Why I hate ebay.

[Eli]

Well it seems nomatter what there's always someone in the world who wants to outbid you. A lot of items on ebay can be readily bought in stores and it's ridiculous to see people bidding up to near full retail price on items that are used. I mean..why wouldn't they pay the extra $50 and get the item in a store with full warranty? Besides the rare and collectable buyers I honestly think ebay is full of people with lots of money who are only looking to save a few dollars over retail.

But this isn't what I've come to bitch about. My recent experience:

I noticed an HDTV for sale by a local Toronto seller. Item was decently priced and available for local pickup only. For 3 days I was the only bidder on the item. Went right down to the last hour of the auction as me being the sole bidder. Then I made the mistake of leaving my computer to go make dinner. I came back, the auction was over and some prick out bid me by $5 bucks at the last minute!

Well I was freakin pissed! Getting scooped like that in the final minutes. To top it off the winning bidder was a store who is most likely gonna resell the item. Anyways...that's my rant.

 

[Edifice]

Well, I use ebay as well and have bought a few things off it at less than retail price.
But I hate it too when you have made a bid on an item and then with 45mins - 1hr to go people outbid you. You can't be at your computer 24/7 checking on the bids cause you could be busy.
My advice is when there is one minute left to go put a bid on it and then put a maximum bid this way those who try to outbid you will have to frantically put small increment bids on it thinking they will outid you and then voila! the item is yours.
As for damaged notebooks, it too puzzles me why people are bidding on a cracked screen or keyboard when they might as well buy a used (non-damaged) notebook somewhere else.

 

[pool]

My usual strategy is not to put my bid in till the last 30 seconds.

yup ...

Doing just that for the very reasonable price of $23.50 USD, I just won this : þ It still increased twice within the last 20 seconds. I keep one browser window open to refresh and check time remaining and another ready to submit my max bid, which you really don't wanna know.




pool [the lonely guy]

 

[stang]

I find that if I bid $1,000,000 I usually win.

 

[Sargeant StiffCock]

My usual strategy is not to put my bid in till the last 30 seconds. And, I think a lot of people have the same idea. I always bid the absolute highest price I am willing to pay;so, if I lose it is no big deal.

That said some of the prices people are willing to pay seems dumb. Here is a Toshiba Satellite notebook with a broken screen that went for $509. Canadian. I phoned Toshiba and they said a new screen for this computer is about $500.00.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/TOSHIBA-SATELLIT...831499040QQcategoryZ31562QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

But you can get an equivalent Dell Inspiron notebook brand new for only $549.00 with free shipping

http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspn_b120?c=ca&cs=CADHS1&l=en&s=dhs

A lot of people buy the broken laptops for parts. The person who bought that laptop will more than get his money back if he / she sells the individual parts like the memory, keyboard, hard drive and whatever else.

 

[Eli]

Well I thought I was being smart on the next item I was bidding on. I was the winning bidder right down to the last 30 SECONDS. I was watching it closely, I refreshed the page and was outbid, I couldn't even respond in time! Lost the item. Now I really hate ebay.

 

[Keebler Elf]

Well I was freakin pissed! Getting scooped like that in the final minutes. To top it off the winning bidder was a store who is most likely gonna resell the item. Anyways...that's my rant.

You're a rookie. The only time to watch an auction is in the last minute. If you're bidding before that you're making a big mistake (for one, you're letting people know you're interested. For another, you're driving up the price). Figure out what your limit is and bid it in the last 15 seconds. The other guys will have, at most, one shot to outbid you and it won't be enough (assuming you're not pulling another rookie move and bidding up by 50 cents).

 

[Eli]

Yeah, I'm getting schooled at ebay. It's called "sniping" and apparently as you said everybody does it. Wish they'd tell you this when you signed up.

 

[ISOMSOG]

why I hate Ebay? Because it isn't secure and offers your mailing address to anyone that wants it, so that's a invation of your privicy...

IMO

 

[Keebler Elf]

If you don't want your privacy invaded by spam, then don't go on the internet.

 

[Sargeant StiffCock]

E bay does not let anybody have your e mail address. Only those who you buy from or sell to. The only other way to contact a member is through e bay but you dont get to find-out their e mail address.

 

[kooley]

i have used www.esnipe.com for years, never lost an auction i wanted or needed to win.

 

[tboy]

Eli: if you hate ebay so much, why do you keep bidding lol????

Anyhow, just be aware that in addition to idiots that will pay more than retail for an item, in addition to f-wads that will pay $600.00 for an empty box (xbox 360), or even F-wads that will buy a grilled cheese sandwich that has an image of jesus in it, watch for who is bidding on an item. If you do a little research there are lots of crooks on ebay that bid on each other's items to crank up the price (which is VERY illegal). In fact, someone last year was caught doing this and was arrested and charged with fraud but it still happens.

I did a little research on something I was bidding on and found that the sellar had rave reviews from one buyer, and that buyer had rave reviews from the sellar when they each were offerring items for sale. This is a prime indication of price fixing.

Anyhow, the proxy bidding works. Bid the highest you are comfortable paying and then forget it until the email comes and tells you you are the winner.

I have purchased about 20 or so items for a total retail of about $3000.00 and only paid (including shipping, taxes and duties) $800.00. There are bargains to be had, but you have to be educated....

 

[Dash]

I hate ebay cos awhile ago i spotted cellphone batteries for my specific phone - that was outdated and no longer sold in store at an extremely low price of 10 bucks each - so I thought about the bright idea of getting a bunch of batteries for those long trips - where ur battery power would run out - halfthru the day - and u cant call people cause ur batteries dead. So, I thought, "hey..I'll buy a couple spare batteries...why not? They're almost free and they're outdated, so they're in limited supply anyways, for my specific phone model...

So, at the time, i thought it was a bright idea...until the reciept for the item i won was sent to my email inbox. The price was ten bucks for the item, PLUS 20 bucks SHIPPING and HANDLING costs. Damn..rip off.

 

[Eli]

I go to ebay to hopefully buy something for less than retail. I unfortunatly had to find out the hard way about "sniping". Now I know.

There have been items I lost and I didn't care because the max bid was too much for me. But there were two items that I could afford the bid and where I was outbid in the final seconds by $5. Y'know...you sit there watchin the clock and see 30 seconds and you think "Hey, I got it!" only to suddenly find out you lost.

Anyways, I'll try again but this time I'll wait till the 10 sec. mark.

 

[pool]

If for any reason I can't shoot from the hip, I ask myself exactly what I'm willing to pay. Would I let it go for that extra $5 etc. Then I add $1.50 or so, so that it's not a round number. My thinking being at least some people will set their maximum bid at a rounded off amount. I have no clue if this actually has ever given me the edge ... heheh

good luck.

 

[tboy]

Eli:

Don't even bother sitting there for the last 10 seconds, just bid the highest you want to go for an item and if no one goes over that amount, you win. Makes NO sense to me to sit there trying to outbid someone. What are you going to do? Go over your highest amount "just to win the item"??? Believe me, do that and you'll fall into the category of people overpaying for items. I honestly think people do that because they look at it as some sort of game: me against you and I WIN I WIN....lol.

Fair warning too: Make sure you email the seller to give you a quote on shipping. Also, if buying out of the US use USPS as couriers (UPS, FedEx etc) tack on a heft brokerage fee...I was hit once by UPS for $60.00 and the duty was only $4.00.....

 

[Sargeant StiffCock]

tboy,

"I did a little research on something I was bidding on and found that the sellar had rave reviews from one buyer, and that buyer had rave reviews from the sellar when they each were offerring items for sale. This is a prime indication of price fixing."

The fact that they had rave reviews (feedback) from each other is actually more of an indication of feedback fixing. New users will often get friends to bid on their items to get their positive feedback up as having and maintaining a high percentage of positive feedback is key to running and maintaining a successfull e bay business.

Dash,

"So, at the time, i thought it was a bright idea...until the reciept for the item i won was sent to my email inbox. The price was ten bucks for the item, PLUS 20 bucks SHIPPING and HANDLING costs. Damn..rip off."

As mentioned in this thread before, always read the fine print, provide the seller with your full address and ask for a total price (including shipping) before you bid.

For all e bay critics out there, e bay has made a big chance in the way people buy and sell merchandise around the world, there is no denying that. There is obviously much better deals to be had and more honest traders than scammers on e bay given the success of the company. I dont have the exact numbers but if i remember correctly they made something like 360 million net profit (don't hold me to that) just in the second quarter of this year. Not bad for a 10 year old company compared to saaaay...one like Bell Canada

 

[tboy]

I couldn't agree more Sarge, like I've said, I've saved thousands by shopping on ebay and swear by it.

 

[JoyfulC]

The other side of EBay

I'm sort of turned off EBay right now myself -- even though my logical side tells me that they're probably acting in their best interest.

My better half got involved in manufacturing and selling a piece of equipment for wine making (even tho we don't even drink wine!). Don't ask. Anyway, he started selling it on EBay. This was not so much for $$ but rather to put him in touch with people who made wine -- this much, it did accomplish.

Shortly after he started successfully selling on EBay, we received an angry note from someone who claimed that Fred's design "infringed" his patent. He provided some info on his patent, and I (of course) immediately purchased a copy from the US Patent Office. Even though Fred came up with his design all by himself, I know that it's still possible to infringe on someone else's patent, and we wanted to see if that was, in fact, the case.

Turns out it wasn't. Not even close. The two designs both do the same thing, and are essentially made of soft materials, but the similarity ends there. I wrote the guy back and explained why Fred wasn't infringing on his patent.

Well, he was sort of a nimrod -- and I suspect he didn't even bother to read what I wrote. Instead, he filed a claim with EBay that Fred had infringed his patent.

Here's the thing with EBay -- and I see their point with it, but having been on the wrong end of it, I guess it left us with a bad taste in our mouths -- they don't make any attempt to decide claims. They shut everything down until the various claimants sort it out themselves. Even worse (although, again, probably reasonably for them) they make everyone involved in a dispute agree to sue in their local jurisdication (which is San Diego??) and to pay all their legal costs.

Well, that sucks.

We went to a patent lawyer in the same state as the nimrod in question (the one who was challenging us). Luckily for us, this is a close family friend of ours -- we still paid for his services, but at least we felt confident of the advice he gave us. He looked at it and came to the same conclusion I did: NOT EVEN CLOSE. He fired off a registered letter to the complaintant -- who, of course, didn't even bother to accept it. Obviously this guy is just a shitdisturber and a nimrod.

We had the option of filing some sort of counter claim within 30 days -- and we were going to. But as I stated originally, selling through EBay mostly put Fred in touch with home wine makers for feedback -- we don't make wine, so this was invaluable to us. We were put off, and weren't sure it was worth pursuing further.

The upshot is that Fred never sold anything again after that -- he never filed the counterclaim. But we never bought anything off EBay since then either. Prior to that, we were making 1-3 purchases per month from it.

Now, I realize our business is not huge -- I bet EBay doesn't even miss us. And frankly, I don't blame them for having things set up the way they do.

But it doesn't work for us.

..c..