Can you give me some advice about using Ebay?

[Pacific]

We want to buy some second hand stuff for DSs model railway.
We have had a look on Ebay and there is plenty of stuff there that we want to buy but most of it is in the States. Some of the sellers say that they will ship worldwide.
I have never used Ebay before but I know a lot of MNs use it. Can you tell me how it works for security etc? And if we buy stuff from the States, how do we pay for it? How can we be sure it will be sent to us?
P.S. I've been around on MN for a while but I changed my name recently because I thought my name identified me too easily.
Thank you in advance.

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Methods of payment are always given at the bottom of the item description - usually for a foreign transaction you either use Paypal (i.e. credit card, plus a membership fee of $5 if you've never used it before) or bank transfer.

Ebay have their own dispute system for when things go wrong, but they rarely do. However it is a good idea to email the seller and ask them exactly how much registered postage would cost: do this before you bid.

Also always look at the seller's feedback (there's a link next to their name in the top right hand corner) - but do remember that some people give negative feedback for spurious reasons (you can see by their comments). I saw one once where the buyer had given negative feedback because there were "no cost savings" - just made me want to shout "well don't bid so much then"

But anyway. I would probably buy something fairly small first to help you get the hang of it. Biggest problem is that it's addictive!

In fact I'm off there now to check out the unwanted pressies!

Thanks all. We will have a go!
sb34, I'm a long time lurker and occasional poster and I've been to the occasional meet-up. I just thought some of my old posts were a bit personal and wouldn't like any of my neighbours to connect them with me. Probably just being a bit over-anxious but it was easy to change my name.

Also, watch out for Custom's charges -- if you buy anything from the USA worth more than £14 (about $24, currently?) you may get stung by HMCE for 17.5% (or more) VAT. I have banned my American family from sending anything ever again, so fed up with paying VAT on everything they already paid 7% sales tax on - gRRRRR!

I second the charges from abroad thing. Dh got really stung on charges because it was wrongly labelled ( they were sending replacement parts and labelled it as some sort of new thing). It took months to get the charges refunded by UPS.

Always check how much they will add on for postage, and what the threshold is for vat at this end. It might end up cheaper to buy it over here in a store.