My parents are moving and have plenty of stuff to get rid of. I was thinking about putting these things up on ebay but I've never used ebay before and don't know what to look out for. Any help would be nice.

I sold a digital camera on ebay. Then when the guy got it, he called me saying it was broken. I had him send it back, and of course it was working when I got it back. So I don't know what stunt he was trying to pull.

Anyway, I lost a bit of money because I didn't set a high enough shipping cost. So make sure you cover that, and specify a return policy that you would want to deal with. Maybe write down serial numbers on items that are worth value, so people don't try to send you back a broken item.

ebay is gay. Use craigslist if at all possible. ebay keeps upping fees, is trying to force paypal as the ONLY option for payment, they've begun setting maximum shipping rates on things (below the flat rate priority rate at that!). They treat sellers like shit basically, and they rely on them. They just know they're the only thing out there and they act like it too.

Watch out for Nigerians or people who claim to be from other countries wanting you to ship something to Nigeria. 99.9% of internet transactions involving Nigeria are a scam.

Were you part of the successful .1%

there has to be someone that buys stuff online in nigeria

I would just not ship out of the country tbh. I shipped some routers to Israel, but other than stuff on our side of the pond it's probably not worth it. Overseas buyers know that Paypal doesn't take a lot of the tracking/confirmation stuff you get when you ship stuff overseas. So they just say it never arrived and wala, they get it for free.

I wouldn't ship outside the country either - even to canada. Personally - fuck ebay and paypal.

Use a local option like craigslist and just meet sellers in a public place. Taking a check is also a bad idea since checks can bounce - and then you will run into difficulty getting your money.

Truth has been spoken here

Ditto!

You cant even get tracking to Canada without having to pay over $12 for shipping

From a buyer's standpoint, ebay is nice now because you know you can bully the seller into whatever you want since sellers can not leave negative feedback and it's really easy to get PayPal to side with you in a lot of cases.

It's also nice because you can use Microsoft Live Cashback to get 25% back on purchases at ebay. So yeah, I just bought some new computer stuff and got it all for about 25% less than newegg... it was pretty nice.

I sold a cell phone to someone in Canada on eBay, and he was stuck with some outrageous import duties before he could receive the package. I covered myself by stating in the auction that the buyer is responsible for all import duties and taxes, so if you do decide to ship out of the country (which I don't recommend, it really is a hassle, but as a last resort if it's the only offer you get, you might want to consider it) make sure you explicitly state that you will not pay duties and taxes. And if you do ship out of the country, stick to the modern countries like Canada, Japan, Australia and pretty much anything in Western Europe. Nigeria isn't the only 3rd world country where shady deals come from...of course, you could get scammed shipping to any country, but it's just a lot more likely from one of the poorer countries.

Allot of new scams on Ebay are coming from Italy. There is no way to track packages there and there's some law there that protects their citizens there with online purchases, so when they blow a whistle saying "Your Scamming ME!" they get full refunds pretty quickly on purchases in order for those companies (CougH... Paypal) they'll give back refunds insanely quickly, to keep their business.

I saw it happen to a friend on mine off ebay, the guy won/paid for the auction and then a week later said he never got it and said it was a scam. Paypal locks my friends account up for 3-4 days asking for proof it wasn't a Scam. Of course he showed his receipt for it and pictures but without any tracking or specific information Paypal refunded the guy the full amount (being almost 2 weeks after the auctions end) and of course it takes 2-3 weeks to get something shipped over there unless you pay insane overnight shipping rates.

So the guy walked away with the whole thing for free, at the expense of my friend. Paypal can be pretty gay about things like that. If you use them, I recommend you sign up for the Paypal Debt card... then go to walmart and use the cash back feature to get your $$$ as soon as it's on your account. Nothing is more retarded then having hundreds of dollars tied up in one of these little seller disputes.

Problem with that is, PayPal has your bank account, and they won't hesitate to go in there and recover funds. And if you close your bank account or something, they'll send you to collections. PayPal sucks when it comes to shit like that, they always side with the buyer. Happened to me once too, but fortunately I was only out 15 bucks

In which case you just modify you auction details to state that you will not accept any transactions from Italy. Having researched this particular scam, it seems that even if you have proof of receipt (http://answercenter.ebay.com/thread.jspa?threadID=900157088&mod=1223154975774) PayPal will bend you over a table and then ignore your claims.