Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Adventures In Ebay

So I have been going to and fro about taking the next generation console plunge. Money is always and issue so I thought the best way would be to put up my PS3 for sale on eBay because I don't have space for both with only one monitor - below is all the fun stuff that happened.



eBay is pretty much the only viable way I think for getting rid of your PS3. It is so late in the game that I doubt Game or other video game store would want it and heading to a pawn shop would most likely get me £30 at most. I figured that most likely in a free bid situation I should get more than that so if I add postage I would have been fine.

Obviously doing the eBay thing does require some preparation time taking nice pictures of what you are trying to sell. Having a PayPal account to deal with payments is pretty much a requirement. A good step is searching for what you intend to sell and pick out the good stuff that makes the listing appeal to you and adding it to your own.

I think to set my one up I spent 45 minutes before making the listing live. Oh pay attention to what eBay suggests you might as well use their stats but of course be aware that if it is low you might take a bath finance wise. It can be a little stressful sometimes.

I set my PS3 for £40 with a few games which I could live with along with the postage that I had already got a quote for. I used myHermes it allows for collection from your home and has decent prices but do your own research.

FEES, FEES EVERYWHERE

The problem with doing the eBay thing is the fees and not just in the obvious ways, eBay charges a monthly fee based on your sales for that month and insists you give its direct debit access. Now that might not be a deal breaker for you but I've never been a big fan of that also not a fan of the way this stuff doesn't kick in until your second or third sale or bunch of sales.

Also another fun thing that happens after a few sales is Paypal start holding onto your money for up to 21 days. The first time I called them up to ask why they said bring my status to Above Standard then they changed that. For now the rules seem to be add tracking for your package on Paypal and they will release it three days after delivery is confirmed. Now there is a problem there are only three postal services that are integrated into Paypal so the rest (like myHermes) won't confirm delivery through Paypal so you have to call them up and get them to check it through the site. Yeah makes no sense to me either.

So if you want to sell things for a reasonable price not the pocket change that cash convertor style places offer go to eBay just be aware that it can be a fair bit of work.