After following a thread about weather it is good or not to buy on E-bay I thought it would be neat to start a poll.

You need another category:

E-bay is OK never had problems - But you need to do your homework

What other category?

I've said all I care to say on the subject. I think I made it clear how I feel about it.

I've done business on RCU, though, and have had good experiences with that. I trust RCU way more than I would ever consider trusting that other place.

E-bay is OK never had problems - But you need to do your homework

hi


like minn said you need another category e-bay is good BUT you need to do your home work and talk to people who have bought from the person and check there feedback and so on.


i buy and sell on e-bay and i have 100% positive feedback, i make sure they get what i post and that it is well packaged and sent out to them right away.



bassman

I have noticed that since RCU came on the scene, I have not purchased my RC equipemt through E-bay. If I need something in a pinch and I cant find it on RCU. I will then buy retail. Only Time I've used E-bay is if its has buy it now or if not I bid a very low price, and usually dont win the e-bay auction. On the e-bay auctions Im either snipped at the end or vary rarly win the item. Some times I will find on e-bay a seller will try and sell something for a like new price and its in like new condition.
I have never been ripped off on RCU by a seller, and I've been ripped off more than once on E-bay (that is where the seller never ships) I was only ripped off on RCU when I sold a TX to someone and they claimed they never received the TX (they claimed they got the shipping box and some of its contience but no TX) and I had to refund the money to the buyer through Pay Pal.
All in all I feel RCU to be the safest on line place to buy my RC equipment. I think that her on RCU it's more of a one on one transaction, where I've seen on E-bay they have the shadow bidders I call them (people who jack up the bid, just so the seller gets his money out of the item sold. sometimes its crap when you get it and sometimes its in like new condition.
Well thats my thoughts on E-bay buying as compaired to buying on RCU. Hope this helps
NEDYOB

Ebay is not one store, ebay is an online place where people can sell their stuff.
People who sell on ebay can be merchants or regular people who are trying to sell something they don’t need anymore.

When you are buying on ebay you are buying from a person who opened a small online store, ebay just gave him an opportunity to do so and you are dealing with that person only.

Either way from my experience on ebay:
• Buying from a big merchant or private person check the return policy.
• Doesn’t cost to ask a question, no answer? Here is your answer.
• Check the sellers feedback and rating.
• For me 90% of transactions there were successful.
• If its too good to be true it probably is…..
• Ebay is not cheap anymore.
• There are a lot of things on ebay, schemes as well.

Best of luck
Alex

There's already a thread like this.

[link]http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_8611453/tm.htm[/link]

Very well put Alex...

I think another catagory of: Ebay is O.K.; but, I have also had some problems!

My feelings are this would be a realistic catagory most would agree with. I did not see anything offered that I could agree with, so I did not vote.

I'm also going to change my tack on this. I'm going to agree with Goirish, if your going to do a lot of buying and selling on Ebay, you should probably use Pay-Pal as it does offer protection. Pay-Pal is almost required now, to do transactions there.

For myself, I don't want to set-up another account at my bank, to limit Pay-Pal's access to my money! I have stopped selling on Ebay, because of their insistance on the use of Pay-Pal and do not buy anything there without doing due diligance! I still can imagine I will get ripped off again at some point! However, simply put, this seems safer to me then having a Pay-Pal account! Many of us older folks just don't want other people having access to our hard earned money!

This begs the question, having never bought or sold anything on R/CU, is Pay Pal required here?

yes we know that thread is where the idea came from to find out what people think of it,

How about.
"I buy and sell on ebay but it costs me about 25% to sell there and I think it is excessive but there are few other sites besides RCU. "

I have bought and sold hundreds of items on ebay but now I hate doing it because they charge so much.
Listing fees Plus final value fees Plus paypal fees = a lot of my hard earned money.
And I maintain 100% positive feedback. But it only takes one or two negatives to blow my percentage out of the water and cost me a bunch more money so it is much easier to take advantage of a small seller who is worried about his feedback while a big seller can take a few hits and his volume will make up for it. And now that all buyers are perfect what protection does a small seller have? I can block a bidder with negatives but they won't have negatives unless they sold something? The customer is always right even when they are wrong because they didn't read the item description?

Sorry, sore subject. [&o]

No matter how you spin it, there is risk involved.

The only time I dislike the fees is when I do not sale an item that has a reserve.

You just have to look at it as one of several options. If there is an easy cheap way other than Ebay to reach the audience you want and get the price you want, then use that. I sell a lot of rare "Adirondack Red Spruce" wood used to make acoustic guitar tops ebay. When I looked at the cost of advertising in publications and internet sites to reach my audience Ebay was clearly, and by a large margin, the cheapest and easiest method. One guitar building forum wanted $800/six months for the lowest level of advertising. I spent some time on the site and I didn't see more than 100 or so people posting.

On top of that, a lot of people that see the ebay auctions where I mainly auction good, but not great wood, visit my retail website and order the high end stuff directly. As far as paypal, I used to hate paying for that service, but once I really started selling a lot of stuff on ebay I wouldn't want to do without it. No more waiting for two weeks to get a check, then waiting for it to clear, trying to keep 20 boxes of stuff organized, making 4 trips to the post office a week. Nope. Now I end my auctions on Sunday evening, say I expect payment by Tuesday morning and make one trip the post office.

I collect and build antique OOP scale kits. Therefore I shop Ebay. No problems, ever.

But, I can't imagine why anyone would use Ebay if they aren't into OOP kits.

I have bought and sold everything from Planes, RVs motorcycles, well just about everything on Ebay, never any problems. You also have to pay close attention to the shipping cost. A lot of sellers charge way too much for shipping. E-bay is not always cheaper. There are a lot of vendors, dealers, wholesalers and retailers that use it too.

I'm a pro ebayer now,lol. I buy and sell RC stuff on there all the time. I will say I'm getting sick of the fees. It costs almost 4 bucks now to list my engine stands in 2 catagories,then whatever % ebay takes on top of that depending on the sale amount. Then to top that off if your a seller like me.....paypal steals another couple bucks from me for the $$$ transaction [:@]. This makes it rough,but I've never really had a problem and still have 100% feedback. One of you guys mentions the high shipping costs.....many sellers to this not to attept to rip you off...but rather rip ebay off by making the sale cost lower,thus ebay takes a smaller sale % and the seller makes more money. Buyers usually dont see it that way though. I've also sold many things here on RCU,but you dont get near the views as you do on ebay,thus it takes longer to sell stuff,but its free! Ebay is great for hard to find stuff though,and you usually do get it cheaper then you will anywhere else,particularly when someone doesnt put together a nice add or word it right. I've picked some good stuff other people were afraid to take a chance on and got great deals.

I love RCU and thank them VERY much for their free adds you can have....but RCU's adds problem is that its search features dont really work well and the adds get dominated by guys trying to sell NEW stuff and very expensive stuff. There are "filters" to use,but they dont work very well. I would love to see a used "garage sale" kinda forum were guys could just say "hey,I've got this for sale if anyone's interested",but that is hard to do to with all the business guys that would try to take advantage of it. Its sucks that we cant talk about buying and selling on these forums but RCU does that for a reason and you cant blame them. Alot of us have stuff we'd be glad to get rid of,but dont feel like all the hastle of making an add and all that.

You've got to remember, you are buying from and selling to other individuals. Ebay and RCU are justs forums that allow you to do that easily. Ebay has been around for years, and it's the first online "market place" that most people will go to buy used stuff from other individuals (or find low prices on new stuff). RCU has a much more focused & limited set of buyers and sellers, which has advantages and disadvantages. I believe Ebay has a pretty good safeguards and rating systems in place to protect both buyers and sellers.