The Best Kept Seller Secret on okay...Exposedokay
can be a haven for great buys and hard to find items, which is why it
has begee a multi-billion dollar corporation and global market leader.
As with any marketplace, you will always find a certain element that
practices underhanded, very gemon ripoff tactics. This guide
will help you steer clear of those sellers looking to rip you off on,
among other things, shipping and handling fees. The more people that
get educated to these okay scams, the better chance okay has of
maintaining a reputation of being the very best place to buy or sell
just about anything you can put a price tag on - and to my mind, that
is well worth preserving.
Low Starting BidA very gemon practice is for a scam-seller to
offer an item at a ridiculously low price. Example? I would love to be
able to link to an okay auction that shows this taking place (okay
doesn't allow these guides to link to specific auctions), but the one I
am looking right now has an MP3 player - new, factory sealed for
$23.00 - Buy It Now! This particular MP3 Player retails for
about $45.00. The prospective buyer sees this price, and in a flash (in
hopes of buying it up before anyone else does), clicks on the Buy It
Now Button - then 'buyers remorse' sets in. During the PayPal Checkout
Process they realize that the seller has assessed a $37.00 Shipping and
Handling fee. That's right, $37.00 for "Priority Mail" shipment. Their
actual cost? $4.60. You have just been scammed. This happens a lot. A
lot more than you might think - to a greater or lesser degree. They
realize this $37.00 fee is not 'seen' by okay, and doesn't get included
in the final value fees."See Item Description"Some
sellers when creating an auction will employ tactics such as setting
their shipping and handling notices to"See Description"' and list
their shipping as "flat rate". This requires the buyer to 'dig' a bit
for the answer to the question, "how much does it cost to ship?". The
seller will then bury the $50.00 shipping fee on a $25 cell phone at
the bottom of the page, and may even decrease the font size on that
portion of the auction. Many buyers, myself included, sometimes get
excited at seeing a low price on the item they want, and just bid in
haste - let's face it, bidding on an auction, especially towards the
end, can be a very emotionally charged experience. Sometimes people let
their emotions get the best of them, and do not read the entire
auction. Some sellers know this, and use it to their advantage. READ EVERY WORD in an auction listing...every-last-word. If you take nothing more away from this guide, let it be those three words - read every word. The extra time could save you a bundle.
Calculated Shipping Costs
Another very popular scam or ripoff is the handling portion of the
"calculated shipping cost" option. This requires the prospective buyer
to enter in their Zip code in order to get exact shipping cost prior to
bidding. Here's the problem:
A seller can add ANY amount to the standard
shipping charges when creating the auction. That's right, when the
seller is creating the auction, they can select the "Calculated
Shipping" option for their auction, and in so doing, they can then add
to the "Handling" portion of that setup, any figure they want as a
'surcharge' for their "handling" of the item. Many people don't want to
trouble themselvesby clicking on the calculated shipping button prior
to bidding and typing in their zip code to actually find out how much
the package is going to cost them to ship, or they don't notice it -
some sellers know this, and exploit it...to their benefit.The
first time (and the last time) I got suckered into this was when I won
an auction for a vintage baseball trading card of Mickey Mantle - it of
course was a 'calculated shipping' auction. The card cost me about
$75.00 - guess how much it cost me to get it shipped to me? $17.00.
No insurance, just came in a Priority Mail box that weighed no more
than 5 ounces. Actual cost? $3.85 at that time..now it would have cost
$4.60. Ripoff, plain and simple. I never clicked on the calculated
shipping button, but if I had, I would have seen $17.00 S
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