My Life as a []er or Eelkat's eBay Showcase

I love eBay.

Plain and simple fact of life.

I spend 90% of my online hours on two sites: Squidoo & eBay.

I joined eBay in 2004. It was love at first sight. Why? Because I love yard sales. I love antique shops. I love fabric stores. Ans boy, oh boy, do I REALLY love comic books! eBay is like all those things in one place.

I joined Squidoo in 2007, and it only helped me to strengthen my love for eBay, as now I buy all my bids off Squidoo lenses! Are you getting affiliate sales off your eBay modules on your Squidoo lenses... that may very well be me!

ooooh, eBay is so addicting!

In September of 2004, I had a brainstorm or rather one of my friends did. He came up with the idea that we should each open eBay accounts and than start selling stuff which we would buy locally. He rambled on about how we would become millionaires by the end of the year. This brainstorm of his was apparently inspired by some $99 pamphlet he had read which told him how to become a millionaire selling stuff on eBay.

Anyways, while I doubted you could become a millionaire on eBay, I went ahead a opened an eBay account, only to learn that you were not allowed to sell anything until you had at least 10 feedback. (I think that rule has changed now, cause I see 0 feedback sellers all the time now). So, with 0 feedback I opened a buyers account instead of a sellers account and than set out to acquire 10 feedback so I could upgrade to a seller's account.

It was my first time on eBay and I had no idea what I was doing. I searched for the first item that popped into my head, which was Greg Hildebrant. I bid on a .99c book and than kept on bidding on 30+ other Hildebrant items, including a set of trading cards.

The next day I had other things on my mind and forgot about eBay. It was well over 2 weeks before I logged in again. BIG MISTAKE!!! My first lesson learned: never bid and leave!

Of the 30+ items I had bid on, I had won only one of them, the very first one I had bid on, that .99c book. And I had several messages from the seller demanding payment. It had never occurred to me that I would have to pay for the items I had bid on. No idea why that thought had missed me, but it did, and I realized how lucky I was to have been out bid on all those other items!

I quickly paid the seller, and in spite of it being 2 weeks late, she gave me good feedback. The next day I had a #1 next to my name and I was 9 away from becoming a seller.

After my first win on eBay I promised myself one thing: never again would I let more than 1 hour separate the time I won the bid from the time I paid for it. And since that time, never again has more than an hour pasted the auctions end, before I paid for my winnings. And thus I became known as a "lightening payer".

It troubled me through, that I had placed more than 30 bids and only won one of them. My next step was to figure out who I had lost and what I had to do, to never lose a bid, ever again. I hate to lose, and eBay, like everything else, was about to become subject to my investigative nature.

One thing sellers know when they see the EelKat bidding on one of their auctions is they can expect instant payment. I have a reputation as "a lightening payer". We are a very rare lot, lightening payers and sellers love us. What exactly is a lightening payer? Lightening payer is not an actual eBay term, but rather eBay seller slang which is used in feedback given to buyers. It means that the buyer paid for the auction within the same hour as the end of the auction.

In other words, if you are reading a buyers feedback and you see that one seller said: "Great lightening payment!" and than you look at the auction and see that it ended at Noon on August 14, 2008, than you know that the seller paid for that auction before 1PM on August 14, 2008.

Lightening payers are usually snippers, which is why they pay so fast.

I had lost the bid on the trading cards and that was bugging me, because I really wanted those. Christmas was coming up and my brother was a big fan of Greg Hildebrant and had wanted a pack of his trading cards from the late 1980's. They were pretty hard to find, and yet on eBay I had no trouble finding them. I was determined to find more, and I did, and I bid on those, and lost.

I could not understand this. Again and again I bid on these card, and again and again I lost each and every auction. I could not understand it because I was doing exactly what everyone told me I should be doing: I was placing the highest bid I was willing to pay for this item, and still a few days later I was outbid.

Next I became a watcher. I started watching every single auction and every single bid. (You could watch bidders and bids back than, you can't anymore, eBay has disabled that feature.) I started noticing that the folks who where winning were winning in the last few seconds every time. As I watched what they were doing, suddenly it hit me: I if did what I saw these people doing, it would be next to impossible for me to lose!

I found more Hildebrant cards. I bid .99c on the first day of the auction. Than for the rest of the week I watched this auction and waited. At 10 minuted before the auction ended the highest bid was $19. Than 5 minutes before the auction ended I logged onto eBay and placed my second bid on the same item, this time at $40. The page refreshed to announce the bid was ending in 3 seconds and I had the high bid. With 3 seconds to the end, there was no time for anyone else to bid and five minutes late I was logged in on PayPal and paying for the cards that would become my brothers Christmas present that year.

Today, 4 years and 300+ wins later I have never lost another bid, and have gained the reputation of being one eBay's worst snipers ever.

In May of 2006 a flood came through and turned my world upside down, decimating our house, destroying a large portion of my comic book collection, and putting my dad in a 2 month long coma.

With no house to live in, and it now being used to keep our belongings out of the weather, I did the only thing the town would allow us to do, and built a tent out of a tarp and 12 cinder blocks, and from May 2006 to February 2007, that is where I lived.

We thought life was rough than, but that was only the beginning. By October 2006, my dad was out of the coma but disabled now, the town was starting in their *war* against us for not selling our land to them to they could put up condos so had shut off our electricity and water to force us out, and to make things a little bit worse, what had survived the flood in May, was wiped out by a fire in October.

From October 2006 to February 2007 my computer remained a mass of melted twisted mess, along with most everything else I owned. In February 2007, with the help of HUD we finally got indoors again, now in an apartment, until we could come up with the money to rebuild. The insurace btw, said that there was only $2,000 worth of damage, in spite of the fact that the house now had 3 outer walls missing, no roof on one room, both doors axed off by firemen, most windows broken out by fireman, and no floor left at all, due to the flood which left the floor boards sunk into a sink hole which had opened up beneath our house as a result of the 4 feet of water that had filled the house, than went under the floor washing out the ground below. The front wall, and the out shell of the West side of the house are all that still stand. The flood did most of the damage said the insurance, and living on the ocean, well, you are not eligible for flood damage. So with no house in a town where houses average at $2 mil to build, $2,000 buys a tarp and 12 cinder blocks.

What has any of that to do with eBay? Well, While I was off line and without a computer due to floods and fires, and trying to figure out how to keep the 7 feet of snow that came in the blizzard that winter from collapsing the tent in which I now lived, my eBay account, unknown to me was hacked, and because I had no way to assess my eBay account, I had no way of knowing it was happening.

In February of 2007, HUD finally got us into an apartment (we were lucky we only had to wait 8 months, because when we signed up they told us it would be 6 years due to the high rate of homelessness in Southern Maine!). For the first time since the fire, I was now faced with plugging in my crippled fire damaged computer and seeing if the hard drive was as bad off as the case. Amazingly the hard drive was undamaged and so with the internet hooked up in the apartment, me and my ancient ever trusty computer, were back in business.

And the first thing I did was, you guessed, head for the []! I love the []. That's when something really weird happened. I was told that I could not log in because I had changed my password and user id and to please log in using the new ones! WTH?

This was not the only problem I had. My email account was telling me the same thing!

With no way to access either eBay or Yahoo, I turned to PayPal for help, to find that there, the hacker had tried and failed. PayPal had locked payments and frozen my account, due to "unusual activity". By usual they meant, the purchase via my eBay account of some 20 computers, several rolex watches, and an odd assortment of other such high ticket items, each selling for well over $1,000! The shipping address on each of the items was the same: Nigeria. The buyer address on each of the items was also the same: one Anthony MacKay of California. With the help of PayPal, eBay locked down my account and gave me new access codes so I could reactivate it as myself once again.

On Yahoo I had to start a new email and use it to tell them what had happened, and by the end of the week I had my Yahoo, eBay, and PayPal accounts back, however, the neg feedback that had appeared on my eBay account was astounding! It took 2 months of talking with eBay and the sellers to get the mess straightened out, and in the end, all feedback placed on my account from October 2006 through February 2007 was removed, because none of it was mine!

Thankfully eBay has kept my trust through this, as they did whatever was necessary to restore my account and get rid of the hacker.

I buy mostly overseas, esp from Japan and France, (to the US) and I usually have to pay $25 - $50 extra for shipping because of it. When I read the feedback buyers leave sellers I see a lot of complaints for high shipping, but than I look and see that they bought over seas, and I wonder, did they even look at the packing label? $25 - $50 on top of the listed shipping is because thats the ACTUAL SHIPPING COSTS!

Yesterday I got a package from China, and the stamps on the box were for $10 and $5 each stamp! I wish buyers would stop leaving sellers bad feedback over shipping costs, because sellers have no way to change the price of stamps.

What is the lowest amount of eBay seller feedback you buy from? I love this question as I'm an avid eBayer.... known across the forums as the much feared: EK the Sniper. To date no one who has ever bid against me, has been able to win. My best snipe time to date was 3 seconds before auction end. I achieve my snipping success, by bidding low early, and than placing a bid high, while counting done the seconds to the end before hitting the confirm bid button. While this can be done with dail -up, it's easier to do with cable. But anyways, I found that question on a forum and here is my answer:

What is the lowest amount of eBay seller feedback you buy from?

I stick with 99.7%, but I always read the feedback to find out why it got low. If it was for a "bad" reason than I won't buy from them (say, non-shipment, wrong item shipped and no exchange offered, etc).

Also, I ALWAYS read the kind of feedback they left for others... if they are really rude and b*!chy in their feedback left to others, than I won't buy from them. EVER! I really, really, really, REALLY HATE a rude seller! How the seller treats others has a BIG impact on wither or not I choose to bid. Being a business minded woman, myself, I do not like to deal with sellers who do not treat their eBay store with professionalism. If they are acting childish in their comments, chances are good that they will act childish in their business skills too: sloppy packing, not insuring items, etc.

I have bought items from sellers with lower feedback 90% range, because after reading their feedback, found that the problem was the buyer's and not the seller's fault.... such as "left a neg because shipping was so high" Happens a lot, even though shipping was listed in the auction!

I buy overseas a lot. On one item, I had to pay $54 for air fair on top of the postage. In this case the auction had said seller pays actual shipping. When I got the item (a box of 300 Picsou Geant comic books, btw) I checked the packing slip, and sure enough, it REALLY DID cost an extra $54 to ship this huge and very heavy box of books from France to the USA. The seller was left good feedback, never once did I complain, because I had read the auction before hand and knew I would be paying the actual shipping costs, and I had bought items from France before, so I knew what kind of shipping costs to expect. I think buyers often forget to think about just how much it costs to ship items. All it takes is a trip to your local post office to find out you made a fool of yourself when you left bad feedback because of *high shipping costs*. Postage prices have gone up folks. Deal with it, and stop blaming the sellers!

And than there are these kinds of stupid feedbacks:

"left neg because you said it was purple but it looked blue on my screen and it arrived purple, but I wanted blue" Man! I see this one in fabric auctions all the time! If the seller says it's purple, than you better believe it's purple no matter what your screen color shows you! Why do people leave a neg for something like that! You read the auction. The seller told you what color it was. Why didn't you believe them? *sheesh*

If the negs are for stupid things like that, things that are the buyers own fault and had nothing to do with the seller, than I'll buy from someone with lower feedback.

Proudly I can say I've been on eBay since 2004 and I have 100% feedback! YAY me! Of course I'm a buyer only, and don't sell anything, so, it doesn't do you any good to know that unless I'm buying something from you! LOL!

How to look at feedback. Here is what I told this guy:

[QUOTE=EXsoldierSNAKE;2430564]When you are looking for costume parts on eBay(if you do) what is the lowest amount of seller feedback you buy from? I usually don't trust anything lower than 99.0 percent, but theres a crucial part that I need and the only seller that has it has a feedback of 97.6%. I checked his detailed feedback and his last buyer complaint was 3 days ago, saying that the item was never received. This crap is driving me crazy! I need the part o so badly, I just don't wanna be screwed over.

thanks:rockon:[/QUOTE]

If it was just three days ago, than the links are still clickable. Go take a look at the item in question. When did the bidding end? Where is it being shipped from? Where is it being shipped too? Did the buyer actually allow enough time for the item to arrive? It is a very common thing for buyers to not wait long enough.

eBay says to wait 30 days for an item to arrive, before leaving a neg. Did the buyer wait 30 days?

eBay says to try to talk to the seller and find out what happened. Often the comments between buyer and seller will show up on the auction listing, down at the bottom of the bidding page. Check out the item in question, scroll to the bottom of the page. Is there any conversation going on between buyer and seller? no? why not? If the buyer is complaining in with neg feedback, why didn't they first send the seller a question about the item?

How was the item shipped? It usually says the shipping method on the auction page. If the buyer opted for a cheaper shipping method, than they can be expected to wait up to 3 weeks for in country and up to 6 weeks for overseas shipping! Did they choose the cheap shipping and if so did wait the full 6 weeks before complaining?

If the seller is overseas from the buyer, did the buyer take the customs laws into consideration? In some places, such as Italy, the government puts a hold on all packages going overseas, until the proper officials have had time to examine the contents of the package (and yes, that does mean they open the package to see what is inside!) If you are dealing with a country with laws like this, you could be looking at a 4 or 5 month wait before they get around to checking your package! (this happened to me, more than once, but it hasn't stopped me from buying items from Italy. I do however, plan for this to happen now, and bid on items knowing that it could be 6 months or more before I see them.)

I live in Maine, USA.

I've been a member on eBay since 2004. In that time I have bought more than 300 items, about 65% of which I bought from overseas.

I've bought stuff from Canada, UK, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan, and Papua New Guinea.

The fastest was from Canada (Quebec) took 5 days. Longest was Italy, took 3 months.

I have had the best experiences with items coming from Quebec and France, rarely do items take more than 10 days to arrive from either country, and as such I tend to buy from these 2 countries more often than the others because I know they get shipped out quickly.

If you really really want an item, but are not sure about the feedback at a first glance, than it's time to do some heavy duty, looking into the feedback of both buyer and seller and all the reasons why and how the bad feedback came about. If you find that the bad feedback was simply a misunderstanding or was the fault of the buyer and not the seller, than go ahead and place your bid; but if you find that this seller has a history of bad feedback for the same reason over and over again, and they show no signs of correcting the problem, than you should probably wait for someone else to be selling the same item.

I am leaving the above section intact, and adding this edit under it, because as of August 16, 2008, I have a new fastest shipping seller: I won it on August 12, 2008, kyoto.antique of Japan shipped my item out on August 14, 2008, it arrived in my Post Office on August 16, 2008, and I had it in my hands by 10PM August 17, 2008! Meaning with 2 days from Koyoto Japan to Maine USA, kyoto.antique has won the record of being the fastest shipper I've ever dealt with anywhere, either on eBay or off eBay!

And thanks to them I now have the fabric I need to sew my Lord Sesshomaru costume! YAY!

Fear the []. Run from the []. If you are new to the [] wear your best suit of armor, because once you set foot in the [] you have 2 options: become a []er or die!

On the internet there are many chat rooms, discussion groups, message boards, and community forums. Millions of them abound, and on nearly every single one of them you will find someone who has a horror story to tell, and that story usually goes something like this:

"Is it safe to post here? I wasn't sure. I just came from the [], and I'm hoping that not all forums are like the []. I'm new to forums and I buy stuff on eBay so I thought I'd join the eBay forum. They were nice of the clothen forums, and I really enjoyed the pets forums, they did get a little wild on the eBayMotors forum, but than I joined the [], and now I don't dare go back to eBay. I'm not even sure I should buy anything on eBay any more. []ers are scary. Is it okay if I post here? I need a place to hide where the []ers won't find me."

eBay has a lot of forums, one for every category. eBay forums are nice quite places where buyers and sellers can get together and discuss the things they love. There is a forum for antique collector, one for car buffs, one for music lovers, ect, and so on and so forth. More than 100 forums abound on eBay, there is literally something for every one. All of eBay's forums have one thing in common, threads were hushed whispers are passed about eBayers dreaded little dark corner. Threads where comments read: "I snuck into the [] tonight, to lurk around and read what was going on over there. Boy anm I glad I didn't leave a comment! They'd have eaten me alive!". It's the one thing all eBay forum posters dread and talk about as though it were the plague: the [].

The [], officially known as The eBay Soapbox, it has a reputation for being the toughest, meanest, most flame filled and politically incorrect forum anywhere on the net. It's the one place on eBay where you can talk about anything. As it's name implies, it is "Your Soapbox to the world. Pull up a soapbox and start shouting at the world. Get it all off your chest. Say anything you like, to anyone you want. Don't hold back."

Start a thread, any thread, any topic, it doesn't matter what it is. The []ers will hate it. It's a []ers way of saying they like you. []ers speak their mind and no topic is sacred. It doesn't matter what you start a new topic about. If you love it, they hate it. If you hate it, they love it. Think of the [] as a celebrity roast.

Do you hate Hillary Clinton? Than start a thread on the [] and tell the world. Be prepared for all her supporters to than use your thread to tell you everything that is wrong with you in the cruelest, meanest, most uncivil way they can think of.

Love Hillary Clinton? Than start a thread on the [] and tell the world. Be prepared for all her haters to than use your thread to tell you everything that is wrong with you in the cruelest, meanest, most uncivil way they can think of.

It is the way of the [] to be against whatever you are for and for whatever you are against, no matter what it is. Start two threads: one for Hillary and one against Hillary and see what happens! 0.O Same posters on both threads! Freaky!

Hate the Mormon church? Well, so does half the [], and guess what? The fights about the Mormon church got so bad, that eBay Pinks (eBay headquarters) had to step in and rewrite the rules. From now on, you mention Mormons or any other religion on the [] and eBay will ban you, no questions asked. No posting, no buying, no selling. Yep, the fighting really did get THAT bad. I was there, I took part (I'm a Mormon). The day the eBay hammer came down on the []'s religion war of February 2005, was the same day The Padded Cell took rise.

There is only one safe place to post on the [] without fear of being hit by wave after wave of attacks, and it was known as The Padded Cell. The Padded Cell was a safe haven, a thread whose introduction stated that no [] Trolls were allowed to enter, that if any did their posts would be banned. It proudly announced to the world that it's thread was free from the harsh cruelty of the []. The Padded Cell opened it's doors on February 2005 and in less than a week had more than 10,000 posts on it's single thread, making it eBay's fastest growing forum thread ever. It lasted nearly a year reaching astounding levels of some 400,000 posts, until one day without warning it too fell under attack by the infamous []ers of eBay. An onslaught of flames from some 40 or 50 []ers at a rate of 300 comments an hour, brought down the Padded Cell in a single blow than soon became legend among []ers old and new. In tears the owner of the Padded Cell announced it's doors would close and the Padded Cell had sent it's formal request to eBay: "Please save us from the trolls of the [] and delete this thread."

The next day, the Padded Cell was no more, long time []er M--O--N--K was banned for ever, never to return to eBay, and Ned the Toothpick packed it up and started his own forum in protest of eBay forums, taking with him, some 200 members of the [], most of whom would never return to eBay or the [] ever again.

Those of us who remained, now had to fight off the []er trolls on our own, with no safety from the Padded Cell to retreat too. And than it happened: fun loving Meme reopened the Padded Cell in a brand new thread: Welcome to the Padded Cell #2, and the Padded Cell lived on. With []er Trolls clawing at it's gates, members of the original Padded Cell were now quick to report every attack on the Cell, to ensure that it did not fall the way of Padded cell #1. Trolls now fear the Padded Cell, for to flame the Cell is to get Pink Slapped by eBay, the one thing that all eBayers fear more than anything else.

Today, 3 years later Padded Cell #2 lives on, not only as the longest running thread on eBay forums, but the longest running and most posted on thread, of any forum. Amidst the fighting and flames, the political outrage, the religious rants, to lifestyle accusations, and the complete and total lack of all online posting dignity, the Padded Cell remains the []es only safety from the flames.

You know, I tend to buy rare, antique, and hard to find items... comic books, autographs, antique silks... average starting bid is well over $50, and $200 is not unusual. Yeah, I'd love to find these same items started at .99c; but you know what? I'd be less likely to bid on the same item at .99c. Why? Because I'd assume it was a rotted piece of junk and not in good condition if the price was that low!

I think a lot of buyers look at items with this mind set and a lot of people who would bid $10 may question the same item at .99c

Rumors are flying hard and fast and it seems that by October eBay will be no more. eBay announced it's plans to discontinue it's auction sales, and move on the a mall-like setting, much the same way Amazon sells. With buyers and sellers alike, deleting their accounts in droves this week, it seems that eBay has made it's worst career move ever. As I watch the fierce flamers of the [] this week, they are now banded together, not sending their flames to each other, but instead, rising up in one voice that shouts out: BOYCOTT EBAY!

I just went through the list some 200 []ers have already deleted their accounts, dozens more are threatening to follow suit, while more than 300 of them say they are writing or have already sent letters of complaint to their local attorney generals.

The complaints of the []ers has not gone unheard, because ABC has jumped the bandwagon and news of eBay's announcement and member outrage is now sweeping the headlines.

Myself? I wait in the sidelines and wonder what while become of my beloved sellers. Will I still be able to buy from them once October rolls around? An inability to buy antique fabrics from Japan and raw wool, will not make this Sessho fan very happy. Not one bit. :(

I'm a buyer who can say, if you are selling what I want I'll buy it no matter where you are, the problem is, I've yet to find either the comic books I seek or bolts of antique Japanese silk anyplace off eBay, so I continue to buy here. The sellers I buy from have no plans on leaving, and I'm a pretty loyal repeat buyer who plans to continue buying from sellers I know and trust. If they leave eBay, than I'll follow them, simply because I know that no matter where they sell, I can trust that seller and their product.

Here is a list of the sellers whom I have bought from, in most cases I am a repeat buyer, buying from the same sellers, again and again.

I generally buy the same type of items again and again as well. In the past 4 years I have bought more than 1,000 comic books off of eBay, so most of the sellers I buy from are of course sellers of comic books. Records and trading cards are another thing I've bought off and on. And of course, you can't be a book collector and not use eBay to expand your book collection, so of course a lot of books have been bought off of eBay too.

The sellers whom I love the most however are the sellers behind my costumes: fabric dealers, wig makers, wool farmers, and antiques dealers.

Below is a list of the sellers whom I buy fro most often.

Are you an eBay seller too? If so, make your own page like this. It's fast, fun, and free. (And you can earn a royalty just for selling your OWN stuff. Wild.)