HELP! First time seller...

[pinkspottywellies]

I popped my ebay cherry today and put our car up for sale! I've just received a message from a buyer to say how much would I take for cash, he'd collect asap. I know this isn't how it should be done but that people do it. If I wanted to take an offer can I then remove the listing, will they know what I've done and will I get in trouble? I'm rubbish at rule breaking (total goody 2 shoes!!) so probably won't take an offer but just want to know what people's take is on the matter.
TIA

hiya, it is against the rules - but quite common. What you can do quite legitimately is sell to the highest bidder -so you could ask your buyer to bid £x and then end the auction for them. But people do end auctions all the time.

I bought my car from ebay and actually asked the lady to end the auction for me and she did. She was ver worried about it and even saw a sokicitor a sshe was so worried - but ebay were completely unintereested - and she never heard another thing.

So - if he offers you what you want yes you could end the auction and sell it to him. If asked you can just say that you had advertised it locally and sold it to a neighbour. They will never check !

My sis had a car to sell so put on her ebay listing "This car is advertised elsewhere and I reserve the right to withdraw listing at any time", so she was covered. I think as long as you dont have a bid on it then you can take it off ebay with no probs. Am sure someone will put me right if im wrong!

blimey, a car. that's a baptism of fire isn't it?

You can remove the listing if you sell the car - you can just say you changed your mind. But otoh who buys a car without looking at it? I probably would give him a price, and I am usually a rule follower. It wouldn't be very discounted though.

NB do not accept paypal for a car.

Why not paypal? that's what we've put.

Oooh no - they can pay you and then withdraw the payment ! You deffo need cash or bankers order for a car - I'd say cash actually as you can get veryg good forgery bank orders !

because a buyer could easily use a stolen credit card, and if they do, you have no protection whatsover: paypal will simply remove the money from your account. Expensive items tend to be targetted for such scams.

Eeek! Didn't know that! Might be better off taking a cash offer then. Wish I'd known earlier about saying it's advertised elsewhere.

If there are no bids yet you can go back in and revise your ad to say that ! You can also change payments methods accepted !!

Go on - do it now !!

Don't worry - it will be fine.

When I sold my car on ebay I got about 15 emails asking for a sell it now price, I also got lots of stroppy ones back saying I wouldn't get that much and I was asking too much etc. But in the end I got my reserve price !

Meant to say as well - car traders are rife on ebay and always trying to find a naive seller to rip off ! My car sold for £5K yet some of those guys tried to persuade me, quite rudely, that I'd be lucky to get £1.5K. Very pushy - but only at the end of email - so easy to ignore !

There's a bid in but only of £1 which we put as the start price - I guess I can't change it now though.

Think you shoulod be able to add to it though - Just add a bit at the end !

Just added the bit about withdrawing but couldn't change paypal. Hope it's not too obvious!

What I would do is revise it again and add a line just saying "I'm really sorry but I have just found out that my Paypal account is not yet set up to accept payments - and will take a few days to activate - so unfortunately I am afriad I will only be able to accept cash or bankers orders for this sale"

Then you are being upfront and should ward off the chancers !

If anyone bids over your resrve I would also email them and make it clear that it's cash or bankers draft only - just to be sure everyone knows where they are !

I thought Paypal worked staight away though. Would anyone believe that? Thanks for this btw!

I know when I fisrt set mine up I had to wait for 6p or something to arrive in my bank account - with a code - then I had to log back into Paypal and put the code in. It only activated then - and it took about 5 days for the 6p to appear !

Not sure if that was for making or receiving payments - it wa sto do with validating my acount ! Probably to make payments - but no matter - if you say that you are not accepting Paypal then that's all there is to it really.

Help again! Just had someone ask what the reserve is. I want to say "get bidding and you'll find out!" but don't want to appear rude! What's the etiquette in this situation?
TIA

you could say ' The resrve is set at what I think is a fair price . Please bid for what you think it is worth. Thank you '

or something like that

Thanks Captain, I've done that! I'm so excited. We've had 3 bids!! and 15 watchers!! I could get addicted to ebay instead of spending so much time on MN

definete baptism of fire..lol I am a seasoned ebayer but just put 2 cars on tonight. One has sold in 10mins and the other has got a few watchers.