I am new to eBay. How do I know if a seller is trustworthy? I am interested in punching an item from
I am new to eBay. How do I know if a seller is trustworthy? I am interested in punching an item from a seller that has a reliability rating of 100%, however, there are only 30 reviews... A really small sample size.
8 comments
kh-andreww
·3 months agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
rushinto_14
OP1 year agoThanks so much for taking the time to provide such an informative and helpful response. All the best.
mudshark61369
·1 year ago@rushinto_14 ,
Checking a sellers feedback profile is a good way to go, but getting to it takes clicking on a few buttons. Any thing on ebay that is underlined and/or in a blue font is a button.
On an item's listing page in the upper right under the seller's username and feedback number you will see 3 buttons
Clicking on their percentage of positives is one way to get to their profile the other is further down the listing page where you see the seller's username in a large font. Under it will be a few comments, and under that a ( See All Feedback) button. Click on it. On the page that opens you will see the following line above some comments.
Click on the switch back to classic view. In the upper left is the seller's country or registry, and below that is a box with the number's of neutral and negative feedback a seller has received. those numbers can be clicked on to read only those comments and the seller's replies if any. Under the box are buttons to see All feedback, As a buyer / Seller /Left for others. You want to see their selling feedback, because a seller can have a fair number of feedback and even a 100% rating but all for buying at least in the last year. Sellers who have no selling feedback or have received none in over a year often run into problems so you should avoid buying from them, until you have more experience.
When you click on the As a seller button just above the first comments on the right is a box w/ [Most Relevant v ] click on that to see their [Most Recent] feedback.
Feedback percentages can be misleading the rule of thumb is not to buy from high feedback number sellers who have a 98.6% or lower percentage. A seller with low feedback number can have a lower percentage for receiving just one negative. The screen shot below is from a seller with a 97.8% feedback percentage.
Seller's whose country of registry is a foreign one, but give an item location someplace in the U.S. on a listing page, should also be avoided.
FYI, As a new ebay member, you will have a limit on how much you can spend and/or on how many items you can buy at any one time until you prove to be a reliable payer.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Buying/Buying-limits-to-a-new-account/td-p/34761127
You also want to read the info about ebay's Money Back Guarantee and its time frames for using it in the link below. I suggest saving/bookmarking it for possible future use.
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/ebay-money-back-guarantee-policy/ebay-money-back-guarantee-policy?id=4210
If you run into an issue and are not sure what to do, you can always come back to these boards to get advice on what action(s) to take.
rushinto_14
OP1 year agoThanks for taking the time to break it down for me. Much appreciated!
rushinto_14
OP1 year agoThank you for taking the time to help me understand some of intracacies of how the whole thing works with eBay. Much appreciated.
comics-scifi-collectibles
·3 months ago@mudshark61369 Just wanted to thank you for this excellent post! I only discovered it recently and have shared it a few times now.
eburtonlab
·1 year ago@rushinto_14
In general, you can avoid a lot of headaches by choosing to purchase only from established sellers that have recent and past positive feedback as a seller for selling items in the same category that you intend to buy. If someone is selling a dozen apple watches, but has no feedback, or only has feedback as a buyer, or only has feedback for selling dress patterns or fishing lures (actual examples I have seen), perhaps wait until they have a track record of positive feedback for selling electronics before you buy from them.
You might miss out on a good deal from a new seller once in a while, and nothing can guarantee that you won't still run into an issue anyway, but you can avoid a lot of potential problems by choosing to do business with established sellers. Anyone can put together a listing that looks nice -- it is not hard at all to simply copy an existing listing -- but it is much harder to create a history of consistent sales and positive feedback.
For more experienced sellers, you can learn a lot about the sort of seller you are dealing with by checking the seller's feedback page to see where the seller is registered and to notice if the seller has any negative feedback. If you see negatives indicated in the table of recent feedback, you can choose to exclusively see each type of comment by clicking on the numbers shown in the table. Reading negative or neutral comments can often tell you if a seller has a pattern of problems with items not matching the descriptions, canceled orders, late deliveries or item location misrepresentation.
If a seller has a pattern of too many serious negatives -- or just not enough positive history -- it is often better to find another seller with a better track record to do business with.
rushinto_14
OP1 year agoThanks for your help with this. Much appreciated!