Hey you Ebay'ers, could you lend a little expertise on how the site works? If you don't establish a minimum bid, do you HAVE to sell to the highest bidder, no matter how ridiculous? Do you owe Ebay anything if you set a price and no body meets it? Can you sell to bidders who put in a bid that does not meet your initial minimum if you decide to? Are you setting a minimum bid or what I think is referred to as a reserve? What is a reserve anyway?

Stuff like that... Anyway to accept credit cards?

Thanks, Willy

-- Will Allen (willyallen2@yahoo.com), April 20, 2001

Answers

Response to Ebay Ins & Outs

1. You have to set a minimum price, even is just $0.01, and there are auctions like that. Normally, with these, they sock it to you on S&H charges.

2. Once your minimum (or reserve) price is met, you have entered into a legally binding contract, although arguably one difficult to enforce. If you back out you will likely receive negative feedback and enough of them can get you banned from eBay.

3. If you set a minimum price at it isn't met (no sale) you will still owe eBay the listing price. If it sells, you owe eBay both the listing price and commission price.

4. A reserve bid is the absolute minimum above the initial listing price you set you are willing to take. If it doesn't sell, you still owe eBay the listing fee and commission based on the reserve price. Say you are not willing to sell something for less than $100, but you want to start bidding at $10. If it doesn't sell for at least $100, you owe eBay commission on the $100. If it goes above that, your commission will be based on actual sales price.

5. Yes, you can sell to the highest bidder on an after-market sale since eBay has already received their commission based on your reserve price which wasn't met.

6. I personally don't use reserve prices. If $X is the lowest I'm willing to accept, then I will announce that in advance by stating it as my opening bid price.

7. Accepting credit cards is up to you and how you have arrangements. I have had several people just not pay for their bid (and thus no merchandise was shipped), but haven't received a bum check. You can give your method of payment, such as a cashier's check or a money order. If a personal check you can wait until it clears before shipping merchandise.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), April 20, 2001.

Response to Ebay Ins & Outs

I think Ken covered everything, I just wanted to mention PayPal. This is such an easy way for people to pay for auctions using their credit cards (or they can send you an e-check and you will be notified as soon as it clears). The money they send is deposited into your PayPal account. Then, you can either turn around and use that money to pay for an item you bought on eBay or have PayPal write you a check OR directly deposit the money into a bank account you specify. I have seen a couple of other sites (Billpoint is one of them) that apparently do this same thing as PayPal, but I am not familiar with them. PayPal is so easy for buyers and sellers. www.paypal.com, they have a FAQ area.

-- Amy (amya@cstone.net), April 20, 2001.

How do sellers get the cardboard, boxes, packing?? I'm thinking of trying to sell some albums but will definitely need shipping materials. I heard once through the PO? DW

-- DW (djwallace@ctos.com), April 21, 2001.

Will,

Ken has covered most everything, but there's one thing I need to clear up. On a reserve auction, you are charged a higher listing fee, but if your reserve is NOT met, you do not owe eBay a commission based on the reserve. Your higher listing fee is your only expense.

As far as boxes/packaging goes, go to any business and ask them for their boxes -You can get them for free. (If you ship by UPS or regular postal mail, you have to provide your own packaging or pay for theirs)

However, if you ship priority, the post office will provide free packaging for you and ship it to your home.

-- Kristin, in La. (positivekharma@aol.com), April 21, 2001.

About the packaging boxes. You can get PRIORITY boxes for free from the post office. You can even order them online. Packing tape and lables are free also. The link is below. At the same site you can also calculate how much shipping will cost so you can let the buyer know. Everyone makes the buyer responsible for paying for the shipping. You can also tack on a small handling charge to cover the bubble wrap, etc. you need. That is why you will notice that everyone ships "priority" on the online auctions. Good luck!

www.usps.gov

-- Karen (nascargo3@msn.con), April 21, 2001.

Willy, If you dont set a minimum bid then your willing to take whatever the auction brings, Just a like a real world auction. The seller does have the upper hand. Even if you have a winning bidder a seller DOES NOT have to sell the item. You might get a negative feedback from an upset buyer but you dont have to (by ebay rules) have to sell. The buyer is however (by ebays rules and many state) required to buy an item bid on.

A reserve auction is used to set a minimum bid price accepted on an item. If you have no confidence that you can sell the item in a no reserve auction then put a reserve bid on it.

-- Gary (gws@redbird.net), April 23, 2001.

I've had good success with Yahoo.com.

The reason I like yahoo is that you only pay a listing, not a percentage of the selling price. It was even better before their stock prices fell, because there was no fees!

I'm not selling stuff this week, but plan to. A great way to move stuff you thought you should throw away.

I cast a vote for paypal.com.

Yahoo guide lines

Yahoo Listing fees

When you get more than 3 or was it 5 postive feedbacks you can bulk upload items, this is really nice.
Email me and I'll send you the spreadsheet, you will need to mail me $5 for the chance to keep your own hair. I will assume you have some techno capabilites.

-- (perry@ofuzzy1.com), April 25, 2001.

Paypal is the best way to go. People pay you from their Paypal account or with a credit card attached to their Paypal account. You can let the $$ sit there and use for auctions you win or transfer the $$ into your bank account. Billpoint works the same way except the $$ goes directly into your bank account (you specify which one). There is also Bid-Pay which is a way for someone to send a money order via Western Union (costs $5 fee)and they pay with a credit card. (Not very cost effective if the auction is only a few $$ in my opinion). You can state in your listing which methods of payment you accept (I personally rarely take a personal check).You can add a Paypal, Billpoint, or Bid-Pay logo to your lising. Just a few ideas. :-)

-- Cheri Asprion (t.asprion@att.net), April 27, 2001.