Ebay Experiences...
 

I believe we're all seeing alot more offshore powerboats for sale on Ebay these days, which got me thinking. In general, what's been everyone's experience whether buying or selling at the site?

I recently purchased a car on Ebay. On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate my experience a 7. Would I do it again, absolutely! Would I do more upfront research, uh huh!!

Ricochet.

I have had great experience with Ebay and Offshorebid.com. They both seem to have decent rules set up. I would always suggest that if it is a large purchast that you hop in a plane and take a look if you can or pay with a credit card to protect yourself from Fraud.

Jon

I use Ebay all the time for both buying and selling. I love it. Only got burned once.

I dunno, a car or boat on Ebay? A person like me wouldn't do it. I need to sell, touch, fell, etc first. Ebay seems to be a harder thing to do that with. you can, but it's a rushed deal. I'll stick to the old fashioned way...LOL! Looking it up on traderonline, then going to look at it:)

Smaller $$ items or things that aren't as touchy as a car or boat I buy and have sold, but currently contract that out to someone cause I think Ebay is a pain in the ass to list things.

Mark

I bought gauges off of mear image on ebay. Everything went great on the transaction...

the truck I bought off of ebay blew the tranny less than 1000 miles after i got it. It wasn;t covered under ebay's buyer insurance becasue it A. has oversize tires B. teh deal wasn't entirely closed on ebay.

FYI i got the $100 ebay sponsored inspection. And it passed with flying colors. Granted even with replacing eth tranny and fixxing the other crap that was wrong with it it cost me what it woudl haev cost me if i coudl haev found the truck i wanted here. (not to many decent pickups available on long island and those that are fetch a premium price)

woudl i buy another car off ebay NOT unless I could inspect it myself for a few hours prior to bidding. The exception woudl be if it was super cheap. Like a ferrari for 10k or a pickup for $500.

as for normal item i buy and sell on ebay all eth time. I made $400 last week selling old computer equipment that was laying around my office colelcting dust.

I do more selling on E-bay than buying. The buying experiences have all been small items and were all no problem sales.
As far as the sales end,it seems that out of every 10 items I sell,I have to chase someone for the money. Either a long time to pay or a no pay. E-bay sucks at doing anything about it.A spanking with a wet noodle is about all they get.
As a seller my credit card is on file. I think E-bay should do the same thing if your a buyer. Make you put up a credit card,and if the high bidder does not come through,charge them.
Other than that,it is alot of work too !!

Same for me, I buy lots of stuff, got burned once but for less than $100. Bought an Eldorado but went and checked it out first. Hell of a deal.

I bought 2 cars on ebay. The first was bought sight unseen, but I used ebay's escrow service. Once the car arrived, I had 3 days to inspect it and release the funds, or ship the car back. It cost a few hundred, but was good protection for both buyer and seller. The second was in NJ, so I juest flew down to check it out. Both deals went OK.

bougt a car and too much other stuff. Did everything but fly to see it. It all worked out but not what I really expected. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I would look for a boat as well on ebay...you cant let any site for you search go un-turned. I sell all the time. Its all play money to me so the few slow payers are tolerated by me(shame on me). Only had one non payer in 3 years.

I buy and sell on ebay regularly up to a couple of grand per deal. After 250 plus transactions, I have been burned just once (on a $260 inflatable) and it looks like ebay's insurance may pay $175 of it. That being said, in order to actually collect against the insurance, you have to jump through quite a few hoops.

I collect mint US commemorative postage stamps and I gotta say that every single dealer and collector I have dealt with so far have been honest to a fault. Further, in my experience, they represent (in general) the ethics of the stamp collecting community as a whole.

I also bought a car from Ebay, sight unseen. This one just happened to turn out to be a real winner and I consider myself lucky. I'll probably buy another, though next time I'll make sure somebody I trust gets a lookover before I close the deal. To tell you the truth, I always prided myself on being a 'kicking the tires' kinda guy, but this last time I got caught up in auction fever and ignored my rules for buying. Like I said , got lucky that time, next time I won't leave anything to luck.

Just last night I was high bidder on some, please don't shoot me, waverunners. One for each of my kids. I phoned the seller in the midst of the auction. Found out the service record and maintenance completed on them and then phoned the actual SeaDoo dealer to make sure the story I was told held true. The SeaDoo dealer gave me some pretty good advice as well. Since I'm buying them in the winter, the dealer recommended I get a letter from the seller stating that if I encountered any problems upon 'first splash' in the spring the seller would cover them.

We'll see. It's still somewhat of a crap-shoot.

Ricochet.

I'm like everyone else, I've had for the most part, good experiences on it. I have purchased some fairly large items on it, such as digital camera and some high dollar software. I have been burnt a couple of times, but continue to do business on it. My feelings about buying a large ticket item is that you can also be burnt looking at the item in person. So like Ricochet said it's a crap-shoot.

Les

Personally I have had real good experiences with E-Bay.:)