eBay expert: How to make online purchases like the pros
DISCOVER HOW TO BEST GET WHAT YOU NEED FROM THE BIGGEST OPEN ONLINE MARKETPLACE WITH OUR HANDS-ON GUIDE TO BUYING TECH ON EBAY.
WE TALK ABOUT eBay a lot as one of the better marketplaces to buy tech (as well as many other goods) in Australia. As a go to, it offers a huge range of items and often at very competitive prices. While auctions still exist, the vast majority of items are Buy It Now, and many include free shipping. But despite this, eBay can be a complex place, so to help you become an eBay master, we’ve put together a guide. While it’s possible to sell on eBay, it’s not really worth it unless you have large volume or a rare item. As always, know your rights consumer rights ( www.accc.gov.au). Items have to be fit for the intended purchase and as advertised. Products must last a ‘reasonable’ time frame (as per consumer rights), not just a short warranty period as dictated by the company.
SEARCH LIKE A PRO
Finding a common item on eBay is easy, finding the best price can be harder — as can snaring a rarer item before someone else snaps it up. In recent times, eBay has put a lot of work into the interface, and aside from a few flaws, it’s pretty good. Let’s say I search for a Google Pixel XL smartphone — it includes all search words, in any order. The results are sorted by eBay’s ‘Best match’ preference — but we can do better. Down the left there are loads of advanced options — some key ones are Buy It Now, new, used, price ranges, location (more on that later) and things like free shipping. One other important option is the ability to search by sold listings to compare prices that items sold at through auctions. When you search, eBay will pick a category for you, but some items end across multiple categories, so up on the top right, you can select all categories or narrow it down more. For further advanced options (such as excluding certain words from your search), click the Advanced link next to the main search button.
SEARCH OPERATORS
A more in-depth way to narrow down the results is to use search operators. Adding quotation marks — “Pixel XL” — searches for that exact wording. Parentheses — Pixel XL (Blue,silver) — work as an OR operator, so returns results that have one word or the other, not both. The minus sign — Pixel XL -Blue — works as a NOT operator, excluding the word from the searches. eBay also has a handy page that goes over these rules, and has some other advanced search tips ( goo.gl/cZ9t3O).
FIND THE BEST PRICE
Ordering by ‘Price + Postage’ works well (or just price if looking for local pickup options), except for one very annoying issue. eBay sellers can include multiple items under one listing with a price range. Searching by price only targets the cheapest one, so the item you want can be much more expensive. The only solution is tedious manual comparison, as the results can’t be excluded. This tends to be more of an issue with overseas sellers, though, and lower-value items such as USB cables.
VIEW
After a search, in the top right next to the Sort column is the View tab. Click it, then select customise for a handy, little known menu. We prefer list view, medium thumbnails, 200 items per page and the rest as defaults. Another handy option is the ability to search by sellers that accept PayPal.
BUYING LOCAL VS OVERSEAS
Depending on the item, buying from overseas can be a whole lot cheaper, but comes with a bunch of caveats. For large tech items such as phones or laptops, buying locally makes warranty and returns easier, and helps ensure you are getting the product suited to our networks and power. Quality can be an issue with small items such as USB cables, and more and more local sellers are reducing prices to match overseas ones. Buying in Australia is generally a good way to get items faster, but airmail from overseas can often be quite quick. A lot of very cheap items out of China ship by sea, though, and can take weeks to arrive. Watch out for sellers claiming to be in Darwin NT, which can be very slow, or actually just ship from China.
PAYMENTS
While other methods are possible, for eBay, PayPal is generally the easiest. Sure, PayPal has loads of downsides, but almost all of them are for the seller, not the buyer. You don’t pay any extra, though the seller will factor the fees into the price. eBay sellers must offer PayPal or Credit Card payments for most items but not large purchases such as cars or real-estate. PayPal includes built-in protections (more on that in the box above) but you can also have your PayPal account charge your credit card, giving extra protection.
SNIPING
For buying an auctioned item, it’s always worth sniping. Buyers tend to get emotional and keep upping their bid towards the end of the auction. Either bid in the last 10 seconds, or better yet, use a sniping service. Our favourite is Gixen ( www.gixen.com), which is free, or paid if you want to have a backup mirror to the snipe.