The eBay Buyers FAQ.

The eBay Buyers FAQ.

Has something gone very wrong and you don’t know what to do?

Below are a few questions buyers ask on a regular basis.

1. Does eBay have a Customer Service Department I Can Phone?

eBay are notoriously hard to contact, should you ever need to; then it sometimes seems like they expect the site to run itself. The best way to get customer support would be to use online help, and to do this you need to use this url address: http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_us/_base/index.html. Or you could try their "live help" web chat too and you can find it here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/n-livehelp.html.

Only eBay Power Sellers (sellers with a very high feedback rating) get to phone customer service. However, you might be able to go about it in a different way, for instance, you could type in; ’eBay (add your country) phone number’; into a search engine and see what you can find that way. More than likely, you will only get an answering machine prompting you to leave a voice message for someone to respond back to you later.

This can be frustrating, but if you look at it from eBay’s point of view; they would get thousands of rhetorical phone calls, and that is probably why getting eBay assistance by phone is challenging.

2. eBay Sent Me an Email Saying They’re Going to Close My Account, What Should I Do?

If this happens to you, then you must first look to see if the email is asking for your password. If that happens, then it’s a scam, an attempt to frighten you, make you give up your details and then steal your account. eBay will never ask for your password or any other account details by email. Their policy is that you should ONLY enter your password on pages that begin with: http://signin.ebay.com/. eBay offers an extensive amount of information on all their policies, such as, Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions and Security. You can read more here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/toolbar/useragreement.html

However, on September 23, 2008 eBay discontinued the ’Account Guard’ functionality that was once a toolbar option. 3. How Does eBay Auctions Make Money?

It is absolutely free for buyers! Sellers, though, pay all sorts of fees: a listing fee for each item they list, a final value fee (a percentage of what the item sold for). Of course, there are additional services offered, but they too have a fee associated with them; for example: highlighting the auction items or putting it in bold; using extra pictures or putting your item on the front page, etc. You can find a detailed listing of these fees at: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html.

It’s obviously worth it to the sellers, though, or they wouldn’t continue to use eBay. What makes eBay work so well for so many, is that both eBay and the seller have to ensure the profit margin is not too outlandish, because if prices begin to get ridiculous the buyers will not want to use the system.

4. Is eBay a safe way to market and purchase product?

eBay has a Trust & Safety (SafeHarbor) Answer Center, where members can ask questions about Trust & Safety initiatives and use the member-to-member question & answer boards. Once on the ’Safe Harbor’ page, you will find information on, hijacked accounts, online safety and how to scam proof your emails, the direct link to this is: http://answercenter.ebay.com/forum. There are many different and interesting facts you should make yourself aware of, and the information provided on the eBay ’Safe Harbor’ will no doubt answer most, if not all of your questions.