Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I use Ebay to get minis that are otherwise impossible to obtain.

Limited Editions
OOP
Unreleased minis
Bits

I also use it to move items that will bring in some decent cash to continue my GW obsession.

I noticed with a little amusement that for the second time someone in GW HQ Lenton has bought my eBay stuff. It's wierd to think that these figures have passed around from various people (as I will have picked up many second hand) only for them to end up going back virtually to the place they were made.

Heck yes I buy on e-bay. I recently bought a mostly painted lot of 30 kroot and the seller included 3 krootox, 2 shapers and an ethereal for free! I spent $25 and got easily 3x that value.

That said, I also bought a space marine army and had to threaten the seller with filing a claim with e-bay and paypal to finally get it shipped. The weasel had even cleverly placed models in front of the land raider to hide the fact it was missing its fron door in the pics. And don't get me started on what he thought a "pro-painted" army should look like...(not always easy to tell by looking at the pics).

Have generally had no problems- except the missing bolter from the cupola of a predator.
To be fair it was in the box but I lost it withing 15 minutes

Had one kit missing parts and no response from the seller :(

and am currently trying to get a response from a seller so I can actually pay for the items.

Overall most people selling are good eggs and have had some mistakes along the way that were genuine and got sorted easily.

I am a powerseller on eBay and I'd like to ad a little info for people from the seller perspective.

eBay does a lot of things that pass pretty much all the risk to the seller. They essentially share none of it and collect all their money from the sellers who take all the risks. Here are a few details about eBay policy:

Don't worry about buying on eBay they really protect the buyers more than anything else (except for themselves).

Sellers can NOT leave negative feedback for buyers under any circumstances, even for fraud, abuse or violation of seller terms or eBay policy.

If a buyer purchases something with paypal and the seller can't prove they got it, paypal will reverse the entire transaction 100% to the buyer and still charge the seller fees. Even if the buyer declined insurance or tracking shipping fees. International customs forms and proof of mailing certificates do NOT count for this purpose even though they are effective proof of mailing and are often traceable as well. International auction fraud is rife (buyers claiming non delivery).

eBay limits the amount sellers are allowed to charge for shipping in many categories, regardless of lot or item weight and size.

eBay forces sellers to essentially accept PayPal (and loose another 3-5% to paypal) on every transaction by disallowing any other payment methods to be mentioned in an auction description. (Cash Check or Money Order)

The average seller looses a little over 10% of the value of everything they post to ebay, due to auction final value fees, paypal fees and auction list fees, sometimes more!

eBay takes down seller auctions at their discretion (and keeps the fees) for indefinite violations of vague policy including descriptions with keyword combination, user complaints and mention of alternate payment methods.

eBay encourages sellers to offer their products shipping included or "free shipping" so they can make a percentage margin on the shipping costs as well.

eBay can not be reached directly by sellers for help, questions or complaints until they hit a certain level of sales.

In short it is very hard to be a seller and very easy to be a buyer and eBay is a company that pushes the limits on ethical customer service.



eBay manipulates sellers fee rates and search engine placement based on buyer feedback rating and degrades sellers intentionally who do not perform as well.

LunaHound wrote:I only have 1 rule of thumb for buying off ebay.

Only bid on something that you know you can see 100%
If something is blurry , too dark , or too *artistic , you know something is wrong.

I have this and 1 other rule: Only do Buy It Now(unless unavoidable with certain Transformers).

It's a personal preference that helps me plan out ebay allotted finances accordingly.

I just make sure to only deal with people with a 97%+ approval rating and at least 50+ transactions. This method hasn't failed me before, and I usually get pretty good prices on stuff.

To the people that got the point of this post and posted useful things, thank you. This really wasn't supposed to be about whether or not there are problems with ebay. I know there are problems with ebay (most of which are caused by the people buying/selling and not ebay as a company) and if you don't think there are you are I don't know what ebay you have been using. I do not directly deal with most of these problems after having encountered them initially. They do cause problems for me indirectly (ie raising prices above what I'm willing to pay, listings I have to ignore because the seller was too lazy to take a decent pic).