buying on ebay from someone with 0 feedback?

[JHNguyen]

Hey,
Thought I'd ask here since I'm sure some of you have experiance with this. I just won something today but didn't realize that the person had 0 feedback. The item isn't really overpriced or underpriced or anything, but it's a decent deal. I was curious, what would you guys do in this situation? It's $60 so I wouldn't be losing a whole lot of money if I did get ripped.

What do you guys think? I'd be paying with paypal, and from what I've read, everything is pretty safe with paypal? Any suggestions? Maybe ask the seller some questions? (but I'm not sure what?)

 

[ucfgrad93]

While I try to be positive and think, gee, you have to start somewhere, I'd be cautious and make sure that you keep copies of any emails that you and the seller exchange. Like you said, its only $60 so if it is a scam at least you aren't out too much money.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

 

[nhcowboy1]

I've done a lot of buying on eBay (too much ) and I've had plenty of great experiences with "0" feedback sellers. My experience has usually been that they have only the one item to sell, they're new to eBay, and want to go out of their way to do things right. But, clearly, that won't always be the case . . .

So, if I were you, I'd do two things:

(1) Look at what else they're selling. If they have lots of seemingly identical or higher priced merchandise for sale all at once, I'd be more suspicious.

(2) Send them an email!!! Ask a question - any question - that should elicit an answer of more than one word. (Even if the only question you can think of is a stupid one that's already answered in the listing, ask it anyway!) And then wait and see what you get. If you get an intelligent, coherent, polite response, then go ahead and bid. You're probably going to do fine. If you get no answer, or an answer that appears to have been written by someone who can't speak English, then stay away!

Scam artists will often copy the text of their listing from another eBay listing - so it will have perfect English. If the email you receive back from the seller isn't up to the same standards, that's a virtual guarantee that you're dealing with a scam artist from a third world country (often, but not always, Nigeria).

Make sure to send your email well in advance of the auction end date - you want to give an honest seller a chance to respond.

Good luck!

 

[hotsauce]

Wirelessly posted (Apple Communication Device: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

Most scams are done with stolen accounts with a cosiderable # of feedback. The only thing I'm cautious of with ebay newbies is irresponsibility. They have less pressure to right a wrong if a problem were to arise.

 

[Abstract]

My first sale ever on eBay was a 3 year old, 12" 1GHz PowerBook for around $750. I only had 2 eBay transactions before that.


Someone took a risk and got what they wanted.

 

[mperkins37]

I agree to these statements:
Pay with pay pal, Keep all emails, Trust until proven not trustworthy, report any problems to ebay & paypal immediately.
Personal experience recently:
I had a guy send me a bogus Tiger install for 60.00 & it wouldn't boot.
Looked closer & it was a printable DVD with the print stopping before the center ring on the disc.
I reported it to ebay when I found out, Also reported it to PayPal and was reimbursed immediately. The guy said that he bought a bunch of macs that he was keeping, and they didn't come with the discs, so he just "made a couple"
he had sold over thirty of them at that point, and had 100% posative feedback, cause everybody got the discs gave feedback before finding out they were bunk!
Anyway I e-mailed him back telling him he was full of it & that he intended to deceive, by Printing the Tiger logo onto the installer discs. BTW I also contacted Apple Corporate & Sent them all the info, Screenshots of the emails, his ebay site, (Which had 5 more up for sale), a scan of by pirate disc, the envelope that he sent.
Apple gave me a Apple store credit for being a good consumer & pointing the sleazeball out.

Positive deal recently, Bought my sig mac from Ultrahighendcomputers on ebay for 5100.00, Came with 667 mhz ram & missing the 2nd Optical drive & airport card. He made everything right within 2 weeks.
I gave him positive feedback.
Just need to find 2 more Seagate 1TB drives & I am done for this year.
I just ordered Master Suite CS3 (900.00) Full Install, Not educational, should be here any day now, & Apple Cinema 30" 1275 including shipping (on the way) I love tax Rebates.