From an email I recently sent to one of my newbie buyers who told me he bought an item direct from an eBay seller to cut out the eBay fees...This is a must read for all new buyers....

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A few pointers on eBay.  Unless a seller has a stellar reputation as I do, 99.9% positive over 6,000 positives and you read them and they all say he is a good guy, I would not buy anything off eBay from him.  The reason of course if your safety.  If you buy it through eBay and their is a problem with the item, you have the Feedback you can leave that will deter some not to screw you over.  You can go back to Pay Pal and put in a complaint and a claim and they can help you and eBay also has a process to help you out.

Once you buy direct, you are on your own and the seller might not be motivated to correct a problem.  Now that is assuming you are buying from a legitimate guy to begin with. What if the guy is a crook and runs an auction for the hottest camera at a prices that is well, Too Good to Be True and you bite and order it.

Well, many are thieves that put up a profile on eBay, get friends to buy items for $1 each so they can get some positive feedback and then begin to run auctions for expensive hard to get merchandise as a great price. By the time anyone realizes they were taken, the guy is long gone with their money.  It does happen quite often...so be careful.

I know we all hate to pay the high fees to eBay and it does pass through to the buyer one way or the other, but that is part of the cost of doing business on eBay.  I may not like the fact that the fees have gone up so high that many sellers have just abandoned selling on eBay because the cost of doing business there is so high and their profit margins are so slim, but unfortunately that is the way it has to be. There is no other game in town.

As I told you, I have reverted to selling either used items I want to get rid of or items I bought at a very sharp price so I have enough room to pay all the fees and still make a few dollars, but that is getting harder too since everyone knows about eBay and the availability of good close-out merchandise has dried up.  I used to find auctions from time to time and get some decent deals, but now there are very few since that merchant that is going out of business is first selling what he can on eBay.  What is left is usually the junk he can't get rid of. In addition on good deals, where you might see a handful of buyers at an auction, you now see 100...all are eBay sellers, so the prices paid for this stuff is way too high to make any money.

So stick with eBay and although you will be paying those fees, you can find out if the seller will give you a small cash discount if you send him a money order and save him the 3% Pay Pal Fee.  Although credit card companies don't like you to do this, many sellers on expensive items will not accept Pay Pal because it is just too much.  An example is selling a 100 Troy Ounce Silver Bar which I recently sold for $1300.  The Pay Pal fee alone would have been $39.  Add to that the eBay fee and on Silver which sells close to the value of the metal itself, you will end up losing money.  By indicating in the auction, I would only accept payment by mail, I saved my customers that $39.

Frankly in some cases they didn't mind covering the cost of Pay Pal and I had no problem then accepting it for payment. I assume the reason for them was many credit cards offer rewards for your business. Either miles or in my case with American Express cash back, from 1-3% depending on the item. So if they had to pay the 3% fee and got 1-3% back, it actually doesn't cost them anything.

Hope this helps you understand some of the costs and safety issues in dealing on eBay. I am going to post this as one of my guides so it might help others like you.

Regards,

Len