Selling gear on eBay

K

KamaK

Platinum Member
I'm curious to know if others on this forum have come across the same or have any additional tips for dealing with eBay's shitty user experience when selling items.

1: Paypal. If you have a discrete Paypal account and want to use it with eBay, linking the Paypal account within eBay is not sufficient to use the two together. You need to link your eBay account from Paypal as well.

2: If you live in the US and do not wish to ship internationally, simply stating US shipping on an auction is not enough. You need to: Set shipping exclusions in your preferences, then set it not to display your auctions in preferences. These two things makes it so that international bidders cannot see your auctions. They can still follow direct links though, and bid, and win! The only pseudo workaround I have is to disable foreign currency transfers in my Paypal settings so they are unable to pay. They can still bid, and win, and will attempt to get your paypal e-mail address from you so that they can have a friend in the US pay, and then attempt to extort shipping out of you or face a bad feedback rating and Paypal locking your account.

3: A buyer has 48h to pay. If they do not pay, you can open an unpaid claim, and can re-list 4 days after the claim was open. You eat a minimum of 6 days. You then have another 7 day auction. That's a 7 day auction + 6 days of BS, plus another 7 day auction = 20 days. I hope you didn't need that money soon.

Sorry if this is a pseudo-rant. Selling 5 drums on e-bay this week, had two internationals try to scam, 2 non-payers, one extortion attempt, one cancelation after winning (duh, I don't have any money, please hold it till I get a job?!?!), and two items that shipped with no issue. I can't even leave bad feedback on the extortionist because I never sold him anything.

Any advice appreciated.
 
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Wow I had no idea this was going on, so many buyers winning and then not paying. What a waste. It also wastes all the other buyers who bid in honesty and did not win. I'm an ebay buyer, never did that crap..

Can one try Amazon? I have read that eventually with all the add-ons and hassle of ebay transactions, that Amazon is set to take over. ebay has gotten ridiculous period.
 
Wow. I've never had any issues with selling stuff on eBay. You can "require immediate payment" when you only accept PayPal as your payment method, which is what I do. And when you only accept PayPal as payment, you can opt to only ship to a confirmed address - which means you're only shipping to the address associated with the credit card they use to pay into their PayPal account.

Extortion? You'll have to explain how that happened.

And if people want to cancel the transaction, all you have to do is file with eBay that you both agree to end the transaction, then the buyer is let off the hook, and you as the seller get your fees back for selling. Seems pretty simple to me.

Selling takes time, I never sell anything with a self-imposed time limit. Nothing ever happens when you want it to. Sorry you're having such a bad experience.
 
Matt Bo Eder said:
You can "require immediate payment" when you only accept PayPal as your payment method, which is what I do. And when you only accept PayPal as payment, you can opt to only ship to a confirmed address - which means you're only shipping to the address associated with the credit card they use to pay into their PayPal account.
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Indeed, but this doesn't prevent international buyers from browsing with a US account, forwarding a link, and bidding with an international (paypal) account. All you can do is refuse to accept foreign currency on the Paypal side of things. They've still won the auction, and you're still SOL for 20 days.

I'm looking through my ebaa-profile->paypal->checkout settings and do not see a require-immediate option. Is that an eBay profile setting or a per-auction setting?

EDIT - Just found it, though it only applies to "Buy It Now" and not auction winners.
Matt Bo Eder said:
Extortion? You'll have to explain how that happened.
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Ship it to me in Brazil, or I will dope-bid all of your other items for sale with various accounts.
Matt Bo Eder said:
And if people want to cancel the transaction, all you have to do is file with eBay that you both agree to end the transaction, then the buyer is let off the hook, and you as the seller get your fees back for selling. Seems pretty simple to me.
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Indeed, or they can ask you to hold it till they get the money. If you say no and file a claim, and they suddenly find the money and pay in the 4-day grace period, they are allowed to leave you bad feedback as a "pushy" seller... As if I've done something wrong asking them to pay for shit they won.
 
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Originally Posted by Matt Bo Eder-
Extortion? You'll have to explain how that happened.


Ship it to me in Brazil, or I will dope-bid all of your other items for sale with various accounts.
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eBay has the international shipping worked out, you send to an eBay hub in KY and eBay takes over from there, as what I just experienced with my last international sale. The (international) buyer paid shipping charges to me for shipping the package from my location to KY, then apparently eBay collects a charge from the buyer to get it across the ocean to them. I messaged the buyer on what was eBays procedure and how much they charged to get the package from KY to them, an incomplete answer was received based on a perceived language comprehension.

Advise is have your box dimension and weight correct (error on your side-big) before you list it. international payment is still thru PayPal. My last international sale went down differently, I had to work out shipping etc, eBay just stepped in and took over this one (this sale was last week BTW), the whole 'Just get/ship it to KY, we'll take care of it from there.' Its easier, but you have to like any sale make sure you cross your T's and dot your I's.
 
bonerpizza said:
I sold a multitrack recorder for $300 on eBay and after eBay and PayPal fees and all that I ended up with a little over $200, that was the end of eBay for me. I'd rather buy and sell gear off of craigslist and risk getting stabbed than pay 1/3 of the selling price to an internet classifieds pimp!
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Indeed. I typically do CL till the first eBay bid hits. I've never gotten lucky though.

I've never had this issue selling stuff oneBay before, and it was strange that I popped 5 items up two weeks ago and got mega-shafted. It was kind of shocking.

On the bright side, everything sold, everyone paid, and I'm not going to get too hung up about it.

Next adventure is going to be buying a bass/rig. It's hard having money in the Paypal account and not blowing it on the first shiny thing to come across my desktop.
 
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