Do you use ebay, have you any good or bad experiences of it?

A question about : Do you use ebay, have you any good or bad experiences of it?

I've just started using it, and apart from someone trying to scam me yesterday, it seems pretty good so far.

Having amassed unwanted/unused crap over the years, I want to get the best price possible for it.

Sold my first item today, (a watch) payment was prompt and I posted it off.

What are your experiences of buying/selling?

Best answers:

• There is a forum for eBay threads here. You will get more sensible answers there. The Arms is mostly just full of pi** heads.
  I have extensive eBay experience, both buying and selling and it has been mostly very positive.
  Don't celebrate that watch sale yet. Things can still go wrong, sometimes badly wrong.
• Mostly good from my use as a buyer. There was one little **** who once sold my missus a usb hub that was supposed to be usb2 and it turned out to be usb1. She bought it for me as i needed one and usb1 wouldn't cut the mustard. Sent it back after a not as described case, he refunded, sent a load of abuse in arabic and then within days had his entire stash of usb1 hubs up for sale as a job lot lol (and yes he tried to flog those as usb2!).
  Aside from that, my experience has been pretty good if i'm honest. Oh hang on, i tell a lie, i did buy a shed from a garden retailer on ebay and it turned up broken, badly made (with structural supports shown in the photos missing) and quite frankly, it was very bad. Sent that back and got my money back.. only to save a bit of cash when the local B&Q started selling solid 4x6 sheds. I bought two of those from B&Q, one went mouldy despite the fungal treatment and they refunded me for it telling me to keep or destroy - naturally i kept and treated it with anti fungal lol.
  Anyway back to ebay, can't really complain much. If there are problems they have a dispute resolution service and just like when you shop in a shop, things can go wrong with any purchase.
  My latest purchase was a dual quad core PC with both processors clocked at 3GHz (24GHz in total spread across 8 cores) and 16GB ram with a 500GB hard drive. Now it did say it was a used system but came with free wifi and bluetooth dongles. It turned up, case was a bit damaged but had a free keyboard and mouse also chucked in which wasn't mentioned in the auction at all. Now the case was a bit !!!!!!ed and the seller did offer to have it collected and sort it or send a replacement part. I opted for the part but that didn't solve it either so I did some DIY repair on the case and now it's all good. Seems pointless sending it back and costing the seller money and costing me computer time when i can do a repair myself, fix it and still have the machine and performance i wanted. Plus I also think we throw too much away without fixing things - I've had loads of broken things on freecycle over the years and fixed them lol. Needless to say i will leave the seller a good feedback as they were very helpful. The clearly meant well, chucked in accessories i wasn't expecting, had got it all setup for wifi before sending and upgraded the processors at my request etc so it seems only right that i also do my best to help them!
• Bought my kids up pretty much selling their old and buying their new on ebay. It works well but you get the odd one who spoils it...and sometimes ebay get greedy with their fees and when the postage shot sky high it wasn't the best.
  But overall I couldn't be without it.
  It's the first place I look if I need anything that is a postable size
• I sold some earphones last night - was pretty exciting watching my listing when the 7pm deadline approached. Bidding went from Ј41 to Ј60.80 in the last few seconds. And I started them at 99p - only expected to get Ј35 or so.
  Then I got that cash till sound from the app on my phone, lol, reminds me of Pink Floyd's 'Money'.
  Items like that which are reasonably valuable I'm sending off by Special Delivery after photographing the package and contents, wouldn't bother for something quite cheap, but at least they're insured and I get the tracking number for both Paypal and ebay.
• I only sold low-value things, trying to build up a good feedback reputation. One lowlife buyer didn't give me any feedback after I'd given him a good buyer rating, so I learned that one - don't give good feedback on your buyer until they give you a good seller rating.
  I left eBay when they 1) changed Ts & Cs [rights of buyer to return an item & eBay doing the refund from you before you receive item / international postage problems] & 2) they got hacked & obviously hadn't taken care to secure users' personal info.
  I'd rather use car boot sales and, if I had something more valuable to sell (real) auction houses. At a car boot, the buyer views the goods there & then - they can see everything about it & decide. Even with electrical goods, you could video them working (alongside e.g. that day's local paper to prove the date) & be able to show that to the buyer. The deal is done on the day & that's that. No postage or listing fees etc, just your one-off entry fee for as much as you can sell.
• Ebay banned me for just trying to sell a kettle.
• The chap I sold the watch to yesterday just messaged me to say he loves it, got it around 11am, money is in my PayPal. So my first sale is a success.
  Sent off the earphones today down to London.
• Ive used Ebay. As a buyer but mainly as a seller. I might be tempted to use it again if I didn't have to use PayPal. I don't like PayPal having access to my bank account.
• I would like to sell on ebay again but it seems quite a bit different from when I used it before
  There seem to be a lot more disputes now.