Just wondering if anyone sells itmes online at Ebay and if so - are there any pitfalls etc to look out for?

Hi,
I sell quite a bit and have only had one bad experience which I suppose is not bad out of more than 100. I will not dispatch goods unless a) They have paid by Paypal b) funds have cleared from their account if paying by cheque c) always get a receipt of posting
The only other thing I would mention is that the description meets entirely with the goods that you are selling, unless of course you want negative feedback!!!;-)

I sell quite a lot on ebay, the only downfall i had was posting a computer without proof of postage insurance, and the buyer claimed not to have recieved the item, i had to give him his money back, so i had payed someone to have my computer in the end, i was fuming. Now i always get insurance so if people try scams i don't lose out. If you read all the terms and conditions you will be fine, but there are some morons out there trying to beat the system as usual. However most of the people on ebay are genuine.

I've only had one bad experience with ebay and that was buying but for selling the main tip I would give you is use paypal as it cuts down the leg work and time involved as payments go in straight away.  i would also suggest you get a set of kitchen scales and a list of postage prices for royal mail so you can suss out your p&p accurately and not end up short changing yourself. Good luck, its far more financially rewarding and therapeutic than a boot sale!

We have sold about 20 items, and have bought probably 40-50 items, we have had a couple of bad experiences selling, one guy used a stolen card, he paid via PayPal, so obviously the next day we sent the item out, then PayPal put a hold on his funds, so we had sent the item and lost the money, and we had another bloke win an item and then never send the payment! With the buying side, we bought an anti-virus CD-Rom, and it completely messed up our computer and we ended up having to buy a new hard drive!! On the other hand we have had some very easy, hassle free transactions!!

Good luck :D

Some of you have mentioned using paypal- I recently sold something on ebay- 1st timer :-O ;-) - and the purchaser said he'd send me a cheque since I didn't want to be paying the paypal fee's?  How much are the fee's for this?  I don't recall seeing anything about fee's

Stacey x

When you sell something on eBay, you pay to place the advert in the first place, eBay also take a fee which is a percentage of the final selling fee (minus the P+P charges), then if your buyers pay's via PayPal, PayPal will take another percentage of the final selling price (again minus the P+P charges) I'm not sure what the exact percentage is that either of them take, but looking at what we have been charged before now, I would guess that between the both of them, it probably add's up to about 3%-ish. It is free for the buyer to pay via PayPal, but they will charge the seller a 'handling' fee.

HTH :D

https://www.paypal.com/uk/eBay/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-receiving-fees-outside&countries=   for paypal fees

and
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/fees.html   for ebay seller fees

sorry links to big to link..... cut n paste :D