Auction-U.com

Auction-U.com eBay Tip Of The Day

Never send your password or a change of password request through email and for the Pete's sake, don't post it in the comment section of a weblog that discusses ebay.

If you are seeking help directly from eBay, go to www.eBay.com and click on HELP.  The help link is on almost every page.

Auction-U eBay Help Desk - Fraud eMails

A reader asks the following question:

I have had 3 emails in the last 3 weeks about someone trying to use my account fraudrulently. Do I need to change my account to keep this from happening, or how do I drop my account. The last time I ordered something on ebay was about a year and half ago.

Auction-U eBay Help Desk Answer:

Ignore these eMails and never sign on to eBay by following a link sent to you in an eMail.

Read more about protecting yourself from ID theft here.

eBay Help: Retracting a Bid

The problem: You accidently bid $1,000.00 instead of $10.00 on an eBay item.

According to eBay...

Bid carefully - retractions are rarely allowed

When you are the winning bidder, you are obligated to pay the high-bid price for the item. As a rule, retracting bids is not allowed on eBay.

However, retractions are allowed when you make a typographical error such as the example above and there is an easy solution found in the eBay help section:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/bid-retract.html

Deciding What To Sell On eBay

A lot of eBay sellers start out selling odds and ends they have around the house—and for good reason. For items that are in good condition, you'll probably get more money for them on eBay than at a garage sale. You probably have plenty of stuff that you'll never miss and you really don't need to store or dust anymore. And it's a relatively risk-free way to test the waters of eBay selling.

If you can't bear to part with anything you already have, start with products you know and have experience with. Choose things that have demonstrable market demand (that is, you know people are buying them). Don't make the mistake of selling only things you like, or the trendiest, coolest things you can find. If your goal is to make a profit—and it should be!—then you need to be selling things people will buy.

If you are considering selling an item, do a search on eBay and see if that product or similar ones are being offered for sale. If the market is saturated, you may want to reconsider trying to sell that product. At the same time, if absolutely no one else is offering the product for sale, you need to figure out if that's because no one else has thought of it, or if it's because no one will buy the item.

Continue reading the article by By Jacquelyn Lynn.

Auction U's Whiteboard Session

I am in the process of moving my Internet business out of my home and into a new office/warehouse space. The space is two levels with offices in front, warehouse to the rear and a loft above the warehouse.

My plans for the loft include an area for my kids (and the kids of our employees) to hang out and an area to hold monthly informal eBay Selling Seminars called Auction U Whiteboard Sessions. The Auction U Whiteboard Sessions will be free and open to the public.

If you live in the greater Seattle area and would like more information about the  Whiteboard Sessions, you can email [email protected]

eBay Customer Service and Feedback

From Start Up Journal:

Online-auction sellers also can apologize to unhappy customers, but sometimes the damage can't be repaired. After every sale on eBay, for example, buyers and sellers are asked to rate their dealings with the other person, plus offer a brief opinion. If a negative comment is posted, anyone considering a transaction with that buyer or seller can read it.

The ratings, called "feedback" scores, are all-important to many eBay users. The scores are cumulative and appear beside every eBay member's name, along with the number of transactions used to determine it.

A buyer leaving a negative rating risks receiving one back from the seller, or vice versa. Since the scores are cumulative, one negative rating won't do much to hurt the score of a member who had dozens of positive transactions. But it can destroy the rating of a member who's only made a few sales or purchases.

Mr. Ferrante always gives refunds to his eBay customers to keep his positive feedback score 100%. He's been selling his personal collection of entertainment memorabilia on the auction site since 1997. "Feedback is the foundation on which you can make any and all claims of credibility," he says. "It's your identity, your firewall." He estimates he loses about $200 a year in refunds to unhappy customers who buy from him on eBay and his personal Web site.

Some sellers find they can't avoid negative ratings, no matter how hard they try. Buyers new to the site and unaware of the importance of feedback are most likely to give negative ratings, says Jan Ovshani in Houston, who has been selling his original oil paintings on eBay since November 2003.

In May 2004 he noticed a flaw on a $48 painting he was about to ship to a new eBay user. He couldn't send a replacement since the artwork was original, so he gave the buyer a full refund, including shipping fees, and apologized via e-mail. The customer, who had completed only three prior eBay transactions says Mr. Ovshani, never replied and left negative feedback, despite accepting the refund.

Mr. Ovshani, in turn, left the buyer negative feedback, which lowered the person's feedback score by 30%. Mr. Ovshani's score dropped by less than one percent and is now 99.5% based on 379 transactions.

Negative feedback doesn't have to remain permanent on eBay. It has a mutual feedback-withdrawal service that allows buyers and sellers to remove feedback left for one another. Of course, both parties must participate for this to work. Mr. Ovshani asked his unhappy buyer to complete such a transaction, but the buyer didn't reply to his request, and the negative feedback stayed.

EBay also will remove negative feedback for buyers and sellers if the comment breaches its feedback policy because it contains obscenities, personal-contact information, links to other Web pages and other violations.