The High Price Of Ebay

by Alan Johnson⁽¹⁾
Sell My Old Cell Phone

I recently read an article by an individual who recommended that people sell their used cell phones on Ebay. It was a decent article in that it was informative and everything presented in it was factual and to the point. Overall, a very useful and suggestive work. I thought about it though, and realized that she had not told the entire truth. Now it sounds as though I am contradicting myself, but remember, I said that everything written was factual. The problem stems from the material that was not written. Obviously the article was old and at the time it was written was likely as easy as she made it out to be. But I want to examine the areas that were omitted and/or have changed over time, making Ebay the place least likely to be “the best place to sell your used cell phone".

In a nutshell, the article said to 1) create an account, 2) create a listing, 3) auction your item, 4) sell your item, and 5) collect your money. Lets examine each of the above for “behind the scenes" information that may make your experience anything but good.

1) Create an account. That’s easy enough and takes all of five minutes. Nothing really “behind the scenes here" except that you might as well create a Paypal account also because very few people will pay with a money order or check with all the fraud that is associated with online activity, including Ebay. They too have had their share of scams. Paypal offers “buyer protection" in case the buyer gets the screws. Creating a Paypal account is not that hard, just fill out some personal information and give your checking account and bank name to them. We all love that right, giving out bank account information online. We will get into greater detail with Paypal later on.

2) Create a listing. Again, relatively easy. Just write some information about it, what your “seller policies" are and how much you want for it. Maybe toss in a few pictures. Some behind the scene things you need to know here is that your listing is all you have to sell your item. It can be very “ma and pa" compared to some listings by professional sellers who have very professional listings. Your listing is like a storefront. You have inviting and you have not so inviting. Unless you’re a professional seller, who has time and money to create a great listing? Also, the article failed to mention that there are fees associated with listing an item. True, you pay them later, but nonetheless, it will cost you money just to list an item, even if you don’t sell it. If you do sell it, it will cost you even more money. Oh yeah, don’t forget your store policies like refunds, returns, shipping, etc. A word or two about refunds later down the road. You will enjoy that, I promise.

3) Auction that item. OK, you are down with the basics. You have an account, you have a Paypal account (worrying the whole time about giving out your bank account information online), and you have created a listing describing the item, explaining your return and refund policies and how you will be shipping the item out. Now, some behind the scenes. In order to receive listing status under a new category created by Ebay called “best match" you have to have met certain criteria, almost unobtainable criteria that even professional sellers yearn to achieve. Since you do not meet that criterion, you are just “generally" listed. That means that VX7000 you are selling will get listed with about three to five hundred other VX7000. That greatly reduces the odds of exposure or visibility and will likely reduce the earning potential. But hey, that’s OK; you listed it for 10 days (10 days cost extra by the way). You also have no feedback. Very few people will buy from someone with little to no feedback. You have no Ebay “creditability". People will shy away from you and choose a seller with significant feedback.

4) Sell your item. Well, you weathered the storm and someone finally won your item through the bidding process. Now what? You get to collect your reward for your hard work. You send them an Ebay invoice and wait for payment.

5) Collect. If you are lucky, they will pay right away and all is fine. If you sold enough items on Ebay you would realize that there exists a certain number of people who are not going to pay, for whatever reason. The most popular is that they had bid on other items like yours and someone else’s came in cheaper so they bought it instead of yours. They don’t care, they are new and usually do not understand Ebay etiquette, not to mention they don’t plan on coming back for quite some time. If you didn’t collect for the item you sold, you can file a dispute, after 7 days. That’s right, you have to wait 7 days while you sit on your item instead of collecting that hard earned reward. But that’s not all; they have an additional 7 days to respond to you. So now you have waited 14 days, still no money. They finally respond on the last day to the dispute and say they don’t want it anymore. Guess what….It’s over. You lose. Plus they are now eligible to leave feedback and quite possibly will leave negative feedback. Now you have one feedback and it is a negative. You will never sell that item now! And if that is not enough, you CAN’T leave them feedback because you are a seller; only a buyer can leave feedback. So now what do you do? You relist the item and start over.; good luck, remember you may be a negative one feedback at this point. This time you set it up on a “buy it now" basis with payment due at the time of purchase. Oh wait, no you can’t do that because you are required to have ten positive feedbacks. OK, no problem, I’ll just spend some money buying stuff from other sellers and get my 10 positive feedbacks. One must laugh because it does not take an accountant to figure out that you will end up spending more than you will make on that phone you want to sell, but hey, it’s America and you can do what you want. Now you have ten positive feedbacks and you list it with a “buy it now". Now it sells and you actually collect the 50 bucks via Paypal. You transfer the money to your bank account and you are on your way, a night out on the town celebrating victory that you finally unloaded that old phone. Twenty-five days later the buyer starts emailing you. They are complaining that some feature on the phone doesn’t work and they want their money back. You are thinking, “whatever" I am not sending you anything. You bought it and it’s yours now. They send a few more emails; you avoid answering them hoping they will go away. They eventually file a dispute with Paypal. Paypal tells them to ship it back to you with delivery confirmation, they do and guess what? Eventually they will get a refund from Paypal. But what about my return policy I wrote? (Remember from above, here it is now.) Your return policy goes out the window because Paypal has its own return policy. So now your personal bank account gets 50 bucks sucked out of it (even if it was closed). But hey, at least you got your phone back…. maybe. They could have sent you a rock, but as long as they have confirmation for delivery, you are out of luck. Oh, by the way, did we mention that Paypal charges a percentage fee for using them?

The moral of this article is that unless you are a seasoned or professional seller who sells for a living, selling on Ebay may not be the right way to go when it comes to unloading your stuff, especially a cell phone. Sometimes it is just better to sell your used cell phone to a professional cell phone buyback company rather than deal with the nightmare associated with “doing business on Ebay"!

Mr. Johnson is the Operations Manager for www.SellMyOldCellPhone.com and is in charge of production.

The author has researched the Ebay phenomena and discovered some "behind the scene" information that may actually cost you more money than you would make if you were to try to sell your one or two used used cell phones on Ebay today.

Article submitted Sunday, July 06, 2008 & read 196 times.

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» left by Linda King from Pasadena, CA (3 years 181 days ago.)

I wish I would have read this article sooner. Selling my phone on ebay ended up costing me money. I sold it, by auction, (I didn't get what I wanted) and the buyer said it was broken (and it wasn't), and filed a complaint with paypal (which was a pain in itself) and I got my phone back, he got his money (sucked right out of my bank account) and I got stuck with stupid fees and didn't even sell the d*&% thing!
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» left by Anonymous (146 days 16 hours ago.)

Oh hell yeah! You cant sell sh*t on ebay without getting screwed by a buyer and worse yet, ebay protects them. I hate ebay's bullsh*t policies. They wouldn't know a free market place if it bit them in the *ss!
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