Archive for the ‘Ebay’ Category

Facts on eBay for Buyers.

Has something gone very wrong and you don’t know what to do?

Here are the questions that I hear all the time from buyers.

1. Does eBay have a Customer Service Department I Can Phone?

It is very challenging to contact someone at eBay and if you’ve ever tried then you probably got the impression that they think the site can basically run all by 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. Or you could try their “live help” web chat too and you can find it 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. More than likely, you will only get an answering machine prompting you to leave a voice message for someone to respond back to you later.

This can be frustrating, but if you look at it from eBay’s point of view; they would get thousands of rhetorical phone calls, and that is probably why getting eBay assistance by phone is challenging.

2. eBay Sent Me an Email Saying They’re Going to Close My Account, What Should I Do?

First, look to see if the email asks for your password. If that happens, then it’s a scam, an attempt to frighten you, make you give up your details and then steal your account. One of the policies of eBay is that they NEVER ask for your password or account information through an email. eBay’s policy is that you should only ever enter your password on pages whose addresses start with http://signin.ebay.com/. eBay offers an extensive amount of information on all their policies, such as, Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions and Security. To read more go to: http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/toolbar/useragreement.html

However, on September 23, 2008 eBay discontinued the ’Account Guard’ functionality that was once a toolbar option. 3. Making money on eBay, how does it work?

It is absolutely free for buyers! 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 then 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 continue to use eBay. What makes eBay work so well for so many, is that both eBay and the seller have to ensure the profit margin is not too outlandish, because if prices begin to get ridiculous the buyers will not want to use the system.

4. Is eBay a safe way to market and purchase product?

eBay has a Trust & Safety (SafeHarbor) Answer Center, where members can ask questions about Trust & Safety initiatives and use the member-to-member question & answer boards. SafeHarbor handles fraud prevention and investigations, helps with dispute resolution and keeps rule-breakers in check. There are many different and interesting facts you should make yourself aware of, and the information provided on the eBay ’Safe Harbor’ will no doubt answer most, if not all of your questions.

Would you like to find out how to make money off EBay? The entire process begins by knowing if whether or not your products will sell. If you do not have this element in place, then there is basically very little that you can do. To decide whether or not those products of yours will be successful, some knowledge of actual sales prices will be needed. The good news is that this information can be quick and easy to obtain when you have some experience using the available tools on their site such as eBay Market Research and eBay Sales Report.

Those who have yet to learn how to make money selling on eBay should never try to omit this vital step of the process. Believe it or not, it is not good to merely list a bunch of products to find out whether there is a market and an acceptable price. They should only test after conducting some research to identifying products and pricing targets. You need to have some past data to work with.

One of the major keys to success is to perform research before ever purchasing items for resale on eBay. You have got to use historic sales data to pinpoint the most appropriate pricing. You must examine competitors who sell the same items. You have to know as much about the marketplace for a certain item as possible before you start to sell. Conducting market research is one of the most important steps if you really want to know how to make money selling on eBay.

Many brand new EBay sellers will make the mistake of thinking that they already know the worth of their products. They become so confident in this knowledge that they move forward without performing any market research. They do not bother to look at competitors in the marketplace and the actual sales data for their products.