Buying online from EBAY

[Flea]

The only issue I had was the bidding process - on most auction sites, they allow bidding to continue after the close time if the item is active, but on EBay I battled with 3g connection. I wanted a 29er a couple of years ago and had to go the EBay route as there was no local stock, but always outbid at the last minute......

I also had to clear beforehand if they would sell to me in South Africa, as the atandard on the US site was to only sell to the US - some were happy as long as I used Paypal, others felt it was too much hassle,so ask beforehand.

[Myra]

I've bought a couple of things from both ebay.com and ebay.co.uk and never had any problems. Usually 'Buy now' because the prices for the items I was looking for were still much better than SA, including postage and possible VAT.

Some sellers say that they will include all the required forms for customs, others don't.

I once had a seller mark my purchase as a 'gift' (without me asking) and I didn't have to pay VAT.

I have also bought jewellery (which I hate spending money on) and the seller marked the item as 'ornament - no commercial value'.

I think some sellers just want good reviews.

[dalem44]

I have been buying off Ebay.co.za for a couple of months now and have saved thousands on bringing in stuff from both America and China. I have found a few items here on Gumtree and Junkmail that I am interested in but haven't committed to buying them yet due to the worry of being scr3wed. Is there anyway I could pay the seller using Paypal here in order to protect myself?

[X-Man]

Ask your seller to not mark your parcel as Gift. It raises a red flag at customs and you may end up delaying your parcel. Its also illegal and customs takes it quite seriously. I had a guy from Europe marking a parcel as gift thinking he was doing me a favour. I ended up having to collect personally from customs at Capemail with my original invoice and having to explain why it was marked as gift.

 

 

THANKS for the tip!

[X-Man]

No problems, been shopping there for almost decade. Always paid Paypal, which adds a level of accountability to the seller. Only problem is many sellers don't ship outside USA - if you are really keen and they wont ship outside USA (some explicitly don't ship to Africa) think about using MyUSA.com forwarding service, but then some are sticky about that and will only ship to your Paypal address. Also save your bids until the last moment, and consider the "Buy Now" option, if the price is not unreasonable.

 

Just make sure the seller puts a copy of the Invoice on the outside of the parcel: that can hold up the parcel at customs. You can send the Paypal invoice through to customs if this happens if cant get the one from the supplier.

 

This particular item I'm interested in, the seller unfortunately doesnt want to ship to Africa. Not sure why so I had to give it a miss.

[kosmonooit]

This particular item I'm interested in, the seller unfortunately doesnt want to ship to Africa. Not sure why so I had to give it a miss.

 

Yes, often the case, but keep looking, you do find them. Even some sellers ship some items from their store internationally and others items not, often defying logic or explanation.