Forum

Selling outside eBay
 

eBay might like to snoop around in peoples inbox so I'm a lil timid to respond when someone asks how much I would "sell the item for right now." Anyone ever got suspended/banned or did it and didnt get caught. Might be worth getting around their final value fee.

When I get messages like that I always uncheck the box that hides my email address from the buyer and them to please contact me via email.
If they contact via email we usually make the sale.
If they do not... O-Well... Next..

65,000 transactions and been threatened to get turned in VERY rarely, never got busted myself ;-) Gary

iight, next time ill go for it. funny thing just happened, ebay reinstated my account. guess ill change ips/delete cookies and start back selling on the old one.

lucky you :)

I love making sells off ebay. It saves me in Final value fees. What I do when the buyer contacts me and don't leave a email address in the question is to contact them and ask for their email address. You don't have to make deals on the first contact/message through ebay messages. Once you get their email address Then I start making the offers/deals off ebay.

I always tell them that I will send them an invoice through paypal to help speed up the process.

BooMer

You can add the following line "please contact us directly and we can list these in bulk on Ebay for you" and include your email address and phone nymber. Back in the day, we would make the descriptions ambigious so they had to call us for details-lol. We also send PayPal invoices on quotes if it is a high margin item to encourge people to save time and pay. For instance answer and invoice in one shot. remember, if you ask a person a yes or no question, you generally have a 50-50% shot, but if you respond to the quesiton with an invoiced quote, it makes it a LOT easier. For example, you have a Dutch auction of 100 items at $20 each and they say (despite a S/H incuded in the auction) "how much for 6 of these shipped to Delaware?" (if no location, I check their auctions and see itheir location) and then I respond with an invoice for 6 to DE that is cheaper than FEEbay. It works a lot more and put a note, "I saved you some posted shipping and passed the savings onto you since this is direct and thanks so much...."

I've actually sold a lot of things outside of ebay. They've contacted me, got their email and then emailed them. Yes, they used paypal to pay for the items too. ;o) I actually have buyers that keep my email and will email me all the time for items or to see if I can get them items they can't normally get in their country. Business on the side is always a pleasure.

I also put in a lot of my auctions: "If you need this item right away, please feel free to make me an offer and I can change the auction to a buy it now for you and you can get the item ASAP"....WHICH I WOULD change it to a buy it now...so yes at that time ebay would get the final fee AND the fee for changing it to a buy it now. Can you believe they actually took down a bunch of my auctions because of the wording?¿? I contacted ebay live chat and ask wtf was their problem (yes, I was rude about it) and they said they were having a problem with the words, feel free to make me an offer. I told them, "SO???? what's the problem? They make me an offer for more, I sell it as a buy it now and you guys make more $$ Do you see a problem with that?"
They quickly put my auctions back up and I've never had a problem since then. I D I O T S !!!

Thanks for the answers, kinda eased my mind a bit. Was kinda sceptical about doing it. Didn't wanna get suspended again.

But what you guys think about this. I sold an auction, it was titled "N95 Slider - New." So this guy confused it for a nokia n95, but in the auction i never said anything about nokia, i said it was a cect. It was shipped in a nokia n95 box, but there was no mention of nokia in the auction. He didnt read the auction. So, should I escalate the "not as described" dispute so paypal will make a decision. Or will paypal even take my side on this. I got an email from him where he said "I am not sure if want paypal and ebay to deal with this because its a "wrong item" ." Which kinda imply he knows he didnt read the auction?

Yeah, I always accept those ebayers wanting to do a transaction outside of ebay. And I always crack up laughing at that sentence in the email ebay sends you that says:

“Never complete a transaction outside of ebay. It is most likely fraud”

Whatever.

The buyer usually just wants the item right now or they want it for cheaper and I usually give it to them. Especially if it doesn't look like the item will sell. I think most of the time the buyer is just emailing multiple sellers to see who will give them the better price.

They still pay for the item via Paypal. I’ve been on ebay since 1999 and have NEVER gotten in trouble doing this. And, yes I too communicate with the buyer through email, instead of the ebay mail.

Do you ship all your ⊗⊗⊗⊗ n95 phones in Nokia boxes?

Quasi_Mojo......

I 2nd your original post and understand the retraction...

HWGA, I had to take a deep breath and edit.
;)

I understand.......
I want to just delete a few people also....:eek: