

It is now completely impossible to sell a laptop on eBay - technoguyrob
http://consumerist.com/5007790/its-now-completely-impossible-to-sell-a-laptop-on-ebay
Some interesting remarks on Reddit as well:<p>http://reddit.com/info/6inwx/comments/
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dpapathanasiou
So, EBay is broken (at least when it comes to computers & electronics).

There must be a startup opportunity there.

~~~
technoguyrob
Essentially, the problem is a credentials issue. If you can distinguish
"serious" buyers from the "scammers," then you're set. I've done a little
freelancing on elance.com, and the way they handle this problem is that they
charge a small amount to make bids. Of course, this is somewhat different
since one is bidding for jobs and not items (receiving money, not giving it),
but it's still not very helpful, since I doubt anyone would pay even a nominal
fee to make bids for _buying_ items. Craiglist's solution to this problem is
to limit buyers and sellers to their respective local geographic areas, which
turns out to be pretty effective, but can oftentimes constrain market
opportunities (and of course, there's no built-in auctioning capabilities).

I remember one post on YC a while back was about generating post modernism
essays in response to spam emails to the point where a spammer could not
possibly sift through all of them in a reasonable amount of time (and the
"English" nature of the essays would make them hard to distinguish from real
responses). This would make spamming unprofitable. Perhaps this can somehow be
generalized to problems like s(c|p)ammers on eBay.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
_Essentially, the problem is a credentials issue. If you can distinguish
"serious" buyers from the "scammers," then you're set._

Maybe... but I can't help but note that anonymous cash transactions do happen
all the time successfully (albeit in person, at shops).

So perhaps credentialed id is not the answer, especially since, on the web
it's easy to go back and create a new account at any time.

 _I doubt anyone would pay even a nominal fee to make bids for buying items_

Maybe listing fees (whether paid by buyer or seller) is the wrong business
model.

Anyway, it's worth a rethink along the lines of " _can you redefine the
problem?_ "

~~~
wanorris
> Anyway, it's worth a rethink along the lines of "can you redefine the
> problem?"

What if you built an Ebay from scratch around a secure financial escrow
service?

Perhaps you could place a hold upon a credit card at the time a bid was
placed, release that hold as soon as they lose the auction, and charge the
credit card as soon as they win the auction. Don't charge a transaction fee
(or charge as small a fee as possible) -- just hold the cash in escrow until
the buyer verifies that he has received the product as agreed. If the buyer
tells you he has not received the item or that it is not as agreed, you
perform some kind of resolution. If no feedback at all is received from the
buyer in X days, you pay the seller anyway.

I don't know whether buyers and sellers would love these terms, but they
should be securable, and if Ebay is becoming inoperable, maybe they would
work.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
_If the buyer tells you he has not received the item or that it is not as
agreed, you perform some kind of resolution._

This is the hard part, especially if either party is dishonest.

~~~
wanorris
No doubt.

Ebay does a form of resolution, but I don't know if it's really good enough.
On the extreme end you could offer formal arbitration. I'm not sure what's in
between.

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martin
I sold my laptop on eBay about a year and a half ago. The winning bidder had a
100+ feedback rating, so I thought everything was fine, but then I get the
email that he wants me to ship it to Nigeria. I contacted eBay via their chat
support, and they were actually not that lame -- they agreed that obviously
one of these scumbags had pwned a legitimate account, and refunded my money.
When I relisted it, it sold without incident.

------
thingsilearned
Another data point. I just sold mine a year ago and had no problems.

I bought a laptop and 3 months later got a work laptop negating my need for
the other. Sold it on ebay at a loss of just 50 bucks from the original price.
Yet another reason to buy a mac. The resale value remains really high.

------
wensing
I've sold two Mac laptops on eBay--one 12" Powerbook G4 and the other a 13"
Macbook (white). The 12" sold within 24 hours (August 2006) for $500 (!). The
13" sold within three days for $900 (I paid $1200 and it was 1 year old,
refurbished). The 13" did come with some other goodies, like Parallels and Win
XP Pro, however.

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vaksel
Craigslist should be thanking eBay, because all the scams and fraud on it have
made all the people weary of shipping things, So local classifieds thrive.

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tx
Ha... I never used EBay in the intended way: when bying I always do searches
for local items only, and just pick things up with cash.

For selling I always use Craigslist.

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babul
eBay is a rule unto itself. They _love_ buyers and do not care much about
sellers.

I used to be a powerseller but stopped as I was fed up of people lying on
eBay, especially buyers who received goods and complained to eBay they did
not. In _many_ cases I provided the shipping tracking numbers and eBay+PayPal
could see the items were sent and recieved by the buyers but still they would
_refund_ buyers so sellers lose out.

They do this as it is easier to push around a seller (eBay tell you that _you_
have to take the _buyer_ to court but then will refuse to give you the buyers
details) than a buyer (who can simply tell their credit card company to sort
it out).

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babul
See <http://www.paypalsucks.com> for the horror stories I and many others have
suffered at eBay/PayPal.

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Tichy
Shorten more, please

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weegee
how do you sell your laptop on ebay? just list it as a single-priced auction,
set shipping to USA only, reject any bidders that don't have a paypal account,
etc. anyone who can't sell something on ebay without running into trouble like
this is an idiot.

~~~
rms
or you can do a buy it now that only counts if they actually follow through
and pay

~~~
weegee
try the "immediate payment required" in that case. it's a good feature that
I've used many times.

------
borga
welcome to human society.

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dangoldin
Haha. The article is hilarious. Definitely a good afternoon chuckle.

