[NA] Best ebay purchase practices

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
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It's a $1200 item which is the highest I've ever paid on ebay so I need to learn how to safely do this.

I read the AI advice on this and so far;
Seller's:
-transaction count 608;
-reviews 100% positive;
-member since 2000;
-historically sells this or similar products;
-I'll use my Visa on Paypal (and never pay, or communicate outside ebay)
-insist on sig required & tracking # for shipping;
-continuous video of parcel being fully opened

Nothing's 100% but is this the best that can be done?
Package is 1000s of miles away in the US
 
That all sounds like what I do. The big check for me is the 100% positive reviews. But as long as you stay inside the eBay ecosystem you do have some protection if things go wrong.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
It's a $1200 item which is the highest I've ever paid on ebay so I need to learn how to safely do this.

I read the AI advice on this and so far;
Seller's:
-transaction count 608;
-reviews 100% positive;
-member since 2000;
-historically sells this or similar products;
-I'll use my Visa on Paypal (and never pay, or communicate outside ebay)
-insist on sig required & tracking # for shipping;
-continuous video of parcel being fully opened

Nothing's 100% but is this the best that can be done?
Package is 1000s of miles away in the US
Click to expand...
608 transactions and 100% positive with a 26 year tenure? Nothing is 100% sure, but that's about as close as you'll ever get. I'd have zero hesitations about buying that on Ebay.
 
I ask GPT these days what documentation and verbiage I should use on the presumption that I will get scammed. I can't keep up with the current state of scams anymore.

Your strategy seems sound to me. I like to ask "what evidence will ebay/paypal require when i open this box and it's a brick inside?" so i can pregame that mentally. I do it more as seller than buyer, to build evidence that "I didn't ship them a brick"
 
Sounds like you have a solid seller. That's the biggest issue I see with eBay. I've bought a lot on eBay and lately I've run into a bunch of deadbeats. A common issue is a reseller lists more items than he can keep track of, the item sells, he realizes he listed it before his cost increased, and he either doesn't ship or communicate at all or he cancels the order and falsifies the reason as buyer requested cancel.

The other issue I have had is the shipper delivers it to the wrong location and marks it as delivered. eBay has tracking saying it was delivered. You as a buyer is SOL. This issue can be prevented by directing the delivery to a UPS store for pickup.
 
And another thing, if this is an auction and you're not using a buy it now, you would be well served to sign up for a snipe program like https://www.myibidder.com/ It works on windows and android, not sure about apple.
On auctions you often will get a better price and increase your chances of winning the auction if you place your bid at the last few seconds; this prevents someone else from changing their mind and increasing their bid. The result of this is jacklegs like myself use snipe programs to place bids automatically even when we're not at a computer. https://www.myibidder.com/ does this for you.
 
I would avoid Paypal as much as possible. I log into my checking account daily to make sure nothing nefarious is going on. A few weeks ago when I opened the bank's app, there were five transactions from Paypal, three payments made and two payments refunded. These payments were sent to two women who I have never met. The two payments that had been refunded by the recipient were for $1150 each, and the one that had not been refunded was for $1250. All three payments were immediately deducted, so $3550 was removed from my checking account. I then had to do battle with them, first through their crappy AI agent, who immediately decided that all the transactions were legitimate and ruled in favor of the recipient. I then had to get to their resolution center, and finally had to appeal their first decision. After two weeks, Paypal finally realized that these transactions were fraudulent and the refunded the $1250 payment.

I've since removed my bank account from Paypal. If I ever have to use Paypal again, it will be with a credit card, and I will remove the credit card immediately after making payment.
 
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FormerHangie said:
I would avoid Paypal as much as possible. I log into my checking account daily to make sure nothing nefarious is going on. A few weeks ago when I opened the bank's app, there were five transactions from Paypal, three payments made and two payments refunded. These payments were sent to two women who I have never met. The two payments that had been refunded by the recipient were for $1150 each, and the one that had not been refunded was for $1250. All three payments were immediately deducted, so $3550 was removed from my checking account. I then had to do battle with them, first through their crappy AI agent, who immediately decided that all the transactions were legitimate and ruled in favor of the recipient. I then had to get to their resolution center, and finally had to appeal their first decision. After two weeks, Paypal finally realized that these transactions were fraudulent and the refunded the $1250 payment.

I've since removed my bank account from Paypal. If I ever have to use Paypal again, it will be with a credit card, and I will remove the credit card immediately after making payment.
Click to expand...
Do you have any idea how these fraudulent transactions occurred? It would be nice to know the specific way they gamed the system so we could understand that particular vulnerability, rather than just hear "Paypal bad."

If there way any perfect system out there that couldn't be gamed/scammed/hacked, we'd all be using it exclusively.
 
I noticed PP insists on a bank account, maybe as a backup - but I can’t remove it.
I tied it to a low-dollar account.

btw, I sniped at t-2:00mins but didn’t need to, no one else bid yay
 
Back when I was doing a lot of stuff on ebay, I used AuctionSniper.com to put my bids in. Worked great.

In 29 years of buying and selling on ebay, I've had like one transaction selling, and two on buying that went awry and in all cases I was able to resolve them satisfactorily.
 
Jim_R said:
Do you have any idea how these fraudulent transactions occurred? It would be nice to know the specific way they gamed the system so we could understand that particular vulnerability, rather than just hear "Paypal bad."

If there way any perfect system out there that couldn't be gamed/scammed/hacked, we'd all be using it exclusively.
Click to expand...

No idea, and Paypal didn't say anything other than "resolved in buyer's favor", though I didn't buy anything. They also suggested that I change my password, which I did. Any system can be compromised/defrauded, but the issue with I have with Paypal is how difficult it was for me to convince them that those transactions were fraudulent. I do have two factor enabled, but didn't receive a request to confirm the transaction, and I didn't receive an email notifying me of a transaction, whereas any time previously when I did a transaction I always received an email. If I hadn't looked up my bank balance, I wouldn't have known these transactions had been performed.
 
flyingron said:
In 29 years of buying and selling on ebay, I've had like one transaction selling, and two on buying that went awry and in all cases I was able to resolve them satisfactorily.
Click to expand...
Either eBay has gone downhill of late, you were more particular of the party you were dealing with or you're just lucky.
I've had 2 go away within the last month.
 
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