A few days back I posted a thread on one of my regular haunts, statueforum. Some guy on Ebay was selling $8k+ worth of statues. He had well over 1000 feedback at 100%, sounds good, right? Except that he hadn’t listed anything of worth in months, was selling the statues at hundreds under their going rates, they were all “new”, one was an item not even released, and he sold a single item 3 times over in a single day. Alright, getting iffy here.
The thread was fine for the most part, although one over-emotional drama queen started freaking out over me ruining an Ebay seller’s business and possibly their entire life by urging caution. Turns out, that Ebay seller then went on to list another $8k worth of statues and hasn’t responded to anyone in over a week now. Welp. Hopefully everyone ends up getting their money back, but that was enough motivation for me to make a handy HOW TO BUY ONLINE guide, since I’ve got about a decade of experience in buying and selling online.
Let’s go through the basics. There’s lots of legit sellers online. There’s also lots of sellers that want you to pay them a few grand so they can blow it on drugs and ship you diddly squat, maybe some rocks if you’re lucky. Your goal is to minimize the rock shipping variety, since there’s always going to be some risk from shopping online (outside of exclusively dealing with shops like Amazon).
Let’s say you’re on Ebay, what’re you looking for?
1) Solid amount of feedback. I like at least a few dozen, but it depends on the value of an item. If we’re talking a $20 bust, I don’t care if they have 5 feedback, as long as it’s good.
2) A high positive percentage in their feedback. Yeah, people are bound to run into trouble here and there so I don’t care if someone with 1000+ feedback has one or two negatives. It’s worth browsing their feedback to see why they have negatives and what they did to resolve it, or if the buyer was an asshole, which happens pretty often!
3) If you’re buying high-value items for well below going rate, check the seller’s recently sold items and whether they have feedback for them. Do they sell collectibles/other high-value items on a regular basis? If yes, it’s possible they just need some quick dough. It happens to most of us at some point. If not? Might be iffy.
4) If you’re concerned, contact the seller. Ask them some questions. No seller should refuse to answer a few questions. If you’re still not sure, asking if you could talk to them on the phone isn’t unreasonable for higher-value items. But if somebody wanted to talk to me on the phone over a $15 videogame I was selling, forget about it.
5) Pay via Paypal with your credit card. This gives you the most security. If you get scammed, you can open a complaint with Paypal and probably get your money back. If not, you’re still able to file a chargeback with your credit card, and they WILL back you up over Paypal. Filing a chargeback against Paypal can get your account closed, but you can just open up another one. Better than losing hundreds of dollars. Don’t feel bad for Paypal, they’ve screwed over plenty of users for thousands of bucks themselves (including me!)
6) If you’re buying on a forum, some of those steps don’t apply. However, most forums with buying/selling areas have a thread or subforum that contains buyer/seller feedback. Make sure to check it about the person you’re buying from. No feedback threads? Do a search on their past activity in the buying/selling forum, or do a search on their username in google to see if you find any horror stories on other forums. Fortunately, most newer forum software is starting to allow feedback in user profiles, so that should help for future forum deals.
7) This one applies to all transactions. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious. If something sets off your radar, figure out what it is, and if it’s a risk you’re willing to take. If someone has sold the same item multiple times (like a videogame), they might’ve gotten in on a sale. If someone sells three of the same statue…with the same item number when obviously, only one of each number is going to exist, well, that’s iffy.
8 ) Finally, if you’ve been waiting a while for an item, it’s not a bad idea to ask one of the statue communities if anyone else has experience with the seller. It’s entirely possible the seller, or someone that knows the seller, is on the community. Sometimes there’s reasonable explanations for these things. Remember, you have 45 days to start your Paypal complaint, do not let that deadline pass.
9) DON’T PRE-ORDER FROM EBAY. This isn’t a big deal when it’s a product with a guaranteed release date, like a videogame, and you’re preordering a few days in advance. This is not the case with statues. They’re often delayed, and you’re limited to that 45 days I’ve mentioned. I’ve seen countless times where people have a successful purchase or two from a seller and then they trust him enough to preorder and never get their money back. IT’S VERY COMMON and I have to stress this. Outside of it being a buddy you deal with all the time, never prepay months in advance, and if you do, open up that Paypal complaint within 45 days.
That’s pretty much it! You get a feel for these things. Even after doing online business for a decade now, tons and tons of transactions, I’ll admit, even I get suckered once and a while. It’s rare, but nobody that shops online on Ebay/on forums is immune. Minimizing that risk is all you can do.
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