Ebay Tips
A few tips to keeping yourselves out of this website. You really don’t want to find yourself right here with the rest of the fraudsters.
Firstly, when you LIST an auction, make sure you can sell it at the price you have listed. Don’t try to get away with selling a cell phone for a penny, and then forcing the user to go to another website and paying $200 for the phone. That’s fraud, any way you slice it. If you CAN sell the phone (legitimately) for 0.01, by all means do so. Otherwise, don’t try it!
Secondly, when bidding on (or selling) an auction, make SURE you know when things end. If you’re the buyer, pay within 24 hours. If you’re the seller, SHIP within 24 hours of payment receipt. It really is that simple! There’s absolutely NO excuse for not shipping within 48 hours tops, and there’s REALLY no excuse for not paying within 24 hours. If you don’t have the money right now, don’t bid.
Thirdly, communicate with each other. Let the buyer know you’ve shipped something. Buyer, let the seller know payment was made. If there are questions, ask them. Do NOT attempt to communicate directly via email whatever you do, because email is unreliable. Use E-Bay’s communication center, that’s what it is built for!
Fourthy, NEVER require outside registration. This includes registration for things such as seller tools (like auctiva, etc). If you say you accept paypal, you MUST provide a direct paypal link. There is absolutely no excuse not to do so.
The last one is a pet peeve of mine, but it is a very , very valid one. Why should your users be forced to place personally identifying information into untrusted, unknown, 3rd party applications such as auctiva? They SHOULDN’T. Paypal handles this very very well, and there is absolutely no excuse for forcing 3rd party, untrusted registration. That only leads to information being sold. What, you think they offer “free services” for nothing? No way, you’d better believe they will sell your information!
Anyways, I’d love for feedback on this page, how to keep reasonable and decent transactions. It’s sad that something like this website is actually necessary, but it is. Let’s try to provide new users with tips on how to avoid ending up right here on this website!