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The
eBay Buyer's FAQ |
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The eBay Buyer's FAQ.
So you have a question? Has something gone very
wrong and you don't know what to do? Well, fair enough. Here
are the questions that I hear all the time from
buyers.
Does eBay have a Customer Service Department I
Can Phone?
eBay are notoriously hard to contact, should you
ever need to - it sometimes seems like they expect the site to
run itself. You can email them, as long as you don't have your
heart set on a coherent response: go to http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_us/_base/index.html.
You might have better luck in a 'live help' webchat here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/n-livehelp.html.
Only eBay Power Sellers (sellers with a very
high feedback rating) get to phone customer service. If you
really want to try your luck, type 'ebay [your country] phone
number' into a search engine and you'll probably find
something. Unfortunately, the chances are you'll have gone to
all that trouble for the privilege of leaving an answerphone
message.
It might seem cruel, but imagine the number of
people who would call eBay every day with the silliest
questions if they gave out their phone number everywhere. Its
Wild West nature is, in a way, part of its
charm.
eBay Sent Me an Email Saying They're Going to
Close My Account. What Should I Do?
This email asks for your password, right? It's a
scam, an attempt to frighten you, make you give up your
details and then steal your account. eBay will never ask for
your password or any other account details by email. eBay say
that you should only ever enter your password on pages that
whose addresses start with http://signin.ebay.com/.
They even offer a special 'Account Guard' as part of their
toolbar, which lets you check that you're not giving your
password to a dodgy fake site. You can read more here: http://pages.ebay.com/toolbar/accountguard_1.html.
It Seems Too Good to be True. How Does eBay Make
Money?
For you, the buyer, eBay is free. Sellers,
though, pay all sorts of fees: a listing fee for each item
they list, a final value fee (a percentage of what the item
sold for). They can they pay optional fees for extra services,
including Buy it Now, extra pictures, reserve prices,
highlighting the auction, putting it in bold, listing it first
in search results or even putting it on the front page. You
can see a full list of fees at http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html.
It's obviously worth it to the sellers, though,
or they wouldn't carry on using eBay. The system is quite
efficient, and basically forces both eBay and the sellers to
keep their profit margins as low as possible - otherwise
prices will simply go too high and the buyers will stop
buying.
How Safe is eBay?
Well, as it happens, that's the subject of our
next email! All of eBay's safety services for buyers and
sellers are in one place, called 'SafeHarbor'. SafeHarbor
handles fraud prevention and investigation, helps with dispute
resolution and keeps rule-breakers in check. Read all about it
next time, and be safe.
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