[LargeFormat] Request for opinion

[Clive Warren]

At 10:04 am +0800 1/2/03, rstein wrote:
>Dear Friends,
>
>      I need some advice. You may wish to give it discretely via direct email
>or openly on this list. The request is genuine.
snip
>
>      The reason I ask is family experience using the eBay here in
>Australia. My daughter sold off a bunch of old clothing on it and I was able
snip

Dear Uncle Dick,

The whole process of buying on EBay is a risk - EBay have made 
transactions as safe as possible but there are limits.

The good, the bad and the ugly...... Generally my experience with 
EBay transactions is that they usually work out ok on average. I have 
had some experience with ex Eastern block countries but it is 
limited. The transaction went well. On the other hand I have had 
transactions in the US where the item arriving here in the UK was 
struggling to match the EBay description and a transaction in the UK 
where I was totally burned!

Overall, the US transactions have been the best - I have had good and 
bad experiences on ebay.de so the German connection is ok but as with 
all EBay transactions, caveat emptor.

When dealing with a seller who has a different mother tongue to your 
own and one that you cannot speak fluently, the communication 
difficulties should not be underestimated.

The feedback mechanisms on EBay are useful in assessing sellers, but 
most people do not give negative feedback when it is deserved simply 
because they want to keep their own feedback ratings "clean". The 
usual response from a seller to whom you give negative feedback is to 
retaliate by giving the buyer a spurious negative feedback. So to be 
able to warn other people about a seller you usually end up suffering 
a little yourself!

So the advice I would give is to bid only as much as you are prepared 
to lose should it all go pear shaped!

Cheers,
        Clive



-- 
All the best,

               Clive     http://www.f32.net