eBaying for the holidays

[mercinary]

Over the last week, the eBay watchdog team (US and UK combined) have reported in excess of 200 auctions a day, amounting to a whopping 1500+ auctions!

This is just a warning to all you folks shopping for anything on eBay over the holidays....scam auctions are literally everywhere. You cannot avoid them. While I think we at M.W. might suggest you avoid eBay altogether, we know that many people will still turn to their services for their holiday shopping. With that in mind, I have come up with some helpful tips.

Tips for shopping on eBay this holiday season:

Read every word of an auction before you even consider bidding on it
Check out the seller's reputation. Don't just look at the number! How many auctions have they acted as seller on. Is there any negative feedback at all?
Be smart with your money. If you are purchasing something that costs hundreds of dollars, use a well-known escrow service.
Don't bid on auctions that claim to have information about where you can get fabulous items for a low price....


-Merc

[Dreamer]

Here are more suggestions:

1. Negative comments are probably the must revealing comments on a seller. If people gripe about things out of the persons control (charged too much for shipping, or stuff like that) that take that into consideration (I ignore those). If people complain about customer service or never receiving anything, stay away.
2. Look at feedback. One of the scams people do on eBay is selling recipes for a penny a piece, get their feedback up to 200, or something that looks good, and become idle for 3 months so that the sales are no longer in the database than they start scamming.
3. If you question a seller look to see what kind of ads he is currently selling and look to see the ads he sold and got feedback on. If he is selling electronics and all of his sales are electronics its probably legit. But, if some are books, and some are clothes, etc, than you might have a problem.
4. Merc already mentioned it but read every word. Before I was looking at electronic violins (so I can practice with headphones and not drive people crazy) and the ads I saw they concentrated more on closing the deal rather than the product itself (one paragraph for the product, 10 paragraphs for terms). I personally don't like these because the ad will probably be misleading because they seem more concerned with closing a deal than selling a product.
5. If its too good...
6. If in doubt, ask the seller a pointed question and see how they answer. If its a legit sale they should have no problem answering silly questions. After all, you want a product and they want to sell it to you. If they don't answer well, or seem to be hiding something they dont' need your business.
7. Figure out what recourse you have if the deal falls thru. If you pay by paypal, I think you have 30 days to request money back thru paypal. If you use your credit card find out beforehand what you'll have to go thru if something doesn't work out.

I'd like to think that most poeple are just selling things to make some christmas money for themselves and aren't try to screw you over, but where there is money to be made there are people who want the money for free.

[MatrixWatch]

I am thinking that perhaps we should all put our heads together and email out an update on our activities at eBay, and also issue a warning about the holidays. We could also mention the massive boycotts of eBay in the other countries.

If we sent it to our thousands of members, and asked them to forward it along, we might really be able to both inform people against getting scammed, and let them know about one of the most successful auction-vigilante groups on the web.