Advice from experienced E-Bay users

What I find really interesting about Ebay is the fact that no one wants an item you have listed until of course someone bids and then everyone wants it! It's like kids with toys, don't want to play with that toy, but if you want to play with it, then I DO!

It is a wellknown ploy. If you start bidding right away and someone bids against you, they soon know what your ceiling is and cap it by a small amount, so you can get into a bidding war. If you wait until almost the end of the bidding, you either get it or you don't, but the price hasn't been driven up by counterbids.

It used to be that you would bid just over a whole number of pounds, then if someone's ceiling was the exact pounds, you would get it. I don't know whether that is still done now.

It's like that at auctions too. Some auctioneers have to work their socks off to get bidding started, as if no-one wants to be the first to bid, and then off it goes like a rocket, and some bidders wait until the last gasp to put their bids in. Not only are you bidding against the room, but also, these days, against the Internet as well. At least with eBay, you are only bidding against the Internet.

We started using ebay about three years ago and their advertising is correct, everyone has around £2,000 of 'stuff' in their house they could sell. What I dont understand is, 3 years on, I am still listing 'stuff' out of my house, when will it end AND I have to point out, I am a minimalist and do not have clutter! Although, we did hire a skip to empty the loft a couple of years ago, I thought 'HE' had!, it appears HE didn't! I'm going up there, I may be a while.........

contact eBay for advice first. I would normally only post to the registered paypal address.

Elegran My Husband has enquired about an item before using my ebay account(so its my name and email) (1) he has signed off using his name(2) and also asked for the item to be sent to our son at a different address(3) as it saved us time and money receiving the item at our address before posting(and paying again) to our son,so it reasonable that your buyer has 3 different contact info. Hope this helps

Elegran asked this question way back in September 2016 I'm sure she would have sorted it by now.

Yes it is sorted - I still have the item (an angle grinder if anyone is looking for one) I contacted the successful buyer and asked whether he had realised that it was collection only. No answer. I imagine he was too busy kicking himself to work out how to organise getting it.
Meanwhile the other interested party, who had found out how to get a courier and was just checking that I was OK with that before bidding, had realised that it was sold and backed out. So that was a lose-lose situation for all of us.