AN ONLINE SHOPPER'S PARADISE!. Review on Ebay

I have been an active member of the ebay community since February 1999 and have a little over 950 positive feedbacks to my credit. I have bought many treasured items - mainly books and photographs from around the world. eBay helped me to satisfy some of my passion in collecting genuine autographed books of such authors as V.S. Naipaul, Paul Theroux, Gore Vidal, Neil Simon, Peter Beard, J.A. Hunter, Jim Corbett, Joy Adamson, George Adamson, Anthony Dyer, John kingsley Heath, Col. Kinloch and many others as well as signed photographs of most Hollywood stars including Sean Connery, Michael Cain, Tom Cruise, James Stewart, Stewart Granger, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx brothers and many more. I even got coins and stamps from various kingdoms that flourished in India before its independence in 1947.

Recently on the eBay, someone sold a signed Hemingway

for a considerable large amount.

Although ebay is primarily an auction site, one can purchase numerous items, from soup to nuts, at a fixed price by using the buy now option. It takes less than 5 minutes to register with ebay. You have to select a userid and a password. If you are a buyer and not going to sell anything on eBay, you do not need to provide your credit card details. But when selling, you do, as eBay has to collect the listing fee and the commission for your items and it is charged to your card on a monthly basis.

Besides the US eBay.com and the UK based one, eBay has global sites in many countries like Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany,Ireland, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan.If you are looking for a certain item with a local flavour, shop at a related site. The global sites are located at the bottom left corner of eBay.com. At any given time, there are millions of items listed on these sites for your buying pleasure, and no doubt the US site contains much more items than any others.

As a precaution, when you buy a product through ebay, certain rules must be observed to avoid disappointment. While most of the dealers are honest, there are a number of unscrupulous elements operating freely on the eBay. Read the description of the item carefully and decide if that is what you want, shop around for similar items online to compare the price, check seller's feedback and see if their customers left positive feedbacks for their products and services. Avoid a seller with unacceptable number of negative feedbacks. Check and see if the seller ship his products outside his country before you place the bid, and finally ask the seller about the shipping costs to avoid surprises. If you are not sure of the product or service, do not bid, because once you bid and win an item, you are obliged to buy it. Failing to do so may cause suspension from the site.

Most sellers accept credit cards, personal cheques, money order, cashiers' chaque and online payments like paypal and bidpay. Paypal payments are accepted by at least 80% sellers, and a transaction through paypal can be completed in seconds. Avoid those dealers who accept only cash. Again check the seller's feedback which are posted by customers, buyers and sellers alike.

If you are selling items on eBay, it is also very simple. You can even open your own online store with eBay for as little as $9.95/month with listing fee as little as 5 cents. The listing fee for non store items varies from 50 cents to $25.00 or more depends upon the price of the selling item and the options you want to add, such as bold letters, color shades, reserve option, featuring a photo gallery for the product and so forth. At the end of the

auction, both the buyer and seller gets a notification from the eBay advising the final price and contact informations. The seller must contact the buYer within 3 days of the auction ending, and payment is expected to receive with 10 days as a rule.

Basically it is that simple, and it is a lot of fun. Addictive? Certainly! But never a dull moment. ENJOY!