I finally decided to sell something on eBay, after frankly not going anywhere near the site before because it always just seemed a bit, well, dodgy. The site boasts excessive use of capital letters to tell you just how CHEAP EVERYTHING IS, and despite obviously having made a huge amount of cash, it still looks a bit like something knocked together by two Romanians in the basement of a cold, dark office block. The TV adverts for eBay have lots of jolly looking people buying and selling Russian sailor figurines, jumpers, toast racks and other trinkety things, plus my mum has been enthusiastically bidding for toast racks and trinkety things without any problems, so I thought I’d give it a try.
The first thing about eBay is that it does seem to be really complicated for something that old ladies are supposed to be able to use to buy Russian sailor figurines and trinkets. Setting up as a seller, you have to connect your PayPal account to your eBay account, set up a Direct Debit here, confirm an e-mail there, jump through a hoop, and sing the Catalina Magdalena Lupensteiner Wallabeiner song while juggling four oranges and standing on one leg. It all seems a bit excessive, and after a while you’ve got half a dozen emails to tell you that you’ve set up half a dozen new Direct Debits with no apparent purpose. This is all probably in the name of security.
My first sale item was an old mobile phone. I set a reasonably low starting price, a fair enough reserve price, added lots of information about the phone, and put up some photos of the phone looking all clean and shiny, and the phone in the original packaging just to show how much like a new phone the phone was. The auction started, with seven days to go. Nothing happened for about six days, then the bids started coming in, and the phone went quickly over the reserve price. eBay is a great indicator of just how stupid the public are, and why it is a bad idea to work in tertiary industries if you want to have any respect for your fellow human beings. People ask questions about something you’re selling when the answers are right there in the description. They ask if they can bid and someone else can pay, and expect you not to think instantly that they’re trying to rip you off. Finally, people bid for the item despite the fact that they are in Holland, when you’ve clearly stated that you’ll only sell the item in the UK. I know this as all of the above happened to me, and not only did this happen, but the winning bidder, who inflated the price of the phone to a ridiculous level, was based in Holland (apparently), and asked me to post the phone to… Nigeria. This is the message I got:
Hello Seller,
Compliments of the season.
I am very happy to win your item, am interested in buying this item right away, please are you sure that this item is in good condition and I want you to ship this item to Africa and Nigeria precisely. Am very sorry for any inconviniency please, spare me out because is meant for a special occasion for my lovely mother in Africa as I am on a convention in the Nederlands at the moment. So kindly let me know and give me the total cost plus the shipment cost that would be conducive and convinient for you and am ready to pay the total cost you bill me. then i want the item be shipped through Royalmail 1st class, In a nutshell, kindly resend the invoice in order for me to qucikly make the payment VIA PAYPAL right away and the money would appear in your account as a notification from Paypal.
Allah be with you as you reply me asap.
My best regards.
note I will deactivate my ebay memebership cos this is the item i need only.
will pay soon.
I’ve never been to Nigeria, but I can imagine that if you’re from Nigeria and an honest person, getting anybody to do business with you might be slightly more difficult than getting a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, wearing a really big hat. Just throw that country into any discussion about doing business over the Internet and anybody with a quarter of a brain cell should be running in the opposite direction as fast as their little legs can carry them. The main problem is that while I have no intention of posting my phone to Nigeria, this idiot still won the auction by inflating the price of the phone beyond the reach of several legitimate bidders – so now, I have to tout the phone around as a second-chance offer, or re-list it. The irony of this is that as my first sale I also lose out on the chance of a favourable rating from whoever buys the phone from me, making it much more difficult to appear trustworthy to anybody else who wants to buy from me.
So, lessons learnt from my first eBay (non) sale? Accept no time wasters, accept no bids from Holland, and if the winning bidder sticks thirty quid on the price, registered on eBay yesterday, and wants you to send the phone to Nigeria, they’re probably looking to rip you off. Maybe selling toast racks is safer.
Possibly related posts:
-
Nick
-
Margaret
-
Steve Cook
Also here
Ghana 180- Cloud poo poo land February 1 2012
