Protecting yourself when Buying and Selling Online

When buying and selling online people need to be aware of some of the pitfalls. Auction sites are great to buy and sell on but sometimes the transactions don’t always go smoothly and there are some things that you need to bear in mind before buying.

First of all, if you are buying check their feedback. This may seem obvious but a lot of people do just bid and then only look at feedback later when something goes wrong with the transaction. I’ve done this myself several times before when I first started buying on auction sites. When I checked their feedback afterwards, it was less than good. If I had checked the feedback before bidding, I wouldn’t have had a problem.

Many people still list without a picture so you need to exercise at least a degree of caution before bidding on items like this. You have no way of telling what the condition of the item is without a picture and this can lead to unhappy buyers. Also, items without a picture often do not sell as well without a photograph so can often lead to unhappy sellers as well.

If you’re a seller, the payment system used most often on auction sites is PayPal. In case of an issue arising over an item that you send, you need to fulfil a set of criteria set out by PayPal in order to be protected by payment protection. This includes sending the item within seven days of payment, sending it to the confirmed address registered with PayPal, and getting a signature for the parcel as proof of postage won’t be accepted as proof of delivery.

Getting a signature for an item that people have brought from you online is also another issue you may be faced with. It does not make sense to send low value items via recorded delivery, at least not in my opinion as people will not pay the extra postage. In this case sellers in the UK should obtain a Certificate of Postage, This insures your item up to a certain value so if you are not covered by PayPal, you should be covered the certificate.