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What’s the best way to figure out if an eBay seller is legit?

November 22, 2004 / Dave Taylor / Amazon, eBay, and Online Shopping Help, / 4 Comments

A friend of mine who is just getting involved with the fun and crazy world of online auctions just recently found something she wanted to bid on at eBay. That’s good, but she decided not to bid because she’s heard too much about scams, rip-off artists and other untrustworthy characters. Rather than just bail on auctions, though, she asked me for some tips on bidding on eBay safely.

My first tip is one that should be obvious: pay attention to the seller’s feedback on eBay. Every single item for sale has information on the seller, that typically looks like this:

d1taylor (305 blue star )
me

This gives you a lot of ways to gain information about the seller, starting with the number of feedback entries they’ve received: I’ve had 305 people leave feedback on me based on our transactions together. In addition, the blue star indicates that I’ve attained a certain level of experience with eBay (you can see the star chart here if you’re interested), and I also have a separate profile page I’ve created on the eBay system which you can easily access by clicking on the colorful little “me” graphic.

Not everyone who sells things on eBay has all of these – particularly the personalized information page – but everyone will have a feedback rating and I make it a policy to never buy from anyone with a feedback rating of less than 50. Some folk are just starting out and depending on the value of the item, I might occasionally make an exception, but generally that’s my limit.

Just as importantly, you should always click on their feedback rating so you can see what percentage of the feedback isn’t positive. For me, it’s 100% positive, I’m glad to say, but if I see a seller who has a feedback rating of anything less than 100%, I want to skim through the negatives to see what happened.

Conveniently, eBay also has a very easy-to-read summary table of positive, neutral, and negative feedback received within the past month, past 6 months, and past 12 months. If someone has a bad week, but has then closed on the last 80 transactions without a negative, I’m willing to give ’em a chance. If four of their last ten transactions are negative, however, I’m outta there!

There’s quite a bit more to learning how to work with eBay, as you might expect, and I even wrote a book about it — The eAuction Insider — but this is a good starting point. If you have other auction-related questions, including how to do research to set optimal pricing, please don’t hesitate to Ask Dave Taylor!.

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

4 comments on “What’s the best way to figure out if an eBay seller is legit?”

  1. Steve Smyther says:
    March 17, 2007 at 5:14 am

    Hi all,
    I am here to give my 2 cents.
    Yes. I totally agree that you shouldn’t be doing business with people with less number of feedbacks. It has been my rule for some time for my online eBay transactions.
    However, I realized that sometimes trading with people with fewer feedbacks will get much cheaper price than usual. Therefore, I have changed my tactic into checking the percentage of feedback, reading each feedback carefully, and how long the registration has been.
    In this way, I can eliminate people with bad reputation while seizing bargains from honest sellers.
    I have used this tactic for a while and I have no problem with it.
    Hope this will be helpful to people.

    Reply
  2. online shopping says:
    November 22, 2005 at 9:00 am

    I use and recommend ebay but the info given here is perfect advice.So far my rating is about 13 and I have always recieved my goods by mail with no major delays..but always check the feedback ratings from other ebayers that have purchased from the same seller you are planing to deal with.
    goodluck with your online shopping..
    ps ..online shopping is good for the environment.
    no fossil fuels burned to go to real shops…

    Reply
  3. Lockergnome's Web Developers says:
    December 7, 2004 at 5:30 am

    What’s The Best Way To Figure Out If An eBay Seller Is Legit?

    A friend of mine who is just getting involved with the fun and crazy world of online auctions just recently found something she wanted to bid on at eBay. That’s good, but she decided not to bid because she’s heard…

    Reply
  4. Lockergnome's Windows Fanatics says:
    December 7, 2004 at 4:55 am

    What’s The Best Way To Figure Out If An eBay Seller Is Legit?

    A friend of mine who is just getting involved with the fun and crazy world of online auctions just recently found something she wanted to bid on at eBay. That’s good, but she decided not to bid because she’s heard…

    Reply

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