Ebay again

Throw them away. My experience of trying to *give* old PCs away when I was an IT manager in the City, or give stuff away on Freegle, or, as a last resort, sell stuff on eBay, leads me to believe it simply isn't worth the effort of dealing with the general public with old or broken stuff. No-one wants it, and even if they do, they're a PITA.

Damaged stuff is the last thing you'd want to try selling on eBay.

Even if you put

DAMAGED !!! SOLD AS SEEN !! NEEDS ATTENTION !! FOR SPARES ONLY !!

in large bold read letters across the top of listing and gain at the bottom around 80% of successful bidders will claim not to have noticed this and will be demanding their money back.

Of the other 20%, 15% will claim it's a lot more damaged than the listing suggests and will demand a discount; while the winning bids from the other 5% of non trouble makers will be so low as to not even cover the listing fee.

But apart from that, no problems at all.

michael adams

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I tend to find you will do much better if you sell parts rather than broken whole computers. So if you have have a rare working screen, take it out, and list it on its own. If you can add some information about what laptop it came from (and possibly others it will fit) all to the good.

(I used to see this at real computer auctions when I went to some years ago - people would bid on a lot that was say a s/h floppy disk drive, but then not bid on a old low spec PC, even though among other things it had a pair of s/h disk drives in it)

What an odd requirment. I don't use a credit card for my Paypal account.

Which presumably means PP have Direct Debit access to your bank account?

Wow.

John, yes, that's probably right, but at the moment I just don't have the time to dismantle laptops. Selling as complete faulty machines has been OK in the past. They don't make much, but I was usually left with a feeling that someone had been able to get something useful out of it and appreciated what they had got. I only remember one whinge from ages ago and that was for a working complete laptop. The buyer was obviously a newbie, but responded after a few basic teaching messages from me.

Regarding ebay in general, it will be a shame if it dies. I have tons of stuff I no longer need and it was a way of getting a large audience for something unusual.

The doc has banned me from lifting at the moment, but it should be the ideal place to advertise my Morris Commander gearbox. I would start it at 99p or less. It could make someone's day if they were looking for spares for their boat. I put the "make one from 2 Enfield diesels that might have gone with it" on freecycle and they went OK, but the gearbox is worthy of a bigger audience.

Yes. Just like many others like utility bills and so on. Direct debit has pretty decent protection against false use. It has to have - otherwise no-one would allow it.

several auction sites have tried, none have succeeded. Ebay has so much traffic that it makes no sense to list things on the others. Ebay pretty much has the monopoly. And yes, it's a pita.

NT

But, if I understand correctly, Ebay in Europe is a bank registered in Luxemburg, whereas Ebay in the USA is not legally a bank but in practice acts more like one than does the European arm.

I hate Direct Debits because of early experiences, but they seem to be forced on us by more and more, often dodgy, organisations.

Any of my Paypal costs are covered by my Paypal account.

Isn't this just another case where the law and regulation are way behind the times and urgently need to catch up.

Don't think there's any danger of Ebay dying.

With the millions of transactions it would be impossible not to have problems with some. Ebay can hardly vet fully everyone who uses it.

I didn't know that, and initially found it difficult to believe but:

is registered in Switzerland. Recently I thought the UK eBay market place is now registered in the UK and we pay UK VAT on fees, even where the UK business is registered. In short I have no idea if this registration is up to date.

Which has a UK address and is a bank. I find PayPal responsive.

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

Last week on Radio 4's financial programme, they talked to an ex-employee of MySpace about the reasons for its catastrophic collapse. Partly Rupert Murdoch trying to push the profits too hard and not listening to the users. In the same programme there was mention of ebay beginning a decline. Evan Davis queried this, but it was not pursued.

If there are millions of transactions, they are receiving fees from millions of sellers. The supposed buyers give addresses like #####, ####, ## or !!!!!, !!!!!!!!!, !!! !!!. Even I could write a small program to flag this sort of thing up and put the buyer on hold until it was corrected and fully checked out.

For heavens sake - just put the stuff into several Freecycle groups in various areas and let people come and collect it.

And when using it to move money instead of paying for something, there is no paypal fee involved if it is from a bank account, but there is if a credit card is used instead.

That can be just as much a PITA with timewasters as Ebay.

IME, much, much worse. I've given up with Freegle and just throw stuff away now.

I usually email anyone who claims anything. Asking for a definite time window and day for collection before giving them the address. Timewasters don't like wasting their time replying, I've found. Those who do take the bother to write a decent purpose email are generally keen on the item.

BTDT. They still don't turn up.

I've just Freegled a greenhouse. I went to a lot of trouble to dismantle it without damage and took photos so it could be easily reassembled.

- The first responder only wanted some bits of it for spares, but when I pointed out it was an "all or nothing" deal (what am I going to do with half a greenhouse?) stopped responding to emails.

- The second responder made an appointment, failed to turn up and stopped responding to emails.

- The third responder restored my faith in humanity by turning up at the appointed hour (and texted me to say he was on his way), took the 'house and sent me a "Thank you" card!

Previously, I Freegled a freezer with similar responses. One bloke said he'd have it, didn't respond to emails asking for a date/time, so I gave it to someone else, whereupon the original bloke popped up and was abusive when I said I'd given it to someone else.

I can't be having with this bollocks. It all goes in a skip, now.

In message , Huge writes

But what do you do with something that won't fit in a skip? I'm about to try to drag a GP14 dinghy out of our front "hedge". It's on a trailer and has a long mast. The boat has a rotten bottom, the trailer has flat tyres, but its no worse than when we took it on in the '70's and it then gave us over 10 years of sailing on sea and lakes before we built the bigger boat.

This led to one son's passion for sailing and gave the others plenty to talk about at job interviews etc.

Maybe I'm a romantic very occasional Freecycler, but one has to dream there might be someone else as mad out there.

PS I've also got an aversion to skips, particularly the unlit ones that have ruined so many lives on roads around here.