A Free Buyer’s Guide to eBay
By
Robert Meeks
Whether looking for a bargain on equipment and supplies, or that elusive camera to add to our collections, eBay provides a wealth of resources with the number of sellers attracted to its venue of available buyers. With the number of sellers offering so many items, and yet, so many buyers vying to be the bidder with the final word, finding a deal can be a destination that just escapes our grip.
To improve our chances of success in finding that item we desire
and bringing the auction to a successful end with an aquisition providing ideal
savings, we can implement several techniques for searching, analyzing, and
bidding which can optimize our investment of time.
When searching for an item, we have various choices: a general
title search; a title and description search; and we can isolate the search
within a specific category and even sub-category. Checking the box for 'search
titles and descriptions' searches within the seller's written description for
an item. If we are looking for a specific item which is easily identifiable by
its name, such as 'ricoh kr10m', this can be a useful choice to make. If we
are, however, looking for a more generalized iten description, such as '3-d camera',
this option will list any item that has 3-D and camera in its description, thus
returning hundreds, even thousands, of potential hits.
When using the search function on eBay, we need to evaluate how
general our search parameters may be. If we are searching for other than a
specific item, it is often beneficial to do a title only search first. We can
then specialize the search by category and/or do a description search or add
another keyword to the search. It is also advisable to do a general search within
all categories as sellers do list items in categories they may not belong.
Finding an item listed out of category can give you a bidding advantage as a
lot of buyers stay within categories for their searches.
There are several techniques we can use in seaches which can
optimize our chances of finding items by isolating the search terms further and
even finding an elusive item others may not find.
Hyphens are a handy way to
further specify our search parameters making it easier to find useful auctions
for our purpose. Placing a hyphen between words will instruct the search
feature to look for those words in that order. For example: if we entred the
search words 'diana camera', we would get all listings which contain the words
'diana' and 'camera'; if we enter 'diana-camera', we will only get results
where the words are in that order, seperated by one space. Conversely, entering
'3-d' in the search box would return any entry which also contains the the
abbreviation '3rd' as the hyphen only instructs that there be on space between
the entries, that space can be occupied by a letter in the results.
A very handy search technique to use to find elusive auctions is
misspellings. Misspellings on the web are all too common, and eBay is filled
with misspellings and typos. If you look in one of the lenses categories, you
will find that a large percentage of sellers believe that the singular form of
lenses is lense (and just in case anybody is confused, the correct spelling is
lens). Searching for items by using intentional misspellings in the search box
can find items many other potential bidders may miss due to the misspelling. On
occasion, I have found a stereo camera listed as 'stareo', 'stero', and
'sterao'. Some of these are just simply typos as we all try to type too fast.
Using this techique can find items for which the bidding competition is low due
to the misspelling, offering you a potential deal.
Keyword spamming is an unfortunate
reality of the internet and eBay. Although they insist that they take measures
against it and it does not exist on their site, it is rampant. Keyword spamming
involves the use of common keywords, whether they have anything to do with the
item or not. Sellers will often list words in their descriptions, and sometimes
the titles, in order to get hits during a search. Some sellers will also list
other items they sell or any word they think has anthing to do with their item.
It is not uncommon to find the word stereo in the description of a camcorder or
digital camera whether the item has the capability or not.
Keyword spamming can be avoided by
not using overly common words by themselves. Common words like ‘flash’ can
bring up any item where the seller has mentioned having used a camera with
flash, and many will use this technique. Unfotunately, some sellers have hurt
the ability to use the word ‘lot’ in a title only seach by including the word
in a title to describe two items or even one item. These tactics clutter search
results.
Taking advantage of the advanced
search option can help to further isolate auctions by not only specifying and
hyphenating seach words as has been mentioned, but also providing words to be
ignored. If searching for a stylus pad on eBay in any type of search by using
the word ‘stylus’ will unfortunately return hundreds, even thousands of Epson
products since they use that as a brand name. Searching for stylus but telling
the search to ignore ‘epson’ will not return any results with the word Epson in
them.
Feedback on eBay is both an important tool and misleading. Within
the business community, a customer feedback rating of 90% would be considered
excellent, on eBay, a 90% rating is poor. The reason for this is a practice
which many sellers on eBay have adopted, which is hostage feedback. They won't
leave feedback until the buyer has left feedback. Being that buyers do not want
negative feedback, they often leave positive feedback or none at all, even if
they were given a bad deal.
Feedback, however, can be used to our advantage. As many buyers
may avoid a seller with a feedback rating below 90%, it is important to know
why they have that rating, if they are a relatively new seller. A seller who
has only had 20 feedback ratings, can have a low feedback rating with only one
or two negative feedbacks. Investigating the feedback comments can give a clue
as to whether the negative feedback was a legitimate concern, a buyer or seller
with unreasonable expectations, or just simply malicious. If the negative
feedback is unfounded or from a questionable source, this can be a potential
bargain as many buyers will avoid a seller based on the feedback score alone
without reading the comments.
Reading comments made by a seller in response to negative feedback
is an important tool as well. If a seller is abusive in their responses, such
as always claiming that everyone who leaves negative feedback against them is a
crook, then that is a seller we may want to avoid as anyone in a selling
position who is abusive toward their customers is exactly what their customers
say they are.
Feedback can also provide a clue as to the availability of an
item. If a seller has listed the same item several times before, we can not
only get an idea of the bid range, but we can avoid overbidding on an item that
will be listed again.
Another potential bargain can be found in new sellers with
feedback below 10, as many buyers will not deal with new sellers. This is not
practicality, it is simply elitism. These buyers never grew up after high
school and never got out of the habit of picking on freshmen. Their problem can
be our advantage.
When dealing with brand new sellers with a '0' rating, there are a
few guidelines to follow. For the sake protecting our investment, it is
advisable to not deal with a '0' rating seller outside of the country in which
we reside (in the case of European members, outside of mainland Europe, or the
EU) as it is easier for a scam artist to avoid legal repercussions when
operating from another country. If dealing with a '0' rated seller, carefully
read the wording of the listing. We are just looking for the context of the
writing; whether it seems like they are promising too much or it seems natural.
Scam artists do have a tendency to oversell (at least on eBay as really good scam
artists would have a rating). Communicating with the seller through e-mail is a
good idea.
After we have scoped out our items and checked out the
sellers, we can implement some tactics in the bidding wars. Some of these
tactics will seem obvious while others may seem questionable, yet, the
objective being set forth is not just to win the item, but to win the item at a
low price.
One of the primary keys to being a
succesful bidder on eBay is to be aware of the mistakes made by sellers and
bidders alike; that is if we care to save money.
Two primary mistakes made by sellers
involves shipping and reserve prices. High shipping costs are a turn-off to
other bidders. If, however, this prevents others from bidding on the item, it
opens up a potential deal if the total (winning bid plus shipping) of what we
would spend on the item is less than what an item went for because it had lower
shipping which attracted more bidders. Reserve auctions will fend off bidders
as well who don’t like to play the reserve game. If we pay attention to what
similar items are selling for, we can use that to judge what we want to bid on
the reserve auction, which means lower than its usual selling price. We may or
may not hit the reserve, but, if we do, and others are not bidding, we stand a
good chance of getting a deal.
Unless the item for which we are
bidding is a rare one-of-a-kind item, there is no reason to jump into a bidding
war for the first item we find which meets our criteria. It makes more sense to
find several items and place them in the watch items section of our ‘my eBay’
page. We can then watch several items and if one is not getting bids while
others are, this gives us the opportunity to get the item for less than the
other auctions. I have seen bidders beat up one each other over one item while
there is a similar item available which is not getting so many bids. This is
more of ego wars than bid wars and should be avoided.
Another method by which we can judge
auctions to get low bidding competition is by their ending time. Sunday evening
is prime eBay time for people browsing eBay. Any auctions ending on a Sunday
evening are going to be high competition and bring higher bids. Conversely, any
auction ending early Sunday morning offers better chances for low bidding
competition as people are going to church, sleeping in, or recovering from
Saturday night. Holidays as well represent good times for auctions to end when
there will be less competition, and, interestly, the Summer is a slack period
on eBay, particularly on Saturdays. It is the days and times of year in which
people will be involved with other things which offer the least competition
when an auction is scheduled to end at that time.
It is the time when an auction ends,
particularly the last five minutes, when the most bidding often takes place. A
technique often used during this time by many eBay bidders is called sniping,
which involve waiting till the last possible moment to enter a bid in which to
outbid an opponent, befor they get a chance to place another bid. Although this
does work for many, and can be very effective to take an item at a low price if
only one or two bids have been placed on it just before it ends, it can also
lead to nickel and diming the bid price past what either bidder would have
originally intended to pay. In sniping, we need to set a limit on an item and
keep it. If the other bidder is aggressive, and so are we, we may end up with
an aution which ended higher than the items normally averages. Sniping must be
used judiciously.
One method to avoid being bullied
into a sniping contest is to bid the most that we intend to pay for an item. If
someone wants to outbid us, but they cannot succeed with only upping the bid by
a few dolloars at a time, they may well give up. Where, as with sniping, if
each bidding party keeps exchanging high bids because they are only bidding up
in small amounts, they are likely to continue further and keep bidding.
Keeping another bidder off their
game is necessary to prevent from being outbid. The majority of bidders on eBay
bid in even dollar amounts. Often bidding in dollars and cents, such as $36.65,
can spell the difference between winning and losing an auction as, if we had
instead bid $35.00, a bid of $36.00 would have beaten us but not if we bid the
$36.65. The odd cents also throws off the chance that someone will equal our
bid which will automatically clue them into what we bid as the original bidder
in a tie takes the bid, but if they see that the exact amount they bid is the
high bid, then they will know that they tied and only one more bid will beat
us.
Sellers to avoid are easy to spot with practice. Any seller who
only accepts payment through Paypal is a poor choice as they are only interested
is fast payment. On average, the Paypal only sellers have a lower rating than
other sellers on eBay.
If you use Paypal, they are not a finacial institution. Any time a
company wants your checking account number, it is a risky proposition. One
mistake in an entry for funds to withdraw from your account can not only leave
you with an absence of funds, but that same absence can cause other payments to
bounce and cost you additional fees. Your bank is not required to, nor will
they, replace any funds incurred due to an accidental overwithdraw. However, it
is only fair to state that the majority of Paypal users have had satisfactory
experiences.
I personally do not deal with demanding sellers. There is a thing
called customer service where a store is more than willing to go the extra step
to be helpful to their customer. This creates good relations. Porter's is such
a store. There are several eBay sellers who are more interested in receiving
their payment within the shortest time and telling the buyer everything that
the buyer is to do for the seller, without a mention of what the seller will do
for the buyer. Sellers like this are questionable. A redlight should come on
for any seller that is primarily interested in getting payed quickly. Sellers
who use the excuse that they have been burned by other buyers are using just
that, an excuse. Our local stores have been burned by an occasional customer
and still offer us customer service, we should expect nothing less from eBay
sellers.
eBay acronyms
and abbreviations
This is a simple list of acronyms and abbreviations used on
eBay by many sellers. As not everyone is familiar with all of them, it would
provide a handy reference. This is compiled from various sources but is by no
means complete, just common.
1st:
First Edition (also FE)
AO: All original
B&W: Black
and white
BC: Back cover
BIN: Buy It Now
CC: Carbon copy
CDR/CDRW:
Compact Disc Recordable/Compact Disc Rewriteable
COA: Certificate
of authenticity
CV: Catalog or
Collector Value
DOA: Dead on
arrival (non functional)
EX or EXC:
Excellent
F: Fine
FAQ: Frequently
asked questions with answers
FB: Feedback
FDD: Floppy Disk
Drive
FS: Factory
sealed
FVF: Final Value
Fee
GU: Gently Used.
Item that has been used but shows little wear, accompanied by explanation of
wear
HB: Hardback
book
HDD: Hard Disk
Drive
HIS/HIST:
Historical
HTF: Hard to
find
HTML: HyperText
Markup Language – used for webpages
IE: Internet
Explorer
INIT: Initials
ISP: Internet
Service Provider
LE/LTD: Limited
edition
LG: Large
MIB: Mint in box
MIBP: Mint in
blister-pack
MIJ: Made in
Japan
MIMB: Mint in
mint box
MIMP: Mint in
mint package
MIP: Mint in
package
MIU: Made in
U.S.A.
MNB: Mint no box
MNT: Mint
MOC: Mint on
card
MOMC: Mint on
mint card
MONMC: Mint on
near mint card
NARU: Not a
registered user (or suspended user)
NBW: Never been
worn
NC: No cover
NIB: New in box
NIP: New in
package
NM: Near mint
NOS: New old
stock
NP: Not packaged
NPB: Non-paying
bidder
NR or NORES: No
reserve price for an auction-style listing
NRFB: Never
removed from box
NWT: New with
tags
OB: Original Box
OEM: Original
equipment manufacturer
OF: Original
Finish
OJ: Occupied
Japan
OOAK: One of a
kind
OOP: Out of
print
OS: Operating
System (Windows, Linux)
PIC: Picture
PL: A Pink, or a
Pinkliner. This refers to an eBay staff member who posts a message on a
Discussion Board. Messages from eBay staff have a pink header.
PM: Priority
Mail
PP: Parcel Post
SB: Softbound
(books)
S/H: Shipping
and Handling
S/H/I: Shipping,
Handling and Insurance
S/O: Sold out
Sig: Signature
TM: Trademark
TOS: Terms of
Sale
UPI: Unpaid Item
URL: Uniform
Resource Locator
USPS: United
States Postal Service
VF: Very Fine
VGC: Very Good
Condition
VHTF: Very hard
to find
XC: Excellent
Condition
This article is
copyrighted 2005 by Robert Meeks