Selling problems

[jeffreygayle]

I used to sell quite a bit on eBay in the early 2000s. I recently migrated to closer to home methods such as craigslist then Facebook and then when that became scam central I decided to give it another shot. I've obviously lost all my reviews so I'm starting out anew and have hit the same situation twice. The first time was accepting an offer for an iphone that was reasonable and after 4 days of trying to contact the individual and no payment cancelled the sale. The person showed 100% rating so I was confused but noticed that all the positive reviews were all filled with hard to contact, never paid, etc. So then I paid for a 3 day auction through the weekend and it's like the same story 1 purchase in the past year, tried to circumvent ebay on payment. 

Is there a secret to auctions that I'm missing? I knew that there used to be scams, but it's getting ridiculous.

Any help would be appreciated. 

[mega-ma-roo]

New sellers are a magnet for scammers like this. Best, maybe only, way to avoid these types of scams is to list your items as buy it now with immediate payment required and no best offers. Still plenty of other scams out there, but it helps with the non-payment types. As always, first rule of selling online is never sell anything if you cannot afford to lose it and any associated expenses.

[mr_lincoln]

@jeffreygayle   Since you have not sold for a while I would suggest using Buy it now listings instead of Auctions.  You can turn on Immediate payment required which cuts out all of the non-paying scammers.  New accounts (regardless of experience) are targets for scammers.

Do your sold search research and price your items competitively then wait. 

For myself I use Auctions quite a bit BUT the starting price is the same one I would use if the item were Buy it now, that way a one bid Auction sale makes my profit margin ... more bids means more profit.

[kensgiftshop]

Unless you want to give that iPhone away, I wouldn't try selling it here until you get a little selling history.