i’ve been on eBay since early on (started my account in 2001) …. here are a few tips:
1) Set price & bid 1 time at end (1 min to go) - Do NOT get caught up in the emotion of an auction and do NOT bid early … Do your homework, set a max price you will pay in your head, add the thing to your Watchlist & come back when there’s 10 mins to go in the auction … If it’s exceeded your max price, move on - if it hasn’t, submit your max price bid with less than a minute to go … If you win, great - if not, then you haven’t over-paid for it
2) Shipping gouging - I realize shipping has gone up - but it seems lately a lot of eBay sellers are charging WAY more for shipping to make up for lower prices on their product … Make SURE to check the charges for shipping & don’t overpay for it
3) On “Best Offer” listings, ask seller for their best price - it’s even easier now to communicate with a seller - when a listing says “Best Offer” send them a message & ask, “what is an offer you would accept for your item?” … this will save you a bunch of time submitting a bunch of offers that are nowhere near what the seller would accept
4) Filter Sold/Completed auctions - when you search, filter on auctions that have sold & completed … this will give you a good sense for what other folks have sold items for recently …
these days, buyers have way more protection than sellers do on eBay - IIRC if you pay with PayPal, you have 6 months to dispute a purchase - IMO that’s an insane amount of time to allow a buyer to come back & ask for their money back … it’s this reason (along with the fee structure on eBay/PayPal) that i don’t sell on eBay anymore - i don’t have 6 months to float/hold funds waiting to see if somebody’s gonna ask me for a refund … the other reason i don’t sell on eBay is shipping - i deal with (sometimes) irreplaceable antique/vintage items & i’ve been burned HARD by USPS breaking my stuff during shipping & not take responsibility for their mishandling of my product & denying my claims for a refund … y’all have all seen my rants on USPS on here over the years 🥵🤬
