Kurt AND Mike

we made this. yeab oi

Take action if you get ripped off

You've followed our advice, but somehow, they gotcha anyway. The bastards! Now you need to make the best of it and try to get even. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to seek retribution (and legal ways at that!):

1. Clarify the situation with the seller. Often, there is simply a misunderstanding and the seller has every intention of shipping the item. Or maybe he/she has already shipped it, but there's been some sort of delay. So when you make a deal, always ask the seller for a tracking number so that you can locate it if need be. Major carriers like Federal Express and UPS allow customers to track shipments online.
   
   
2. If that doesn't work and you're sure that the seller is trying to defraud you, then you should write negative feedback about him/her on eBay. This will prevent others from getting screwed by the same person and will make the users auctions much less popular. There is no need to falsify or exaggerate your negative feedback about the user, as this may shed doubt upon the truth of and motive for your comments, but simply explain the situation and why it is your opinion that no one should do business with that user ever again.
   
   
3. Although negative feedback may keep others from being screwed, it won't get you your money back. Fortunately, eBay offers $200 in insurance, minus a $25 deductible, to any user who has been defrauded. "Defrauded" means either you paid for an item and never received it, or you received an item that wasn't exactly what you had in mind (you got a fake Rolex instead of a real one). In order to receive the insurance though, eBay has a few requirements, including that both you and the seller were in good standing at the time of the transaction. If the problem is that the buyer and seller do not agree on the terms of the auction, eBay suggests using a service like SquareTrade.com in order to arbitrate the dispute.
   
   
4. Other ways of getting even include issuing a complaint with the FTC, the National Fraud Information Center, or - if the seller is a business - the Better Business Bureau.
   
   
5. Finally, contact the seller through other means. If you know that the seller is trying to screw you and you have previously contacted him only through e-mail, then this is when it will be useful to have his White Page listing. Call him over the phone! If the seller happens to be a kid (despite eBay's 18-year-old age limit), then you can speak to their parents in order to resolve the situation. Explain that you would like the item shipped or your money refunded, and that if the seller fails to comply, then you will contact their local authorities. The seller will probably do as you say in lieu of a potentially embarrassing appearance on COPS. Note: These measures should only be taken if the seller refuses to discuss the issue. If the matter concerns a disagreement over the terms of the auction, then arbitration should be sought instead of getting the police involved.

Well, by now you should be a savvy auctioneer, ready to take on the dangerous yet rewarding world of Internet bargaining. Go get 'em Tiger. Just make sure they don't get you. And if you see Jimmy out there, please tell him that the banana trees are a big hit!

Sell Smart

OK, we're going to assume that you know the fundamentals of how to sell something on eBay. If you don't know how, then read this eBay seller's tutorial. What we'd rather spend out time doing is giving you those all-important tips to getting the best price possible for your junk.

Title your items effectively
Beware of "collaboration"

Title your items effectively

The number one way sellers screw themselves over and not find buyers is by promoting their product with a poorly written auction title. Although this may seem like a relatively minor issue, spelling mistakes and insufficient descriptions can be the difference between an item attracting buyer interest and garnering a high price, or going for a paltry sum offered by one lone buyer.

Remember Jimmy? Let's say that he wants to sell his new TV set (since he needs room to practice with his donkey-bone yo-yo). Jimmy has a number of options for how he can title his item, including:

a) big TV
b) 27-inch television
c) Sony Trinitron 27-inch television TV, model #tbk-889

The last item description is the best, and here's why:

1. eBay's search engine favors titles that include the most information. Jimmy's TV will turn up for multiple users, whether they type in "television", "TV," or "Sony TV."
   
   
2. Listing items in this specific manner allows for more exact matches.

Another example:

Sally is looking for the exact model of Sony TV that Jimmy is selling. Sally doesn't want to have to wade through all the other 27" TV sets on eBay, so she searches for Sony #tbk-889. If Jimmy had used one of the first two auction titles, eBay's search engine would have passed over his listing, because it did not include the words Sally was searching for.

While being as specific as possible is good, don't stress over the capitalization, exclamation points, and dashes - they do not affect the eBay search engine.

Beware of "collaboration"

Collaboration occurs when buyers communicate with one another in order to affect a low final price for an item. Think of it as a Survivor-esque alliance (without the melodramatic speeches about snakes, rats, and "island spirits"). Although traditional collaboration is difficult to pull off, the gigantic size of eBay's bidding community makes it possible for users to collaborate in a modified form. For instance, in a traditional auction-where all bidders are sitting in the same room-collaboration could be achieved if all the bidders interested in an item decided that only one person would bid so that they could later split the profit. On eBay this would be virtually impossible to do, since there is an unlimited number of potential buyers.

The modified form of collaboration on eBay involves bid retraction and bid defaulting. Example example!

Jimmy and Sally (who are now good friends, having met on eBay) decide that they want to both win an auction by collaborating. Jimmy bids extremely low ($2) on a ceramic lawn gnome early in the auction. Sally then bids extremely high ($100), ensuring no one else will outbid him and buyer interest in the auction will remain low. Then, just before the auction ends, Sally retracts her bid and Jimmy's $2 is reinstated as the highest bid. Jimmy will now probably win the auction, as Sally's former high bid scared everybody else away. Alternatively, Sally could also wait until after the auction ends and then default on her bid, forcing the seller to either offer the item to Jimmy, or hold the auction again.

Unfortunately, it's hard to catch slimeballs like Jimmy and Sally. The best way to determine whether collaboration is occurring is to analyze Jimmy's and Sally's bidding histories. If their histories show that they both bid on all the same auctions (or that one or both of them have a large number of bid retractions), then there is reason to believe that they are collaborating. It should also be noted that "Jimmy" and "Sally" could be the same person. A single person could register multiple user names and then do collaboration between these usernames. If you suspect that buyers are collaborating, be sure to contact Safeharbor.

So our point is that when you're selling, you should constantly check the bidding histories of the people who are placing the bids. If something fishy is going on, then report the names to SafeHarbor and immediately pull your item off the market.

Getting Started

Ahhhh, eBay… the ultimate worldwide flea market. Everyone from Midwestern grannies to jobless goatee-ed hippies are in on the action, peddling their wares in the wee hours of the morning. Chances are if you want to buy, some poor sucker is selling, and if you want to sell, there's some poor sucker willing to buy.

We know what you're thinking: How do I avoid being the aforementioned "poor sucker"? Well, we're here to save your sorry ass. But first we have to make one thing clear: This article will assume you have at least a basic understanding of how eBay works. Why eBay, and not some lesser known online auction service? Because it's the largest and most high-profile service around. However, if you're an anti-establishment type who prefers to frequent the underdog (i.e., you use Bn.com instead of Amazon.com), realize that you can still use this SYW - most of our pointers are applicable to all online auctions, no matter where you choose to buy and sell your crap - we mean "valuables."

Getting Started

First things first: eBay requires all registered users to enter the following:

• Name.
• E-mail address.
• Mailing address.
• Phone number.
• Credit card number. This last criterion is new as of October 22, 1999, and doesn't apply to everyone. For example:

1. Sellers who sold items prior to October 22, 1999 can ignore this policy. These sellers are not required to list a major credit card in order to sell items.
   
   
2. If you have a free e-mail address from a service such as Hotmail.com or Yahoo.com, you MUST register with a credit card. No exceptions.
   
   
3. For those who don't wish to register with a credit card, eBay provides an "ID Verify" service. ID Verify will match your personal information with the information on your credit record in order to verify your identity. There's a $5 fee for using ID Verify, and the service is good for one year.

There's also a bunch of optional information that you can provide. Whether you give it or not is up to you; just make sure that you don't lie about any of your information.

As soon as you've registered, you may be tempted to start bidding on stuff, most of which you probably don't need. ("A glow in the dark towel rack! Just what I always wanted!") Not so fast. First you've got to become aware of three invaluable tools offered by eBay that every savvy participant should utilize:

• User Feedback allows users to comment on each other's activities. When commenting, the user either assigns a positive, neutral or negative ranking to his/her description. By looking at the user feedback, a user's reliability can be determined easily by their rankings, with a high positive ranking meaning that the user received a large number of positive comments. This feedback can indicate if a seller sells quality merchandise, if a seller is recommended by others, and if a buyer submits his/her payment quickly. All good things to know!
  
  
• SafeHarbor is eBay's "comprehensive safety resource and protective arm"-basically a service that allows eBay to monitor its users. Whenever users log into the system, eBay's servers record their Internet addresses. Although users cannot view this information, SafeHarbor personnel will respond to complaints by users and will determine whether, for instance, an eBay user is using multiple usernames in order to manipulate auction prices. So it prevents you from registering 15 times with 15 e-mail addresses, and bumping up an auction price to get people to pay more.
  
  
• Users may also view each other's bidding histories. A bidding history shows which auctions a user has bid on, and also lists the other users who have bid in those same auctions. This can be helpful in determining whether users are playing by the rules. We'll elaborate on this later.

Now, you should familiarize yourself with the two types of auctions eBay offers:

Single winner auctions
Dutch auctions

Single winner auctions

With these auctions, the item goes to the highest bidder, just like any normal auction. So you're first question may be "Do I have to go to eBay every day and submit a new bid?" Not at all! eBay has this amazing feature called "proxy bidding." This allows a buyer to enter the maximum amount he's willing to pay for an item. But instead of instantly putting your bid on the item, it'll put in a lower bid for you, and if anybody makes a higher bid, eBay will automatically increase your bid for you until it hits your maximum. Hmmm... an example may be called for.

Jimmy really wants to bid on a donkey-bone yo-yo. The current bid is $100. If Jimmy's willing to go as high as $500, he can ask eBay to proxy bid on the item for him. eBay will then put a bid in for him of, say, $150, which is the highest amount of any other user's proxy bid. Jimmy will now be the high bidder, and eBay will keep increasing his bid to keep it the highest until another buyer bids over $500. Then Jimmy loses, or he can go back in and place another bid.

Another feature of single winner auctions is the reserve price, which is the amount at which the seller is willing to sell the item indefinitely. Another example, you say? No problem.

Jimmy puts his Playboy collection up for auction, starting at $1. Jimmy is worried that only one person will bid on the Playboys and that they will be auctioned for $1 (much less than Jimmy is willing to sell them for). So Jimmy puts a reserve on the auction of $100. This means that until someone bids over $100, he doesn't have to sell the collection. If someone only bids $99, Jimmy will get a report at the end of the auction stating that the reserve was not met and that the highest bidder offered $99. At this time, if Jimmy is willing to sell the Playboys for $99, he may contact the buyer and offer them for $99. However, the buyer has no obligation to buy the Playboys since the reserve was not met.

Dutch auctions

These auctions can have multiple winners, all of whom are bidding on the same item. Since you love our examples so much, we'll oblige with another one (starring that social miscreant, Jimmy!).

Jimmy has 10 banana trees that he wants to sell, starting at $1 per banana tree. This means that 10 people could go and bid on an individual banana tree, and each would win one banana tree.

Dutch auctions also allow buyers to bid on multiple quantities of an item. The great thing about Dutch auctions is that, specific to eBay, the lowest winning bid for any user is the amount that all users will pay. Dutch auctions are complicated, so please read the complete rules.

Of course, none of these special auction features are required. You can always just put in a real bid and if anyone bids above you, you can go back and make another one. Whatever floats your eBoat.

eBay: The World's Online Marketplace

Founded in September 1995, eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) is The World's Online Marketplace® for the sale of goods and services by a diverse community of individuals and small businesses. Today, the eBay community includes more than a hundred million registered members from around the world. People spend more time on eBay than any other online site, making it the most popular shopping destination on the Internet.

Mission

eBay's mission is to provide a global trading platform where practically anyone can trade practically anything.

Marketplace

On an average day, there are millions of items listed on eBay. People come to eBay to buy and sell items in thousands of categories from collectibles like trading cards, antiques, dolls, and housewares to practical items like used cars, clothing, books and CDs, and electronics. Buyers have the option to purchase items in an auction-style format or items can be purchased at a fixed price through a feature called Buy It Now.

People from all over the world buy and sell on eBay. Currently, eBay has local sites that serve Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition, eBay has a presence in Latin America through its investment MercadoLibre.com.

eBay offers a wide variety of educational tools, features, and services that enable members to buy and sell on the site quickly, safely, and conveniently. These services include online payments by PayPal, tips on safe trading, and the Developers Program for community members who would like to develop their own technology solutions.