tell you and give you the opportunity to bid again. Otherwise, you’re now the new highest bidder! All you need to do now is wait until the end of the auction – if someone else outbids you, then eBay will email you and you can bid again.

2006-06-27T15:35:00.000+01:00

Background to Ebay

I don't think it matters where you are these days, if you mention the name ' eBay ', there is someone there who has either bought an item on it, or who has sold something on it, eBay has become a household name around the world. I started buying and selling on ebay around 7 years ago. There are thousands of people living in the U.S. that make full time living's selling item's on eBay, and thousands more that buy items on it daily.

eBay was started by one man named ' Pierre Omidyar '. When Pierre was 28 years old he started writing the programming code that was to become the internet site eBay. The site was launched online on Sep 4, 1995, ' Labor Day ' here in the U.S. At first it wasn't called eBay, but was named ' Auction Web '. Later it was changed to ' ebay ' , which was a short version of a consulting firm Pierre owned named ' Echo Bay '. eBay was free at the start, then it started charging fees to help cover it's internet costs for hosting and other charges. At the time, Pierre was dating a woman that collected PEZ toys, she used the new eBay site in its earliest incarnation to buy and sell rare dispensers. In 1996 Jeffrey Skoll, a Stanford MBA, joined the company and by 1998 eBay had gone public in the stock market, making Omidyar a billionaire. In 2005, Omidyar's 214 million eBay shares were worth around $8 billion. In March 1998, Meg Whitman was brought in as President and CEO of eBay where she serves still today

Let's start by going to the eBay site and joining. Just visit: www.ebay.com and you will be taken to the main page of the website. Once there look towards the top area of the screen and you will see text that says: ' Hello! Sign in or register. ', using the mouse button, click on ' register '. After clicking on ' register ' you will be taken to a screen with a form on it, enter the information about yourself, such as your name, address, telephone number and email address. Next you will be taken to another screen where you must choose a password and ebay user name, the eBay user-name is the ID or Name you will be known by to other ebay bidders and shoppers.

The password should be something that is not common, for instance do not use your first or last name, or some common word such as ' pencil ', or ' computer ', take your time and choose something difficult and a little long, make sure you write this password down and keep it near your computer in case you forget it. I recommend writing your ebay password on a yellow post-it note and hanging it someplace near your computer.

When your done with the username and password screen, you just have to check your email for the confirmation link that eBay sends you, just click on the link as shown in the email to activate your eBay account, now you have joined eBay, and you can start bidding and buying right away, but before you do let me tell you about the different features of eBay and how some things work.

eBay is not just an auction site, I mean you do not have to bid and wait for an auction to end, in order to purchase every item on eBay. In fact many items can be purchased for a set fee, and bought instantly, these are called ' Buy Now ' listings. For an example of how listings differ from each other, let's look at some ebay items. Let's say you and I are looking for a ' singing fish ', the fish that look like their mounted and displayed on a piece of wood, when someone gets near it, it will start singing and move it's mouth and tail, they are often called ' big mouth billy bass '.

To see if eBay has any of the ' singing fish ', we just go to the main ebay page (www.ebay.com) and in the 'SEARCH' area, type in: singing fish, and the screen shows there are currently 60 different items or listings found. I scroll down and select one of the listings, it currently shows the current bid price is $7.00 and it has had 4 bids, with 1 day and 13 hours remaining before the listing or auction ends. If I really wanted this item, and was willing to pay up to $15.00 for it, I would just click on ' Place Bid ', and enter my ebay username and password, if requested to

About The Author: Robert W. Benjamin has been in the software business on the internet for over 5 years, and has been producing low-cost software for the past 25+ years. He first released software on the AMIGA and C64 computer systems in the late 1970's-80's. RB59 Software http://www.rb59.com/software