Getting Great Deals on Ebay: A Guide for the New to Novice Ebay Customer

The wonderful community of ebay has been around for years and people taken for rides are by far the minority when compared to those with only tremendous experiences on the purchasing end. A bad experience early on as a buyer often leads to a "fool me once" sentiment and writes the site off as just another swindle on the World Wide Web. These experiences cannot be eliminated, but one can take steps to minimize this exposure and maximize the chance of receiving a deal not found anywhere else. The following will give personal experiences and tips so that anyone can enjoy ebay with an informed perspective as far as making a purchase from an unknown seller.

Personal Experiences - Avoid the School of Hard Knocks

I joined ebay in 2000 and learned by trial and error. The allure for me initially was sports memorabilia for my favorite college football team. By searching the site, it is likely treasures exist not found at your local discount store. If they did, the items would be one of a kind and quite pricey. One of the better assets ebay can afford is inexpensive items that are invaluable to the buyer. The seller is happy and so is the buyer.

I moved on to buying things for my then son to be and the eventual son that is now a happy 4 year old, along with miscellaneous items I could not find at a decent price elsewhere. The one time I did not get at least an item I was expecting was when I searched for a wooden rocking horse that at least looked like an antique. These were very pricey. I found one that was just perfect, or so I thought. So astounded by the price, I barely read the description based on my excitement. Well, I paid for that mistake when I received an ornamental, miniature rocking horse. I immediately rushed back to the auction for details ready to light up the seller.

When I read it more thoroughly, the dimensions were there in black and white. While it did not say, as nearly all the others of its kind, "For decoration only," or "Not safe for actual use," it did give the size that was accurate. Quite obviously, had I perused that a bit more carefully, I could have saved that money. Lesson #1: read the entire auction.

I have been very successful in finding toys for my child that are slightly used or even brand new in the box, NIB is the ebay term for the latter, at far lower prices than the "big toy store", the term my little fisherman uses for Toys R Us. When searching I would look at "lots", several similar items offered in the same auction, and I was able to purchase brand new Thomas the Tank Engine accessories/trains for less than half what any store would charge. I would say that I have never had a truly bad experience and never felt like a victim but for my own lack of scrutiny. At first, this was luck and then, by studying their message board along with discussing strategies with successful ebay purchasers, I now am confident I can avoid all but the most slick of ebay sellers. After all, ultimately there is some assumed risk based on the dynamics of the concept for the site.

Rules of Engagement

The following is a list of general guidelines for nearly every auction that will help avoid negative incidents and make the experience fun. You will add to this and, perhaps, develop your own list as you gain experience, based on which category you purchase from the most.

1) Read the auction in its entirety at least twice.

Lesson #1, which I learned above, is the perfect example of how you must be diligent by reading with at least a little skepticism. This includes all the fine print such as: shipping information, return policies and whatever else that may give the seller the wiggle room not to stand behind the product.

2) Do not make a hasty decision.

So the auction is ending in 5 minutes and it says "One of a kind," so you must bid now, right? No. Either a similar item, if not the exact same one, will exist on the site or the seller will magically have another one. I have yet to see the case where I missed something that I regret because it usually will appear again, even if you have to wait several weeks. You need time to follow the guidelines and 5 minutes is not enough.

3) Set your maximum price and bid not a penny over.

While many things are hard to set a value upon, there are tools on ebay to help you make an informed estimate for this. Go to the Advanced Search section and look for the item with the Completed Items Only box checked. Sort it by price, low to high. You will then see the range that similar items have sold for recently. In addition, you get a good luck at the availability of the product. If it seems like you can make a deal on the current auction, mark it as Watch This Item.

You must also look at the shipping cost and include that in the total. This does make it more difficult, but now they disclose that on the search results if the seller has included it. Most will not gouge you for shipping, but follow step #1 so there are no surprises. Some auctions' will make the shipping amount equal to the total value they expect to get for the item and start the bidding at 1 penny. These often appear as a very attractive offering until you compare it to something similar with reasonable shipping and handling. Do not get upset should the total cost for delivery be over the actual shipping charges, unless exorbitantly so. Remember, the sellers must use packing materials, gas to get to the post office and their time. Most are not at this full-time.

4) Do not bid until the last minute or less.

Enter your maximum amount, realizing that it will only cost you what it takes to outbid any competitor for the item, not the full bid, necessarily, unless that is what it takes to put you on top. If possible, enter your ultimate, final price you are willing to pay with 30 seconds or less to go. Yes, I am serious! There are sites that offer last second bidding as a service, but of course, they want money for their assistance. I prefer to have two web surfing windows open: one with the auction that I refresh as the time counts down and one ready to enter the bid and at the last step of confirming. Keep in mind it may ask for a password and there is a confirmation page, as you get ready to snatch up your new widget at the last second. If you tinker enough, you will have it down to a science.

"Why not bid days before? After all, I put in my maximum. What harm can that do?" Oh my naïve friend, first, you let everyone know you are in the game. If your maximum bid exceeds that of a current one, should there be one, that competitor gets an email stating this. Now a game beneficial to the seller may ensue. The other bidder outbids your maximum. You get an email stating that you were outbid by $0.50. Are you going to take that? No, you will pay just $0.50 more. Now the item is not important, winning is. The real winner in this scenario is the seller. This is never the case with a last second bid due to the fact there simply is not time. The term for this last second bidding is sniping. Anyone who thinks this is an unfair practice is likely someone that cannot be by his or her computer at auction's end.

5) Research prices via other sites that you trust, even after peeking at the ebay Completed Items.

Personally, Amazon.com, Newegg.com, CircuitCity.com, BestBuy.com, HomeDepot.com, TigerDirect.com and ToyRUs.com are some of the ones I use. Of course, this will vary dependent on the item. If found listed lower on a site you have never heard of or done business with, I would advise looking up their credibility before believing their prices. Computer equipment, for whatever reason, seems to fetch higher prices, so be particularly cautious in that arena.

6) Perform various searches for the same item.

The plural of a word will not show if it is not in the title. You can select Title and Description, that will search auction bodies, but if the plural is not there, it will not return as a hit. An example I used regularly was for Seminoles. This does not equal Seminole or Siminoles. The advantage is less competition, though you know you are not dealing with the sharpest knife in the drawer. Poor spellers do not equal notorious sellers.

Use broader search terms and then the minus sign, "-", in front of words for which you do not want results, in order to narrow the results to match more of what you want. An example would be John Grisham Book -DVD. This would return results for Grisham's books but the mention of DVD will prevent it from appearing. In addition, use the term lot and get lower prices for buying in bulk. Do not get caught up in the, "Well I do not need that one in the lot, so I will pass." Calculate the price and if you are getting things you want at a good deal, forget the part you do not want. Save it for when you become a seller.

Also, enter quotes around words that need to appear together for it to return your heart's desire. For instance, "Blank Sony DVD" will prevent many Sony DVD players from popping up that include the word Blank somewhere in the event you just want to purchase DVD's to record on and not a player... There are places on the Advanced Search page that allows you to enter the words not to show in their own text box. Further, based on the text you enter, it allows for the choices of whether or not to display results for 1) only those with the exact phrase, 2) all of the words, but not necessarily consecutively, and 3) any of the words you type. That last one is useful when doing the misspelling game. The Advanced Search is a bit more user-friendly than the single search line on nearly every page of ebay.

7) Ask questions before auctions are near ending, be very polite in doing so and do not ignore an auction that is not a beautiful display of HTML code.

I am polite by nature, despite what my wife might tell you, so I send gushingly, friendly questions while I may be thinking, "This guy is about to rip me off." I have been wrong 90% of the time and the tone of the replies to questions tell the story. If you put them on the defensive by even implying a lacking in integrity, the response could be an unthinking reaction to that and not how the person truly is. The seller may be trying to chase you off, fearing a bad transaction at no fault of his or her own. If you are nice and the seller is curt or rude, move on to a seller that you have a better feeling is at least honest.

Lastly, do not judge a book by its cover. Many auctions are so clever with pictures galore, links to this and that, beautiful backgrounds and the like. This could very well mean the person is very good and been into it for a long time, BUT the person with a mere paragraph of plain text and one, poor picture could be the diamond in the rough. These are typically infrequent sellers trying to get a little cash for an item. They do not want to invest the time to learn how to beautify; they want to get a bit of money for something they no longer need. They are paranoid about getting it packed well, will email you every step of the way and sometimes even check back to see your level of satisfaction, especially if you do not leave feedback, which brings us to the 8th and final guideline.

8) Interpret feedback correctly.

Analyze and do not assume anything on the rating alone a seller may have. An utter lack of feedback is usually one of two things: a person wanting to serve customers well or a person that has changed ID's to cover the negative feedback in the past. The former is 95% of the time what is going on. See #7 and ask away to size him or her up by the reply. Your gut is often right.

Also, look at the negatives someone has received. Statistically, there must be those that are honest but have run into buyers with unrealistic expectations or that have been blackmailed with threats of negative feedback. Inspect the person's negative feedback by clicking on the number they have located next to their nickname for the site. Scroll to the negative and see what it was.

Another smart thing to do is look at the product on which the negative was placed (only a few months of data are stored for completed listings, so this may not be possible for older feedback left). You may find the person had some bad products and did all they could to make good on the issue, but the negative was place before resolution. Conversely, if you see complaints about the exact or similar item you are buying at a high rate, especially in recent times, move on to another seller. Further, you can see the reply a seller may have left in response. You be the judge. Also, look at the buyer's feedback. The buyer may be a troublemaker.

Final Analysis

Buying on ebay can be tons of fun and a great way to procure things you cannot find elsewhere. Just browsing with no intentions of buying can be hours of entertainment as well. It is like a huge garage sale and can look downright like a flea market in some areas. The bad things about online purchasing are that you are unable to handle/inspect the item closely and the mailing process eliminates the instant gratification from going to the store. However, if you can save big money, it tends to make those issues bearable. The fun you will get from bragging how much less you paid for your Gucci watch than your friend, is months of fun. Never mind that yours is a fake... Just kidding; it is all in asking the questions. If it is a deal such as $50 for something that is brand new and the item has a retail tag of $1,000, just exercise discretion.