Questions about Ebay? (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

Out of curiosity, what do you do when given such an offer? Let the auction run its course or take the extra-auction offer?

His offering price was on the low-side of reasonable, based on other auctions I've seen. But I'm a new seller with basically no feedback, which might deter some bidders. I've decided to run the auction and hope for the best. I'll know in two days if I chose wisely or poorly.

 

[Cees Alons]

Well, in that case, he still may or may not be trying to cut eBay out of their share, but he certainly tries to get the deal done before the offers (possibly) get higher.

In my view it's against the nature of an auction. I know what I would do.


Cees

 

[Matt^Brown]

Dave let us know how it works out. I never really understand why anyone would want to handle a sell outside of the Ebay and paypal world. It just seems much safer to me to have them involved.

 

[KELLYBOY]

I have been selling through Amazon over two years now and have been very happy with their system. Don't want to deal with Pay Pal where I have to handle the funds and set postage or for that fact auctions. Amazon handles postage (which is usually generous) and funds which is securely put into your checking account. I have sold off all my VHS, many books & CDs and tons of DVD's, sometimes very quickly, and never had a problem. E-bay has Half.com which is similar to Amazon but its harder to sell on this site and they are not terribly generous with postage. I use that site to sell off my laserdiscs. .

 

[DaveF]

I'm prevented by eBay from using the "Buy Now" system as I use my wife's PayPal account for these sales, so I couldn't do eBay's approved method of creating a new listing for the proposed purchase. Frankly, I was surprised that it wasn't against the rules to circumvent an auction's process to sell to under-the-table offer. I guess eBay doesn't care as long as you use a "Buy Now" process and they still get their cut.

Unlike my Tivo sale, this ad has already generated some bids. It's about 50% of where I hope it ends up. This is is encouraging, but I'm still hoping for a lot of last minute activity.

 

[Will_B]

Here's what ebay's FAQs say, and I've highlighted in red the parts that may apply to you and the curious customer:

Offers to buy or sell listed items outside of the eBay site are not permitted. Offers of this nature are a potential fraud risk for both buyers and sellers and circumvent eBay's fees. If you receive any spam (unsolicited commercial messages) through email or Skype that includes offers to buy or sell outside eBay, please report this using the appropriate link in the "Additional Information" section below. Some examples of offers outside of the eBay site include: Using member contact information obtained from eBay or using any eBay system to offer to sell any listed item outside of eBay Canceling a listing to sell to a buyer who became aware of the item through eBay Ending a listing early to sell the item at a higher price to the winning bidder Offering to sell an item to a bidder in a Reserve Not Met listing without going through Second Chance Offer Offering to sell duplicate or additional merchandise to under-bidders without going through Second Chance Offer Sending unsolicited (without prior permission) commercial email offers to bidders for the same or similar products that they have bid on in the past
It is acceptable for sellers to end a listing early in order to sell an item at the current bid price to the high bidder. Bidders are permitted to contact sellers with requests to end a listing early and sell at the current bid price; however, sellers are under no obligation to honor the request....Your ability to end a listing early depends on the amount of time remaining in the listing and whether the listing has received any bids. If there are 12 hours or more before the end of the listing, you can end the listing early without restrictions. If there are any bids on your item when you end the listing, you’ll be asked whether you want to cancel the bids or sell the item to the high bidder. If there are 12 hours or less before the end of the listing, your ability to end the listing early depends on whether there are any bids on the item and whether the item has a reserve price. Number of bids on the item Can the listing be ended early?

• No bids Yes
• One or more bid, Yes, but you must sell the item to the high bidder.
• One or more bids, but the item’s reserve price wasn’t met No

 

[DaveF]

According to eBay tech support, you can also cancel an auction to sell to a bidder to an offered, but not bid, price. All bids are canceled and a new "Buy Now" listing is created for the offered amount. The offerer is expected to then buy at that amount.

I realize now that the other way to do this is to have the offerer to make a bid in the offered amount and once that bid is in, cancel the auction so it is sold to the offerer. But I guess that assumes there aren't automatic bidding systems active.

 

[Will_B]

Yeah it sounds like they're letting you bend the rules, just so long as it all winds up back on ebay again. The risk is to the buyer, who might not be quick enough to buy it. Someone else might swoop in and get the Buy Now price in the minutes before the annointed buyer does.

As long as it ends up through ebay I guess I wouldn't worry, but in general, suspicions go WAY up when someone tries to cut some behind the scenes deal rather than wait until the auction ends. I mean really, what's an extra few days?

 

[DaveF]

As for the proffered offer: he offered more than the highest bid (at that time) but less than some similar auctions had gone for. It was close to what I would have set as a "Buy Now" price, if I could. So it was a reasonable offer to try and get a good price for himself while offering me some risk management against the auction not reaching that price.

Being an auction noob, I chose to continue with the auction and hope for a better price.

My auction ends shortly ... (I need a "nervous" emoticon)

 

[DaveF]

The auction ended and sold for more than the early offer

The sale price was decent, more than my minimum desired, but not as much as other recent sales have gone for. I'm assuming it's my lack of feedback; I think my listings are equal to others that have sold for higher prices.

The Invoice confuses me, again. I sent it, but I'm not sure how it looks to the buyer, in terms of selecting their desired shipping option and getting the updated price. But it can be revised if the shipping isn't pre-selected correctly.

 

[Matt^Brown]

DaveF I can't help you much on the invoice except that when I get one I never have a problem with it. I consider myself a mid level eBay buyer and have been purchasing stuff since 2001. I believe that you will have much higher bids once your feedback increases. I know that I will not buy a high dollar item from anyone with low feedback. High dollar to me is anything over $100 or any electronic. Remember you can increase your feedback from buying stuff as well.

 

[DaveF]

The invoice isn't a problem; it's a point of confusion. And eBay's help is surprisingly vague about their own tools.

When a buyer receives an invoice, can they change / choose the shipping option and have the invoice update and bill accordingly? Or do I, as the seller, need to guess their shipping choice, invoice, and if I'm wrong, send a revised invoice?

I thought that buyer and seller reputation were wholly separate scores? But I'm working on selling more items to increase my feedback. Maybe I'll look for some good buys if feedback is an aggregate score of my buying and selling.

I've also sent this feedback to eBay:

1) The shipping information (package type, dimensions, weight) is lost after the auction is complete. Going to the Print Shipping Label goes to a PayPal site that does not have the package sizing and it's no longer visible from the Seller's page.

2) As I must now re-determine the shipping parameters again, I look at the eBay / PayPal help ... and it's very wrong. My package is 34" x 23" x 16" and 58 lbs. The PayPal help says this is a Very Large Package, Irregular and will cost $68 to ship from 14586 to 60062. But the eBay auction tool only charged $29 for shipping based on the package details. And using the USPS website it is determined to be a large package with shipping of $29.

I'm trying to print the shipping label and get this shipped and am concerned about either having grossly undercharged for shipping using eBay's tool or not having sufficient shipping when I send it.

 

[DaveF]

I've graduated from eBay noob to eBay novice with about 30 sales and $1000 net over the past year. I've got the first gold star (ten feedback points) and have reach about 21 total feedback points. Nothing to retire on, but it's like getting an extra 10% off every electronics purchase we've made this year A few things I've learned in the process:


* Don't take a request for an early sale, either on eBay or CraigsList. These people are trying to get a great bargain by preying on the seller's anxiety and buying at a lowball price.


* Include a little note in each shipment thanking they buyer for their sale and asking for feedback. This increased my feedback rate from 40% to 90% (roughly speaking).


* Build a cheap DIY photobox for getting better pictures. It also helps to have a wife with Photoshop skills to fix whitebalance, but you can still get better results starting with a basic photobox.


* Do your research when selling used DVDs. I've gotten $10+ for some. And lost money on others.


* Sealed Blu-rays are great sellers! Got $10+, after expenses, on some unopened discs I didn't want.


So what now? Are there any guides, books, or tips I could learn from to further enhance my sales? What helps increase the final selling price? I continue to sell some low-price items as much to get the feedback as to get the few dollars they bring. I think the next milestone is 100 points and I'm a long ways from that, but I'll keep chipping away at it.