Hi again.

  This guide is intended for both buyers and sellers as it effects both equally in relation to the actual listings themselves.

 Being a long time seller AND buyer I have seen the frustrations from both ends of the spectrum when it comes to listings in general. Buying and selling in Ebay is intended to be a safe and enjoyable experience but sometimes it can get a little frustrating when having to deal with either sellers or buyers who dont seem to have a working grasp of Ebay. In this case, I hope I can offer a little help.

BUYERS:

 First off I can't express the importance of reading a listing FULLY before you hit that little "Buy It Now" button or place your bid. When you place a bid it is a LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT and is just as solid as if you were at an auction house in person. Buyers who don't read listings properly can also be ripped off after they didn't read the small print. For example, in a recent listing for a Darth Vader Reveal Helmet, the bids were growing past the $100 dollar mark as most people assumed the mask was FULL SIZE, unfortunatly the mask was a RIDDELL MINI HELMET (I Recognised it) worth $50 at the most (And available "Buy It Now" elsewhere on Ebay for about that price. The clue was the hot stamp on the included stand. If you looked really carefully, there was small print which read "9 inches tall" so the lsiting was legal and if you bought it, well tough. The guy even made an effort to have many detailed photo's but used forced perspective so you couldn't tell it's real size..... This is just one example.

 You wouldn't buy a car without a history report, detailed description and a test drive would you but it seems people are more than happy to part with their money on the spur of the moment here. So please protect yourself and read EVERYTHING.

 Also please rememeber when you buy something and you didn't read the listing properly it frustrates sellers as it wastes our time and money. We get charged 3 times for one listing. Once for the listing fee, again when we sell an item and again from Paypal once we receive payment. Not a big deal eh?... well after giving a refund, we don't (As sellers) get that money back, only you do. Why is this important....well the higher our fees and the more money we lose, the less we can sell and the less you can buy...or we sell higher to recoup our costs later on. After all it's a business. Personally I like to keep my prices low so a simple act of reading a listing fully can prevent a refund and help us keep our prices low in retrospect. This also reflects in our feedback. Nothing worse for a seller than bad feedback because the buyer didn't know what they were buying.

 Mostly it protects the buyer. Getting ripped off (Even once) like I have been can really take the wind out of your sails. Not exactly motivational and hell to sort out with claims and emails. Some sellers are even reported to the FBI when it gets out of hand. Be mostly cautious over high popularity items like PSP's and MP3 players etc as this can be silly (Especially near christmas) if you don't believe me, ask the guy who bought an XBox BOX...yes just the cardboard BOX...no unit!....

 If you do have an issue as a buyer, before getting mad at least contact the seller with politeness and proffesionalism first as it may have been a genuine mistake and all honest sellers are more than willing to help. Try to do this BEFORE you leave feedback please as it's not retractable.

SELLERS:

 What can I say, PLEASE PLEASE be honest, it makes the rest of us look bad when you don't and can ruin the marketplace and costs us honest sellers sales from lost customers to Amazon etc...

 List everything you can about the item you sell, it's not hard..maybe a little longer to type out but it will benefit you in the end once you get that sale and the happy customer. If something is not quite perfect, say so... if it's not quite new...say so.

 Mostly, try to be fair with your prices as new sellers who have the dollar signs in their eyes soon realise if the price is too high to start off with, there is a higher listing fee and no sale in the end as customers will move on to the next cheaper, identical item. Try listing a PSP and you will see what I mean. Last count 1200 listings today so plenty to choose from. Now that's competition.

 So I hope this helped, if it did, please hit the "Yes" button and let eveyone else know so.

 Good luck and happy bidding. Lets make Ebay a nice place to shop.