Sunday, December 04, 2011

My latest experience with ebay.

I had an iPad I bought used about a year ago, I paid $360 or $380 for it from someone locally that was replacing it with an iPad II. I had decided to check Craigslist the day Apple put iPad II on the market, and sure enough there were many there. I used it for a while, then let my wife use it after I bought a Samsung Tab 10.1.

Now, my wife and I handle our finances unconventionally. We keep our finances separate and split our expenditures. So, she wasn't surprised when I asked her for some money if she wanted to keep the iPad. She didn't think it was worth the $350 I was asking, so I put it out on Craigslist. Apparently nobody locally thought it was worthwhile enough to pursue with anything more than emails asking if I still had it, because that was all I got. There was one person that did actually come to the house to look at it, but he left empty handed after I turned down his lowball offer of $315.

So, I decided to go to ebay. I've used them before, but it has been years. I put it up for $350, and there was no activity until the last day besides a few 'watchers'. At the end there was a flurry of bids, and it ended at $395. I was surprised, but it turns out the extra $45 came in handy after Paypal took their fee of $12.14, and ebay's fee turned out to be a total of $37.19. In the end I got about what I wanted for the machine, but those fees are killer, more so than I remember.

I found this article from way back in 2008, long after my last transaction on the website before the latest....

The fee came out to be close to 10%, and now with that in mind the dude making the lowball offer probably had that in mind. I've heard about the lowballing that goes on on Craigslist, and I'm sure it's probably a given that savvy sellers will post at 10% above what they what to take this into account. I don't know that I would have had many serious responses had I asked for $385. I certainly wouldn't pay that much.

Still waiting for my positive feedback on ebay before I consider the transaction final, even though the money is already in my bank account. Still apprehensive about the whole thing, waiting for an email that the tablet is DOA, but the buyer had very good feedback.

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