Do you have a question? Has something gone very wrong and you do not know what to do? Well, fair enough.
Below are the questions heard all the time from buyers.
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Does eBay have a Customer Service Department I Can Phone?
eBay are notoriously hard to contact, should you ever need to – it sometimes seems like they expect the site to run itself. You can email them, as long as you don’t have your heart set on a coherent response: go to http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_us/_base/index.html. You might have better luck in a ‘live help’ webchat here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/n-livehelp.html.
Only eBay Power Sellers (sellers with a very high feedback rating) get to phone customer service. If you really want to try your luck, type ‘ebay [your country] phone number’ into a search engine and you’ll probably find something. Unfortunately, the chances are you’ll have gone to all that trouble for the privilege of leaving an answerphone message.
It might seem cruel, but imagine the number of people who would call eBay every day with the silliest questions if they gave out their phone number everywhere. Its Wild West nature is, in a way, part of its charm.
eBay Sent Me an Email Saying They’re Going to Close My Account. What Should I Do?
This email asks for your password, right? It’s a scam, an attempt to frighten you, make you give up your details and then steal your account. eBay will never ask for your password or any other account details by email. eBay say that you should only ever enter your password on pages that whose addresses start with http://signin.ebay.com/. They even offer a special ‘Account Guard’ as part of their toolbar, which lets you check that you’re not giving your password to a dodgy fake site. You can read more here: http://pages.ebay.com/toolbar/accountguard_1.html.
It Seems Too Good to be True. How Does eBay Make Money?
For you, the buyer, eBay is free. Sellers, though, pay all sorts of fees: a listing fee for each item they list, a final value fee (a percentage of what the item sold for). They can they pay optional fees for extra services, including Buy it Now, extra pictures, reserve prices, highlighting the auction, putting it in bold, listing it first in search results or even putting it on the front page. You can see a full list of fees at http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html.
It’s obviously worth it to the sellers, though, or they wouldn’t carry on using eBay. The system is quite efficient, and basically forces both eBay and the sellers to keep their profit margins as low as possible – otherwise prices will simply go too high and the buyers will stop buying.
How Safe is eBay?
Well, as it happens, that is the subject of the next posting! All of eBay’s safety services for buyers and sellers are in one place, called ‘SafeHarbor’. SafeHarbor handles fraud prevention and investigation, helps with dispute resolution and keeps rule-breakers in check. Read all about it next time, and be safe.
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Stay tuned,
Christer
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Over the years, eBay has introduced all sorts of different auction types, in an effort to give people more options when they buy and sell their things on eBay.
There are many people who do not like the idea that their item might sell for a much lower price than they intend. Equally, there are people who have hundreds of the same item and do not want to sell them individually. This email gives you an overview of the different kinds of auctions and how to spot them.
Normal Auctions.
These are the bread-and-butter of eBay, the auctions everyone knows. You bid, others outbid you, you outbid them, and the winner gets the item. Quite simple.
Reserve Auctions.
Reserve auctions are for sellers who do not want their items to sell for less than a certain price, a concept you will know about if you are familiar with real auctions. They work just like normal auctions on eBay, except that you will be told if your bid has not met the reserve price set by the seller. If no one is willing to meet this price, then the auction is cancelled, and the seller keeps the item.
You can spot these auctions by looking out for ‘Reserve not met’ or ‘Reserve met’ written next to the current bid on an item’s description page.
Fixed Price (’Buy it Now’) Auctions.
‘Buy it Now’ auctions can work in one of two ways. A seller might add a Buy it Now button to a normal auction, meaning that you can choose either to bid normally or to simply pay the asking price and avoid the whole bidding process. Some sellers, though, now cut out the auction process altogether and simply list all their items at fixed price. Recently, eBay added a twist to fixed price auctions. They introduced the ‘best offer’. This implies that you can negotiate a price to someone who offers their items using ‘Buy it Now’, which could be a great way to get a bargain on things that don’t seem to be selling.
Fixed price auctions are easy to spot, as they have a little ‘Buy it Now’ logo either next to or instead of the current number of bids on the search listings page.
Multiple Item (’Dutch’) Auctions.
These are auctions where a seller is selling more than one of a certain item. Dutch auctions can be done by bidding. Buyers bid a price and say how many items they want, and then everyone pays the lowest price that was bid by one of the winning bidders. If you have trouble getting your head around that then do not worry, everyone else is having the same problem! These auctions are very rare.
What is more common is when a seller has a lot of one item, and lists it using a combination of two auction types. A multiple-item fixed price auction. This just means that they say how many they have, and offer them at a fixed price. You can enter how many you want and then just click ‘Buy it Now’ to get them.
After all this, you might find yourself facing a dilemma. When you have the option, should you bid, or should you just use ‘Buy it Now’ and save yourself the hassle?
This is what the next posting will be about.
* * * * *
If you seriously thinking of earning, not losing BIG money on eBay, I definitely recommend a very successful product how to market eBay(R) auctions
eBay Fortune , The Definitive Roadmap To Auction Riches -
as a successful eBay Seller, you will need it!
Take Action – Click Here to Download “eBay Fortune , The Definitive Roadmap To Auction Riches”
* * * * *
Another viable and most recommendable option, when starting up an eBay business, is to make use of the drop shipping concept, which you can read about in the post – eBay and Drop shipping – What Is It All About?
Click here to find out more about drop shipping.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
Do you also remember to FOLLOW ME on Twitter?
If you find the information useful, don’t hesitate to Tweet or email the post to your friends and colleagues and set up a link on your own blog!
http://twitter.com/christerfolke
Your reputation as a buyer (or ‘feedback rating’) is the most important thing people see when they deal with you on eBay.
It is on the basis of this little number that they will decide whether they can trust you or not.
Each time you buy or sell something on eBay, people can leave feedback for you, and you can leave feedback for them. This feedback can be positive, negative, or neutral, along with a comment. Your feedback rating, then, is worked out using a very simple summary: the numbers of positive feedback comments people have left for you, minus the number of negative ones. This means that someone with a feedback rating of 28, for example, might have 30 positive ratings and 2 negative ones.
If you are a considerate buyer, then you should find that positive feedback will just appear next to your username, without you needing to do anything. If you want to help it along, though, there are a few things you can do.
Always leave feedback for others: People will feel an obligation to leave feedback for you if you leave it for them (eBay will send you an email after each transaction to offer you the opportunity). Take the time to write a positive comment about sellers who do what they should and the chances are they will do the same for you.
Pay promptly
Sellers love nothing more than to be paid promptly – paying as soon as the auction ends saves the seller all sorts of worry, especially if you pay by credit card or another electronic method. You will often find that your positive feedback appears within a few minutes of you paying if you pay as soon as the auction ends.
Don’t be a difficult customer
Understand that your seller might take a day or so to respond to you, and perhaps a few days to send your item – harassing them is nasty and unnecessary, and won’t get you good feedback.
Build relationships
If a seller sells a lot of a certain kind of thing you like, buy from them a few more times. They will be very happy to find a regular customer, and will go out of their way to leave positive feedback like ‘a joy to deal with as ever’. Also, they might offer you a few special deals!
Sellers will not generally be reluctant to sell to buyers without much of a reputation, simply because it is the buyer who takes most of the risk in a transaction. It is worth remembering, however, that transactions where you are the seller and where you are the buyer are counted towards the same feedback total – so if you ever want to start selling, being a good buyer is especially worthwhile.
On eBay, people pay far more attention to sellers’ ratings than they do to buyers’ – most sellers cannot be bothered to check their buyers’ feedback, while bad feedback on a seller can (and should) be a dealbreaker. When you are buying, then you need to worry more about the seller’s reputation than you do about your own, and that is why the next email will be all about sellers’ feedback ratings.
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Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
Do you also remember to FOLLOW ME on Twitter?
If you find the information useful, don’t hesitate to Tweet or email the post to your friends and colleagues and set up a link on your own blog!
http://twitter.com/christerfolke
Have you noticed that whenever you open a newspaper, watch the TV or have a conversation, people seem to be talking about eBay?
If you never have used it and you have no idea what it is all about, then the chances are that you’re starting to feel a little left out. But don’t worry! This email contains everything you need to know about the basics of bidding and buying on eBay.
So What is eBay?
eBay is an online auction website – and not just any auction site, but the biggest one in the world. If you know how an auction works, then you already know how roughly eBay works. Someone adds something they want to sell to the site, and then buyers come along and place bids on it. The highest bid wins the item! It is that simple.
eBay being an online auction makes a big difference, though. Buying and selling are not reserved for any elite. eBay accept almost any item, no matter how small, and will then advertise it on their sites all over the world. It is a powerful combination of an auction and a slightly chaotic marketplace.
What is Bidding?
Bidding is when you say how much you will pay for an item in an auction. Bidding on eBay, however, does not work in exactly the same way as a normal auction, at least in theory. On eBay, you tell the site what the maximum you are willing to pay for each item is, and then eBay places the bids on your behalf. That means you could say you were willing to pay up to $100 for something and only have to pay $50, if that was the highest maximum bid anyone else placed.
It is not as complicated as it sounds – the best way to get used to it is to give it a try. First, the best thing to do is to go to the eBay website designed for your country. If you don’t know the address for it, just go to www.ebay.com and it will tell you there. Now, on the front page you should see a big box marked ’search’: just type in anything that you’d like to buy there.
Wasn’t that easy? Now you should have a list of items for sale in front of you, along with how much people are currently bidding for them and the time when bidding ends for each item. If you click one of these, you can read the description, and then – if you are happy with the item and happy to pay more than the current highest bidder is – you can bid!
How Do I Bid?
Go ahead and scroll down to the bottom of an item’s description page, and type the maximum you are willing to pay (your maximum bid) into the box. Then simply press the ‘place bid’ button – you will need to sign in once you press the button, or go through a quick registration process if you don’t have an eBay username).
If someone else’s maximum bid on that item is higher than yours, then eBay will tell you and give you the opportunity to bid again. Otherwise, you are now the new highest bidder! All you need to do now is wait until the end of the auction – if someone else outbids you, then eBay will email you and you can bid again.
All sounds great, doesn’t it? But by now you might be wondering whether a site as chaotic as eBay can really be all that safe to buy from.
That is why the next postingl in this series will be about your rights when you buy from eBay.
* * * * *
If you seriously thinking of earning, not losing BIG money on eBay, I definitely recommend a very successful product how to market eBay(R) auctions
eBay Fortune , The Definitive Roadmap To Auction Riches -
as a successful eBay Seller, you will need it!
Take Action – Click Here to Download “eBay Fortune , The Definitive Roadmap To Auction Riches”
* * * * *
Another viable and most recommendable option, when starting up an eBay business, is to make use of the drop shipping concept, which you can read about in the post – eBay and Drop shipping – What Is It All About?
Click here to find out more about drop shipping.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
Do you also remember to FOLLOW ME on Twitter?
If you find the information useful, don’t hesitate to Tweet or email the post to your friends and colleagues and set up a link on your own blog!
http://twitter.com/christerfolke
Is the eBay Customer Always Right?
The answer to this question is ‘yes’. In fact, the answer is a BIG fat ‘YES!‘, the biggest yes you have ever heard. Of the course the customer is always right. If you want to be a successful eBay seller, you should go miles out of your way to make sure every single one of your customers is 100% satisfied, no matter how much time or money it might cost you.
A dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedbacks, and negative feedbacks are to be avoided at all costs. That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell might have been. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part.
But What If…
But nothing! There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer.
Below are a few common situations and how to handle them.
The customer says the item never arrived: Politely ask the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still has not arrived. If it still has not arrived, you should assume it was somehow lost in the post and offer him or her to send a replacement if you have one, otherwise give them a full refund. I quite frankly do not care what it will cost you. Are you serious about selling on eBay or not?
The item has been damaged in the post. You must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation.
The customer says the item does not match the description. Resist the urge to email back with “yes it does, you just didn’t read the description properly”. Take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to straighten out any confusing points in your description.
I am certain that you are starting to detect a pattern by now. Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, whilst having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold.
You should always handle customers’ complaints before they complain to eBay. In fact, you should email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you and is downright unnecessary.
Are you still not convinced? Think this would only work with cheap items? Well, you see, the higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you. Let us presume you were selling $10,000 worth of items each week, for example, and making a $1,000 profit per week overall. You might think that refunding one customer’s $1,000 purchase would be a tragedy, losing you your whole week’s profit.
However, it is far better to look at it form a different perspective. If you are not prepared to give that refund, then not only will you lose the next week’s profit, but you will probably lose the next few weeks’ profit as well. Now which option looks better?
I absolutely cannot emphasise enough the importance of really believing that the customer is always right. But trying to make excuses for complaints is not the only thing you have to give up on. There are a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid unless you want to kill your business before it has even started properly.
In the next posting I will show you what it is all about
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If you are serious about making serious money on eBay and on the Internet, you must get the book
“The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On eBay”
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♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
Do you also remember to FOLLOW ME on Twitter?
If you find the information useful, don’t hesitate to Tweet or email the post to your friends and colleagues and set up a link on your own blog!
http://twitter.com/christerfolke