Tips for Buyers to Identify Reliable Sellers on eBay
I frequently purchase items on eBay and am looking for ways to better evaluate sellers before making a purchase. Specifically, what factors do experienced buyers use to:
* Identify trustworthy and professional sellers?
* Avoid low-quality products or misleading listings?
* Assess whether a price is fair or potentially too good to be true?
* Handle situations such as delayed shipping or an item not as described?
Are there any red flags in listings or seller profiles that buyers should always be aware of? I am looking for practical advice based on real buying experiences.
13 comments
ed8108
·4 months agoAlways remember past performance may not necessarily reflect current performance
simba6
·5 months agoToo good to be true prices.
A seller with no feedback selling high value items.
A seller with a user name that looks computer generated.
A long dormant account that has lots of popular high priced items.
Items for sale that would cost more to ship than what is being charged.
Large or heavy items with free shipping.
A seller with a lot of feedback but it's for penny items.
A seller that has sold cheap items for some time but all of a sudden has high value items listed.
christworks
·5 months ago@ha_448007 I both sell and buy.
Very, very good advice here.
As a buyer, when I am looking for something that has a function (e.g., sound, movement, etc.), I look for sellers who have videos in the listing. I want to see that something works (or what is wrong with it), not just be told that it works. Everybody has a video camera in their pocket, and it takes only a few seconds to show something works. Videos build trust, and I will pay more to know I am getting something I can see works, while understanding that anything can happen and break during shipment. As a seller, I heavily use videos for these types of items.
The other thing I'm looking for is the handling time. If it is more than a couple of days, I'm moving on. Anything longer signals to me the seller is too busy for eBay, and if there is a problem, they are not likely to respond to messages in a timely fashion.
I avoid buying from sellers who cannot spell or use correct grammar.
I avoid sellers who take less than 3 photos of an item, use blurry photos, cluttered photos, or photos where the item is far back and there is a ton of white space. Show me the item or I move on.
reallynicestamps
·5 months agoI avoid buying from sellers who cannot spell or use correct grammar.
Sadly, a poor education often goes with a poor attitude to the vicissitudes of daily life.
I don't mind so much when the seller is obviously using their second (or third ) language, heaven knows I can be erratic in my French grammar.
But there is no shame in using Babelfish or Google Translate to correct possible errors.
Not thrilled about textspeak either. YMMV.
reallynicestamps
·5 months ago1.) Read their Feedback Left for Others as well as any Responses
2.) Don't buy anything with an AI description
3.) Again read FB for complaints about non-delivery or cancelled transactions. Otherwise, if that's the only one available, the price is fair.
4.) Delayed shipping, ask for the tracking number and check the last place the item was recorded. INRs are covered by the Money Back Guarantee.
tobaccocardyahoo
·5 months agoI will not buy products which sell through authorized resellers on Ebay. Ebay does not verify whether their sellers are authorized. Or whether the products are actually NEW.
I will not buy NEW products other than cheap Chinese commodities on Ebay and recently have used TEMU which is usually cheaper and arrives more quickly.
I will not expect any warranty beyond the Ebay MBG on any Ebay purchase. I assume that if it fails it will go into the trash.
I never buy anything unless I know what it should cost, and try not to buy at a price below wholesale (it is often a scam).
I buy from Ebay sellers I know or have heard of. Gotten great buys from some of the Goodwill sellers.
FB is as useless as internet reviews. I read both FB and reviews after I have made the purchase. Every truly awful seller I have bought from had a 100% positive FB record, right up to the time that Ebay NARUed them.
eburtonlab
·5 months agoFB is as useless as internet reviews. I read both FB and reviews after I have made the purchase. Every truly awful seller I have bought from had a 100% positive FB record, right up to the time that Ebay NARUed them.
Without feedback, buyers have no way to judge a seller's past behavior aside from personal experience with a seller.
There is a wealth of information available on a seller's feedback page beyond just a simple number or percentage, if buyers choose to look closely.
There may not be enough information on a seller's feedback page to adequately judge the seller's history, but that in itself is valuable information.
Any buyer should be able to look at a seller's feedback page and quickly put the seller into one of three categories:
1) Experienced sellers with proven track records of delivering exactly what was advertised, with a history of selling similar items or similarly-valued items, as shown in the feedback comments of actual buyers.
2) Experienced sellers with patterns of troubling feedback that show serious problems, indications of being drop-shippers, or drastic changes in behavior that might indicate a hijacked account, or sellers suddenly offering deals that are "too good to be true" with no indication of having done so in the past.
3) Sellers without enough experience to classify in either of the first two categories.
Buy only from sellers in the first category; avoid the second category; reserve judgement on those in the third category until you have enough data to put them into the first or second category.
tobaccocardyahoo
·5 months agoIMO Buyers have no way to judge a seller's past behavior aside from personal experience with a seller.
Most buyers have inadequate experience to evaluate the FB in a many that the system's proponents suggest it be used.
Buyers have the Ebay MBG and nothing else to protect them. And they should not buy anything if they feel the MBG is inadequate.
Lots of buyers leave positive FB when the seller has screwed up royally. As a seller, I have been treated better by my buyers than my performance deserved, more often than I have been mistreated by my buyers.
Even a top rated seller is not perfect. And although many sellers, including myself, have bones to pick with how Ebay grades our performance, buyers do not have direct access to the metrics which are used by Ebay to evaluate sellers.
I sell on Ebay because it is where the buyers who will buy my items are most likely to look for them.
I buy very little on Ebay because there are other sites with better prices, delivery times and a safer buying experience than Ebay. There are entire categories which I would never buy anything in on Ebay. And it is easier to know what they are, than to tell whether a seller is trustworthy.
eburtonlab
·5 months agoIMO Buyers have no way to judge a seller's past behavior aside from personal experience with a seller.
Would you really treat an eBay seller that has been apparently successfully selling used electronic equipment on eBay for many years exactly the same as you would treat a brand new seller with no previous selling experience selling the same device using the same listing description? I think most buyers would be better off dealing with the more experienced seller, for a whole host of reasons, even if the new seller is entirely honest and trustworthy despite the lack of evidence.
Most buyers have inadequate experience to evaluate the FB in a many that the system's proponents suggest it be used.
That is not quite the same thing as feedback being "useless", and I think that most buyers are capable of deciding whether a seller counts as experienced at selling in a particular category or not, if the buyer is willing to look closely at the seller's feedback page. Given a choice of buying from several different sellers, most buyers are capable of picking an adequate seller if not always the best one, and are also capable of avoiding the worst ones.
Any buyer capable of ruling out the bottom third of eBay seller accounts to avoid buying from is bound to do much better on eBay, even if the buyer is choosing randomly from the remaining two-thirds of seller accounts left.
Lots of buyers leave positive FB when the seller has screwed up royally. As a seller, I have been treated better by my buyers than my performance deserved, more often than I have been mistreated by my buyers.
That may be true, however sellers with routinely bad transactions can hardly count on all buyers to be that generous over time and over many transactions. It is the pattern of negative feedback that matters more than any single comment which might be an outlier.
Even a top rated seller is not perfect. And although many sellers, including myself, have bones to pick with how Ebay grades our performance, buyers do not have direct access to the metrics which are used by Ebay to evaluate sellers.
"Top-rated" is evaluated monthly at best, and is not something that I rely on by itself. Plenty of "top-rated" sellers only lose their top rating long after their performance has fallen off a cliff.
No doubt eBay could provide better data to buyers, including direct access to sellers' metrics; I would not necessarily be against that. Until that happens, buyers can still learn a lot looking at feedback and looking for patterns of problems or lack of experience.
I buy very little on Ebay because there are other sites with better prices, delivery times and a safer buying experience than Ebay.
That may be a function of the sorts of things you are shopping for; in many cases, eBay is the only option for many of the hard-to-find items I am seeking. If Amazon or Walmart carried what I needed, I might do things differently.
There are entire categories which I would never buy anything in on Ebay. And it is easier to know what they are, than to tell whether a seller is trustworthy.
Fair enough. There are some categories, like cell phones and coins, where I would only consider buying from the most experienced and trusted sellers, and I would hesitate recommending others buy in those categories unless the buyer was already experienced buying such things as well.
By following a few fairly simple rules, even a relatively inexperienced buyer can greatly decrease (but not entirely eliminate) the chances of buying from a scammer or a problematic drop-shipper and then needing to use the money back guarantee.
mudshark61369
·5 months ago@ha_448007 ,
I just want to add some things to @bonanza125 's reply:
"*Avoid sellers with zero feedback".
1) Not all sellers with (0) feedback are crooks, but most do not know that as a new seller that ebay will place a 21-30 day hold on their payments, and they do not know how to deal with it. They tend not to ship or respond to messages about shipping, because of that. All they know is that your payment status shows as Pending or Processing.
2) It does not matter how many feedback or how high of a percentage a seller has, you have to check their feedback profile. You could see that a seller has high feedback number and a 100% rating, but it could all be for Buying not Selling, at least in the last year. The payment hold is reapplied to sellers who have not sold anything in over a year.
3) The general rule of thumb is not to buy from high volume/feedback sellers who have a feedback percentage of 98.6% or lower. A low feedback number seller can have a lower percentage if they receive just one negative feedback. In either case click on and read a seller's neutral feedback if they have any. Neutral feedback, does not count against a seller's percentage, but if most of the neutral comments should be negative feedback, try roughly recalculating what their actual percentage is.
bonanza125
·5 months ago"Are there any red flags in listings or seller profiles that buyers should always be aware of? I am looking for practical advice based on real buying experiences."
*Avoid sellers with zero feedback, newbies, or very high negative feedback which they aren't following through with the transaction.
*Know you as a buyer have buyers protection with a 30 day moneyback guarantee.
*Avoid International purchases
*Check profiles to make sure location is in the US and not from somewhere else like China.
*Ask all questions up front before purchase. If seller doesn't respond do not buy. If they aren't responding before purchase they probably won't after.
*Know that anything below market value may have a chance of being cancelled by the seller due to lack of research.
grann-4629
·5 months agoVery helpful advice from the experts.
Thank you @bonanza125 and @mudshark61369 .
mudshark61369
·5 months ago@ha_448007 ,
"I frequently purchase items on eBay and am looking for ways to better evaluate sellers before making a purchase. Specifically, what factors do experienced buyers use to:
* Identify trustworthy and professional sellers"?
Open the link below click on Go To Best Answer and read the advice I gave that new member and the advice posted by others.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Buying/I-am-new-to-eBay-How-do-I-know-if-a-seller-is-trustworthy-I-am/m-p/35202197#M528253
In the link above there is a link that explains New member spending limits. open it
* Avoid low-quality products or misleading listings?
Read every thing a seller writes about a product. If they give a Brand name in the title but in the item specifics box next to Brand it says; unknown, N/A, not available or another name, hit the back button.
* Assess whether a price is fair or potentially too good to be true?
Do some research for items you shop for you can find Mfr's. suggested retail price (MRSP) online.
At the top of an ebay page to the right of the search oval and the Blue Search button you will see
Advanced. Click on that and on the page that opens enter the item's name, model number if you have it, and other info. Below that select the closest Category, If you're not sure leave it set at All Categories. To get an idea of trending prices check the box next to Sold listings. > Search.
On the results page that opens above the first listing on the right you will see a sort oval
Setting it to Ended Recently will give you the current prices an item has sold for. Keep in mind that prices may vary for New and Used items, and If the seller knew what they were selling and listed it properly. Some do not! Items that are seasonal may sell for less, out of season.... etc.
* Handle situations such as delayed shipping or an item not as described?
In the link I posted above there is a link to eBay's Money Back Guarantee (MBG) policy. Click on it to read the terms and time frames for using it. I suggest saving/bookmarking it for possible future use, or on every listing page you will see just under the accepted payments icons Shop with confidence under it is:
Click on Learn more. FYI, if a seller has a No Returns policy, it is trumped by the MBG policy.
"Are there any red flags in listings or seller profiles that buyers should always be aware of? I am looking for practical advice based on real buying experiences".
Included in the link I posted above are instructions on how to access a seller's feedback profile page, and read the info about the seller.
If you are unsure about whether or not a listing is valid or not. You can always come to these boards and ask. You can post a listing's ebay item number, which you will find in the upper right corner of the Item Specifics box, and we'll check it out for you. There are also Product Category specific boards hover over that header above to be taken to an appropriate board and ask questions on it.