This brings me to the following essential level: Price will not be the one factor to think about when shopping for on eBay.

Know the Seller

We do not simply need the bottom worth; we would like the very best quality merchandise on the lowest worth. I’ve discovered that, sadly, photographs aren’t a superb indicator of product high quality. I’ve bought many objects with horrible photographs which have turned out to be in glorious form, and I’ve bought issues with glorious photographs that turned out to be junk. (I returned them.)

A significantly better metric to evaluate the standard of an merchandise is the vendor’s suggestions ranking. vendor—who’s probably promoting a high-quality merchandise in good situation—can have a suggestions ranking of 99.8 % or higher. I very not often purchase from a vendor with a suggestions ranking of 99.6 % or much less.

That leaves a grey zone—sellers with a 99.7 % ranking. In these instances, click on the “detailed feedback” hyperlink and browse by way of the latest suggestions. It might be there was just one detrimental ranking and it was a number of months in the past. Everyone makes errors. Sometimes, a low ranking comes from issues that weren’t actually the vendor’s fault, like a package deal being misplaced within the mail, so it pays to learn by way of precise opinions and see what’s up. If the vendor has a ranking of 99.6 or beneath, I personally do not care what the worth is. I do not bid.

I’ve bought dozens of laptops, telephones, cameras, digicam lenses, forged iron cookware, musical gear, and even pay as you go cellular phone plans off public sale websites. In all that point, I’ve solely been ripped off as soon as, however even then I ended up getting my a reimbursement. I did not get the merchandise I used to be after, however I did not lose something both.

That stated, it in all probability bears repeating: If a deal sounds too good to be true, it’s.

How to Bid

Once you’ve got discovered an merchandise you need, and you understand how a lot you need to pay, it is time to … wait. I strongly counsel you bid solely on the final second. And I imply that just about actually. I solely bid when there are about 5 to 10 seconds left. I wait till the public sale is ending, then I look it up on my cellphone, as a result of I believe eBay’s app has a greater interface for precise bidding (it is horrible for searching), and in these previous couple of seconds I enter the utmost quantity I’m keen to pay.

You do not bid earlier since you do not need to give your competitor an opportunity to react. If you outbid somebody days, and even hours, earlier than an public sale ends, they may attempt to outbid you. My guess is they may come again and outbid you even should you drove them over their unique max bids. You do not need to give different folks time to get into the emotional expertise of bidding on eBay. Only auctioneers need to whip bidders into public sale fever. We need them to by no means see us coming.

Once it is right down to these final 20 or so seconds, you then enter your max bid. At that time, a type of automated bidding battle begins. This one will not be emotional, although. It’s machine-based, chilly onerous logic.