by B. Rock

Created on: December 29, 2006   Last Updated: March 31, 2007

I have been both a buyer and seller on eBay for several years now. I have had good experiences and bad. Although the bad will never drive me away from the site, I urge other buyers to keep a watchful eye and learn from my mistakes. You should be aware of possible scams, possible problems with legitimate sales, and your recourse for unsuccessful transactions.

eBay auctions are not monitored or tested by administrators before they appear, so you are your first line of defense. You need to look at the auction and decide if the seller is legitimately trying to sell the item or not.

The most important thing to look at is the user's feedback. If it is low in absolute terms (less than 10 feedback) or low in percentage terms (below 95%), I would beware. If it is a small item, you may want to continue with the sale; but hesitate before dropping a thousand dollars on something that is not reputable. My identity was involved in a rather strange scam that could be detected with this method. Someone created an account with a name very similar to mine, using my address and contact information. They then created a Paypal account using my contact information but a different e-mail address and bank account. They posted an item they had no intention of shipping and waited for buyers. If a person paid by money order, it would be sent to my address (which actually happened, and I was left wondering why I had a $700 money order) and the scam failed. If they paid by Paypal, the money was withdrawn, the account closed, and the scammer moved on. He would keep creating new accounts, presumably with cycling through a bunch of different identities, so each one would have a low feedback score.

Also look at the auction's price compared to what you think it is worth and what other similar items are selling for. Although eBay is a good place to find deals and discounts, some things are still too good to be true. If other users are shying away from an auction, it probably means they think its a scam! For a while, I was buying and selling sports cards on eBay with a friend of mine. We had our eye on a Michael Jordan rookie card. We were looking for graded cards, since they had relatively stable value. We wanted to purchase one at slightly below market value and then re-sell it. We found one that was going for around $700, whereas it was worth around $900. We scooped it up, sent out a money order, and eventually received a card in poor condition with no grading. It was hardly worth a couple of

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