e-Bay - Advice?

[Nine Toes]

I won my first auction on e-Bay.  I bid on a Wacom Graphire3 4x5, and for $54.00, I won it.  After shipping, I ended up charging about $65.00 to my credit card.

The thing is, the auction said exactly this:
"This Graphire 3 is brand new. It was opened after it was bought, but was never used. Graphire 3 includes 2 CD's a drawing tablet, wireless mouse, and drawing pen."

I got the thing today in the mail, and I was a little less than satisfied with it.  It had clearly been used... a little bit more than gently, I might add.  There was sweat, hand-crud, and scratches all over the tablet, and the mouse.

The ad also said it came with the driver disk, but I noticed later down near the bottom, the seller had added a comment saying it only came with one disc (in small black print).  I guess that wasn't really a big deal, because I got the drivers from Wacom's site,

It came on time, but the box it came in was jerry-rigged; a bunch of smaller boxes all taped together to make a bigger box.  And I noticed on the postage, that I got overcharged for the shipping.

I took some pictures of everything, I'll have to upload those after I get home from work.

So, I feel like I've been a little bit ripped off.  I didn't pay (more than half of what I could have bought it for brand new) for a crusty, beat up Wacom.  I sent the guy a message, and I may have to leave him some bad feedback.

But, do I really have any reason to bitch? (Would you?)  As far as I can tell, the tablet works just fine. I haven't really had a chance to use it yet, because I need to leave for work soon.  Plus I've never used a tablet before, so I have no reason for comparison.

I'd like some advice for future reference when buying items through e-Bay.  Things to look out for?  Things to remember when bidding on or buying new or used items?

*Remember: I'm completely new to all of this e-Bay stuff, so keep that in mind before you flame me, or call me nasty names and throw stuff at me*

[Radiant]

Auctioneers are ranked (by people buying stuff from them). That might give an idea of how trustworthy said person is. Given how much you paid for it and the fact that it works (or does it?) I'd say you should be happy with it - consider that there are also people that'll take your money and not send you any goods.

[LimpingFish]

Although, if he stated it was never used when clearly it was, he lied.

This might call for bad feedback. But it IS eBay after all and, supposedly, stuff like this happens all the time.

[Mad-Hatter]

You know, I once bought a 100 ft. Ethernet Cord off of Ebay.

Now my brother and I can play Halo at two ends of the house!!!

Better yet, we recieved it the very next day after we'd won the auction.


But, I DO have one question:

If you paid over half of what you could have got for brand new, why didn't you just buy a brand new one?




Tip for auctioning on Ebay:

DON'T bid on anything until the last couple of minutes. Ebay has a nifty feature that tells you how many days, hours, and minutes are left, so if you can figure out when, you'll be set.
The reason you wait until the last couple of minutes is because all the other bidders are doing what you do: They see you raise the price, so they raise it too. When you wait until the last couple of minutes, you usually get it for a lot cheaper than if you'd raised the price $5.32 every other day.
This strategy doesn't always work, though, so I'd suggest finding something that doesn't have many bidders, or has a 'buyitnow' option.

I tried bidding on a Korean-English; English-Korean dictionary, and someone beat me by 5 cents!!!

And, although that shows you can't always win, it shows that the other guy did. And, if you're like him, you saved a lot of money!
(btw, I'm not suggesting that you only raise the price by 5 cents... In essence, it sounds like a good idea, but somehow I doubt it really works. That guy got lucky. Try only raising it by 2 or 3 dollars. Still cheap, but not TOO cheap.)

[Mr Flibble]

I make it a rule to only buy items when a photo is given. And not just a cruddy boxshot swiped from Google (if anything, I find that worse than no picture) an actual photograph of the item I'm bidding on.

And also, because its been a while since anyone linked this, P-P-P-Powerbook prank.
(Don't worry, the "pranker" was responding to a scam anyway.)

[Pesty]

One thing you should know is that you will almost ALWAYS be overcharged for shipping. Why? Because eBay takes a percentage off of what the sellers earn from you, so they will try to get their money back by charging more for shipping than what it costs to ship, which eBay can't take any money away from. Many times you'll see auctions or Buy It Nows for $0.99 with $50 shipping costs. It's just a scheme to get around eBay charges.

I will also back the "don't buy unless there's a picture" policy, mainly because it's easier to get away with saying "New, never been used" than it is to show a picture of the product being sold. Keep an eye out for people who use the same picture for different products, too, because they'll use a generic graphic for the product instead of the actual product being sold, which is occasionally (but not always) dodgy. If they're honest sellers, they'll put down any flaws in used products, because all used products have signs of use, even if it's only been used once or twice. I tend to buy stuff from people who say "There's a small nick on the side" over people who say "Like new! Almost never been used!!"

For what you can do now with your problem, leave the user bad feedback. I know it doesn't seem like much, but an experienced eBayer checks everyone's feedback and if there are a lot of negative comments, even if there are more positive ones than negative ones, they won't buy from that person. Word of mouth is a powerful thing in any market, even online.

[Mad-Hatter]

its been a while since anyone linked this, P-P-P-Powerbook prank.

That was funny. I laughed quite a bit over that. Unfortunately, I couldn't get to the last page: The Scammer's Response

And when i tried regoing to the site, it kept saying "Cannot Find Server"....

I'll try again later, though.