[DRLOWZ]

To succeed on eBay, you need to learn to see in the dark and look where others don't. You need to discover new ways to find things and follow suspects around like a private eye. Above all, you must master the meager tools provided.

Ebays search engine can be very confusing , if not just down right to stupid to handle. Because eBay has grown so large, if you don't arm yourself with a few tricks, your searches will usually produce overwhelming results that are tough to winnow down to a useful size.

So if you cant understand how to search then you down right shit out of luck...

Find It Fast
These days, you must ferret out the good stuff quickly.

Way back when, most auctions lasted for a week, giving you plenty of time to stumble across competing sellers of Mickey Mantle baseball cards (in mint condition). At the end of 2001, however, eBay started offering a Buy It Now option that lets bidders snap things up for a preset price as soon as the item hits the screen. Roughly 45 percent of all listings use this feature. Now, the first buyer to find something often gets it.

Be Specific
The most direct way to find what you want is to master eBay's search engine. You'll need to hone your hunts with lots of trial-and-error attempts and get comfortable with eBay's gnarly syntax rules. The site provides a decent tutorial on this—just click on the Tips link to the right of the Search button on the Smart Search window.

Search Twice
Make sure you do all your searches twice—with and without the "Search title and description" box checked. When you check the box you'll get far more results, but when you leave it unchecked you'll get newer listings. That's because eBay doesn't update everything instantly. Items show up first in category listings, then a little later in title searches, and finally in title-and-description indexes.

Lose the Losers
Go beyond the obvious and screen things out as well as pulling them in. If you don't exclude overly broad terms (by using minus signs) you'll end up with way too much chaff.

Search for Synonyms
People in different regions and with different educational levels refer to the same thing in a wide variety of ways. Try common shortened forms and abbreviations of terms you're looking for. To uncover plurals and odd case endings, use wild-card asterisks (a search on orang* will pull in orange, orangey, and orangish. It will also pull in orangutan, so use with caution). And be sure to search on all the misspellings you can think of—you'll be amazed at the results. Since misspelled items are harder to find, it means less competition.

Don't Be a Going, Going, Goner
Some users like to browse the Going, Going, Gone view of each category list, claiming this lets them find last-minute bargains that others have missed. But if you've done your homework and searched properly, this shouldn't be necessary. Besides, many of these items will fall to last-second snipes.

Stick With a Seller
When you locate an interesting item, click on the View Seller's Other Items link. Sellers often specialize in certain kinds of merchandise or sell related items one by one, whether they're the newest PDAs or classic Republican campaign buttons. This can be a fast way to find similar treasures. And speaking of shortcuts, that brings us to the granddaddy search tip of them all…

!!!Shop Out of Other People's Carts!!!
There are three ways to find things on eBay. You can browse through lists of items in a particular category (hopeless). You can hunt across all categories using eBay's search page (arduous). Or you can use the George Carlin method (smart).

I use the technique of the brilliant and subversive comedian every day. In one of his comedy routines, Carlin explains that instead of slogging up and down the supermarket aisles, he prefers to shop out of other people's carts. When they complain that the stuff is theirs, Carlin points out that it most certainly is not. Until they pay for it, it's still owned by the store.

And eBay makes it easy to look into other bidders' shopping baskets. Keep an eye out for any bidders who consistently go after the same items you're interested in. When you find one, click the Search button at the top of the screen, then click the By Bidder link on the page that comes up. Plug his ID into the search box and you'll get a list of every item he's currently bidding on, along with one-click links to these auctions. If his selections look interesting, add him to your list.

Now, eBay lets you save item searches, as well as lists of hot categories and favorite sellers, on your My eBay page. But it won't let you store lists of other bidders' baskets, so I roll my own. I bookmark my competitors'/assistants' pages in a folder called Bidders in my Internet Explorer Favorites. It's just as convenient, as I don't have to be on My eBay page to jump right to them. I've also created a single Links subdirectory that stores my favorite searches.


The Bidding
The auction giant has a mantra it would like you to adopt: "proxy bidding." Just enter the highest amount you'd pay and eBay will automatically raise your bid by the smallest increment necessary to top any competitive bids, until your limit is reached. Or so goes the chant. To be an eBay master you must empty your mind of all such chatter. Proxy bidding is for lazy, naive people.

The Problems With Proxy
Putting in a big proxy bid can ding you if there are shillers around, because you give them time to inflate the selling price by "testing" your bid up as high as they think you'll go. Another reason not to bid early: You're protected from "bid stalkers" who "shadow" or watch others bid, then wait until the end of the auction and snipe for the same products themselves. This is a detestable practice when done by others, but a brilliant strategy when you execute it yourself.

Besides, proxy bidding doesn't win auctions. Not only will two kinds of bidders—newbies and compulsives—see your early bid as a challenge and try to top it well before the auction ends, but then there are the snipers to worry about.

If nobody ever bid at the last moment, you wouldn't have to snipe. But since sniping tends to be the rule rather than the exception, the only real recourse is to snipe back. Sniping generally gives you better prices, and more important, lets you win, which, as the philosopher of Green Bay noted, is "the only thing."

Sniping Secrets
To be an effective sniper, all you need is a fast connection, a steady hand, steely resolve, and infinite patience. A killer instinct doesn't hurt, either. Think you have the stuff? It's time for your initiation.

Once you've found a worthy target, record the precise time the auction ends. Then, four to five minutes before that time, log on to eBay and bring up the auction. Sign in. Go down to the bidding area at the bottom of the page and type in the highest amount you'd ever want to pay (remember, proxy bidding means you will—you hope—pay much lower than your maximum). do not click on the Review Bid button (or hit the Enter key) yet.

Shrink the size of your browser window until it fills half the width of your screen or less and drag it over to the left side of your monitor. Press Ctrl-N to bring up a duplicate browser window. Drag this second window over to the right side of the screen so you can see both browser windows side by side. The left-hand window is your lethal sniping screen. The right-hand window is your clock.

Move the cursor to the left-hand window and click the Review Bid button, but do not click on the Place Bid button (or hit Enter) yet. Now, move to the right-hand clock window and scroll it up to the top so you can see the "time left" info. Now, start refreshing the clock window every few seconds. Focus intently on the "time left" clock. Remain calm. Resist the temptation to bid. You are a warrior. You are one with your mouse, your screen. Then, with only a few seconds showing on the clock, move the cursor quickly to the left-hand sniping window and click on the Place Bid button. If you did all of this correctly, and you didn't wimp out with a low amount when you entered your maximum bid, you'll win for an absurdly low price. Welcome to Nirvana.

If the screen responds sluggishly every time you refresh the clock, you may want to enter your bid with more than just a few seconds left. You don't want your bid to be so close to the wire that it fails to register before the auction ends.

Of course, he who lives by the snipe can die by the snipe. An insufficiently high bid can be fatal because there's no time to place another bid. Bid high and late, though, and you'll win every time.


An Auction Starter Kit
Don't have a big, honking system that runs so fast it hovers off the floor slightly? Not a problem—eBay will work fine on just about any recent PC. But to win every time, you'll need a speedy, reliable connection, a big screen, and a wheel mouse.

A T-1 line at work is great (if you have an understanding boss) unless too many people are using it while you're trying to bid. At home, avoid slow dial-up services. The ideal connection is a speedy DSL line or cable modem. If you can't get one in your area, move. It's worth it. And if you're locked into one ISP because it's the only high-speed provider in your area, consider getting an additional cheap dial-up connection to use for emergencies. There's nothing worse than wanting to snipe and being frozen out.

A giant screen gives you a real advantage. Searching on a tiny monitor requires way too much scrolling (although a wheel mouse will definitely help). And to snipe properly you will need to have several windows open at once, especially if two auctions are ticking down one right after the other.

Make sure you're using a recent version of Internet Explorer. This is important because Microsoft will eventually take over the world, and when it does it will sweep down through the wires like an avenging angel, smiting systems with non-MS browsers and eating your brain. Also, IE works better than Netscape.

If you plan on selling regularly, get a high-quality digital camera, a small tripod, and maybe even some cheap studio lights from your neighborhood photo shop.

Finally, success on eBay demands constant attention. Not at the computer all day? Try using a cell phone or other wireless gizmos to stay eBay-connected. The rollout of its new Wireless Rebidding option, which will work with any cell phone or wireless device equipped with Short Message Service (SMS), was announced by eBay in June. For $2.99 a month, users can be notified if their bids have been bested and then up their bids if they choose. Sign up at eBay.


The Selling
Anybody can sell under the right circumstances. If you're the only guy hawking Cipro at the hypochondriacs' convention, you'll clean up. But try peddling anything in the middle of Times Square on New Year's Eve and it's a different story. That's where marketing joriki, or focus, comes in. The formula for success is simple. Your items must appear in the maximum number of searches. Your description must be mouthwatering. And bidding must be so intense that prices skyrocket. It's all a matter of how much joriki you want to put into getting it right.

To sell among the masters, you need a title that draws people irresistibly in, and a description, photo, and price that lead them slavishly to the bidding button. And you need to know how to time your auction for maximum sniping benefit.


Title Trouble
Lots of buyers rely primarily on title searches. As Woody Allen once said, 80 percent of success is showing up. If your title just doesn't show up in searches, you're toast. And space is tight.

Don't waste space with words that long ago lost their meaning, such as "rare" (which can be found in 150,000 eBay titles). Don't use inscrutable abbreviations that will confound both newbies and search engines, or forget that some users will search for plurals and some won't—if you have the room, include both. Don't worry if the title is ungrammatical. The key is to appear in searches, not to get an A in English. Do mention the materials your product is made of (oak or silver), its time period (1930s or '60s), or any special terms of the trade (such as "Arts and Crafts" for Mission furniture).

Drop brand names like crazy. If your bowl would appeal to Tiffany collectors, say LIKE TIFFANY or NOT TIFFANY or just TIFFANY. The only worry here is that eBay's cudgel-like VeRO program may screen out certain words that some companies think they own.

Pack your title with as many synonyms, appropriate brand names, and even common misspellings as you can. Try to imagine what terms (and spellings) searchers would enter to locate products like yours. Become the searcher. Literally. Do searches for similar products to see how the pros write their listings, to check on the state of the market, and to scope out the competition.

Twenty Questions
Less may be more, but not when you're trying to sell against a horde of screaming competitors. Your description is the heart of your listing. Make it too terse and buyers will breeze right by. Text loads fast. You don't want to write a book, but the more good selling points you can communicate, the better.

Use the description to highlight all the things that attracted you to the item in the first place. What is it? How big is it? What terrific features does it have? How would you describe it to your best friend or someone from another culture? Is there an aura about it because of its history or special function? Why is your particular copy of it so special? Include details such as marks or signatures, materials and construction techniques, condition, and when it was made. Many sellers add strings of related keywords designed to catch search engines—"This tile will appeal to lovers of Gruby, Rookwood, Catalina, Laguna, Claycraft, Pewabic, and Batchelder."

Point out any flaws. You can often do this in a reverent way—"gently used" is better than "worn." But don't hide anything negative, since you want to avoid returns and unhappy customers later.

Be clear about your terms of service—what payment methods you accept, how long you hold checks, what kind of shipping you use, or whether you sell internationally. Figure out a way to accept credit cards. Insisting on checks—or worse, money orders only—will drive many potential customers away. The credit card leaders are PayPal and Billpoint, and if you're serious you can also consider a merchant account at your local bank.

Finally, package all of this in short paragraphs with spaces between them, or a few paragraphs and bullet points, rather than one big, scary block of text. Use the inverted-pyramid writing style—put the most salesworthy info at the top and the interesting but less critical stuff at the bottom. Compose your description on your word processor, and run it through the spelling checker before taking it public.

The Photo Finish
In our image-obsessed society, pictures can be your best sales tool. The three things that probably turn the most bidders off are lack of photos, lousy photos, and photos that take too long to load.

Digital cameras are perfect for eBay photography. Even cheap ones work fine because their medium-resolution images load quickly and still look good. If you don't have a digital camera, you can scan conventional prints or slides, or have your photo lab put them on a CD or the Web as JPEGs.

When taking the picture, use a solid background, remove clutter, and make sure the product isn't obscured by shadows. Natural light works well, but stay out of overly bright direct sunlight. The ideal source is the soft, diffused light of an overcast day. If you can't go outside, put a table by a large window, or try positioning incandescent lamps on both sides. Avoid fluorescent lights, which can turn things green. And crop the final image tight. A half-inch-wide object in the middle of an eight-inch photo looks ridiculous.

Include enough photos to show the object from different angles, highlight close-up features or marks, and reveal any flaws. But don't go overboard. Photos load slowly on dial-up connections, so you don't want to make them too large or include more than four or five at most. Lead off with the best photos, and put things like close-ups and flaws lower down on the page.

You're allowed to put in one free photo, and eBay will charge you a few cents for extras. It's worth it. (And there's even some science behind this, as The Way We Bid Now, details.) So is the ability to let users enlarge or "supersize" them. You can also sometimes park photos in the Web site storage space allotted to you by your ISP, or use third-party photo hosting services. Some of these are free but end up plastering the screen with ads, which can be a distraction. However you work it out, you must never forget that good photos are a seller's best friend.

When to End It
Figuring out when to end your auction is important because a lot of the bidding takes place in the last hour or so. Weekends are better than weekdays, early evenings better than mornings or late nights. Friday nights and holidays are poison because people are away from their computers. Remember to consider time zone differences so that half the country isn't asleep when the auction winds down. And make sure your auction lasts for at least a week to attract the most bidders.

The jury is still out about using a low opening price and a reserve (a secret minimum price) rather than a high opening price and no reserve. If you have to protect your investment, a reserve may be necessary, although most experts admit it will scare off some users. Having a reasonable reserve will also head off any potential bid-shielding problems. If the bidding doesn't meet the reserve you can always relist with a smaller one.

Put counters at the bottom of the page that show how many users looked at it. Counters are generally free, and they'll help you figure out whether you're making your listing visible on the search engines.

USE PHOTOS. In two years, the effect of photos on price more than doubled. Pictures used to boost prices by 5.8 percent; now it's 11.8 percent. Wood hypothesizes that rather than coaxing more money from buyers, a lack of photos may make buyers leery of what they're getting. "You would always have been willing to pay $1 for [a coin]. Now, you are still going to pay a dollar, but if [sellers] don't have a picture you are going to pay 88 cents."

END ON A WEEKEND. Weekend auctions fetch 2 percent more than auctions on weekdays.

KEEP IT SHORT AND SWEET. A long auction boosts the sale price of an item much less than it used to. "If you say an auction expires this month or next month it doesn't affect the price too much," says Wood. "There are enough people looking for bargains that they are not going to let one go by just because it's available for only three days."

WATCH OUT FOR SHILLERS (sellers who bid on their own merchandise). Many shillers set a low opening price, bid up the item in larger increments than legitimate buyers (using false identities or proxies), then drop out of the bidding. One in five sellers engages in shilling, and the practice has increased a whopping 60 percent since 1999.

RESERVE-PRICE SHILLING is also common. Because eBay charges sellers for establishing a reserve price, shillers achieve the same result by putting in a false first bid on their own merchandise.


Protect Yourself
According to the latest statistics from the Internet Fraud Watch, online auctions accounted for 70 percent of all online frauds in 2001, down 8 percentage points from the previous year. The average online auction loss in 2001 was just over $400.

The Fraud Protection Program at eBay offers buyers free, automatic insurance against nondelivery or blatant misrepresentation of an item. But it covers only $200 of the loss (with a $25 deductible) and won't pay if you report it too late, if the product violates eBay's user agreement, if you sent cash, if you've applied for three claims in six months, or if the product was lost or damaged in shipment.

While eBay crows about its feedback feature, it can be manipulated, and most users won't leave negative feedback in fear that they'll receive an unjustified negative rating from the party they just zapped. The online auction site has been encouraging credit card use, partly to avoid headaches and partly because it boosts eBay's bottom line. The site also works with Escrow.com, which holds the payment until the bidder receives the merchandise and is happy with it, and SquareTrade to offer online mediation in case of disputes.

In addition, eBay has quietly put into place an application known as the Fraud Automated Detection Engine: It collects data from those scammed and then tries to predict which new sellers may be dishonest. But scammers are smart; they often find ways to beat the system (the biggest problems are those involving nondelivery and fakes). Here's how to avoid getting taken.


Buyers, Beware Of...
NONDELIVERY The big swindle: You send a check or money order off into the void, it gets cashed, and that's the last you hear of the seller. E-mails go unanswered, and eBay's Find Members feature contains a bogus name, address, and phone number.

Since this often involves mail fraud, it's possible to have the postal inspectors step in, and they have helped on occasion. Ditto with the district attorney and Attorney General in both your locale and the perp's, the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (a partnership between the National White Collar Crime Center and the FBI), and the Federal Trade Commission—but don't count on getting your money back soon or ever. This wouldn't have happened if you had used an escrow service.

NONDELIVERY ON STEROIDS The seller posts an auction for a desirable item, such as a rare coin. He puts a starting price of $1 and a ridiculously high reserve on it—which attracts a fleet of bidders, none of whom bid high enough to meet the reserve.

The seller then contacts them all after the auction with a sob story: He just had a death in the family, lost his job, and got divorced, all in one week! He was so upset that he missed the decimal point and set the reserve at $10,000, not $1,000. But now he needs the cash right away and can't afford to wait for another auction cycle, so the first bidder who sends him a money order for $500 gets the coin. This way the seller can have several suckers send him payment for the same nonexistent item. Even worse, eBay insurance doesn't cover after-auction offers (see Scam Stoppers).

FAKES Whether the seller is an out-and-out scam artist or a gullible innocent who really believes that Babe Ruth signed autographs with a glitter pen, phony memorabilia and celebrity tchotchkes are almost the rule rather than the exception. Another huge market for fakes is antiques. Sometimes sellers are legalistically correct, hinting broadly that a painting is by a well-known artist without actually stating it. The grifters snagged in the notorious Richard Diebenkorn scandal on eBay were said to have netted more than $100,000 scamming buyers this way.

Again, credit cards and escrow services can pretty much beat these scams, and for expensive items, have an expert authenticate the item right after you receive it.

FALSE DESCRIPTIONS & PHOTOS Many sellers get carried away when writing descriptions (even when using photos). They tend to downplay or ignore flaws. Some use nasty tricks such as putting measurements in millimeters or saying something is gold or silver or diamond when it's really gold-colored, German silver (a copper-zinc-nickel alloy), or diamond-shaped.

Photos can be deceptive, too, blown up to make an object look larger than its real size, doctored in Photoshop, or turned so that a flaw is hidden or in shadow. Crooked sellers also use photos of similar products in better condition or product shots from the manufacturer. If you're nervous about this, e-mail the seller for more details and better photos. Credit cards and escrow can save you here, too (are you beginning to sense a theme?).

BAD GRADES While not as much a problem in some categories (coins can be "slabbed" by sealing them in plastic after they're professionally appraised, and gems can be laser-engraved), grading can be very subjective. Antiques vary extensively in value based on condition, and unless you're an expert, it can be difficult to know what lowers value on an otherwise nice-looking item. You might think the heirloom that granny left you is in pristine shape, but a reputable antiques dealer may take one look and toss it in the $5 bin. While some problems are obvious, even experts can disagree on subtleties. Again, have the item appraised by a legitimate authority as soon as it arrives, and challenge the seller if the appraisal confirms your fears.

IDENTITY THEFT This doesn't happen much, but some dirtballs go through the motions of selling products and then getting all your personal details and a credit card number just so they can steal your money or—worse—your identity. Don't ever send your Social Security number or mother's maiden name to a seller who requests it to "expedite" or "verify" the transaction. If you buy through an escrow service or one of eBay's credit card services, you register once, pay the service online, and then have eBay send the seller his cut on delivery—all without revealing your credit card information or anything else about you other than your shipping address.

SHILLING This scam is especially wicked because it's easy to do, hard to prove, and the winning bidders often never know they've been had. The crooks create a string of different eBay IDs that they use to artificially pump up the prices. This guarantees that if you win you're paying far more than you should have. The site claims it runs proprietary shill-hunter software to track down such scum, but a lot ooze through the net. And the software generally doesn't track auctions longer than a month old, making it difficult to catch shillers who spread out their crimes. The only risk a shiller takes (other than getting kicked off eBay and possibly violating some local laws) is that he or an associate may get stuck with the high bid. Since the item can easily be relisted, this isn't much of a deterrent.

So how do you spot a shill? Shillers often set up multiple accounts and IDs. The accounts probably have very low feedback ratings, as they're used for this nefarious purpose only and not to buy anything. Most telling, look at the suspected shillers' bid histories. If the items they bid on are from lots of different categories, that's another red flag, since most bidders tend to stick to just a few favorites.

Think you've found a shill? Report it to eBay's Safe Harbor. If eBay agrees, they'll NARU the seller (make him Not A Registered User; i.e., kick him off) and stop the auction. Unfortunately, that means you won't get a chance to bid on the item, but that's a problem only with very rare merchandise.


Sellers, Beware Of…
BAD PAYMENTS Most sellers wait to ship merchandise until they receive a money order or certified check, or charge the purchase to a credit card. Most will wait an additional week or two for a personal check to clear, although some friendly types ship "on receipt" of a personal check. This is either very sweet or very stupid, depending on your general opinion of the world. It is possible for creeps, using stolen or doctored forms, or even high-quality color printers, to send bogus money orders or bank checks. If you wait until the cash is in your account before you ship, you should have no problems.

Some unscrupulous buyers use credit cards, get the merchandise, then contact the credit card company and claim the item never arrived or was broken. If you use a shipping carrier that can track your package, you can prove it arrived. Be sure to state the shipping costs in your terms when you list your item. Before you ship, ask the buyer if he'd like you to insure the package (at his expense), and if he declines, make it clear that he accepts liability for shipping damage. Escrow services protect sellers in this case as well as buyers.

BID SHIELDING A bid-shielding duo looks for an auction on an expensive product that has a low opening price, no reserve, and that hasn't been bid on yet. Each bidder plunks down a sky-high bid, the second being slightly higher than the first. Because of the way eBay's proxy bidding works, the first bid will go in at the low opening price, and the second one will go in at the maximum (as it has to beat the first bid's maximum), scaring away any other potential bidders. Then, right before the auction ends, the second bidder retracts his bid, letting the rock-bottom low bid win.

The site has time limits on when and how bids can be retracted, but thieves know how to work the angles. The defense against this ploy is a high reserve. Reserves can scare off potential bidders, but they do protect against bid shielders, eBay outages, or just bad luck attracting valid customers.

BUY AND SWITCH Very low tech and nasty, this is a way for crooks to upgrade things they already own. If a scammer has a Rookwood vellum vase with a nick in the rim or a busted Rolex Daytona watch and sees an auction for an identical item in better shape, he makes sure he wins the auction. When he receives the item, he complains bitterly that he's been scammed, keeps the product he just bought, returns his inferior copy, and demands his money back, sometimes threatening blistering negative feedback. Not nice.

At this point, the seller can stick to his guns and risk a flaming negative rating or give in. If he gives in, he's out the eBay fees and is stuck with the switched and inferior product. Bad options.

Sellers can protect themselves to a degree by putting discreet marks on the items they send out. It's easy to use a pen with black-light ink to write an initial on the bottom of the vase that's visible only under an ultraviolet lamp, or to put a small pencil mark on an inside page of a book. And items such as expensive watches typically have serial numbers. But nobody wants to get into a pissing match with a skunk, as the saying goes.

SHIPPER SLAMMING This is a variation on the Buy and Switch scam and is basically a ruse to bilk the insurance company. The guy with the same chipped vase as in the Buy and Switch example wins the better one on eBay. Then, after receiving it, he puts the chipped one in the opened package, stomps on it, and files for an insurance claim with the shipping company. If he wants to be even more evil, he claims the box was empty when it arrived, in which case he now has two copies of the item. While this one doesn't ding the seller (just the shipping company), it violates all sorts of insurance fraud laws, especially if the item is pricey.

BID SIPHONING With this, the bad guys lure bidders away from someone else's auction and offer them an identical product. No fees, no fuss writing the ads or taking photos, and not much eBay can do if the bidder says yes, or if the siphoner is clever about getting the bidders' e-mail addresses. This hurts the real sellers by reducing the bidding pool, but unfortunately, there's not much to be done about it. Consider yourself warned.

A Scam That Hurts Everyone
AUCTION INTERCEPTION After successful auctions, eBay sends notices to buyers and sellers. But at busy times, these may not go out for a day or even longer. And some buyers don't read these very closely (or ignore them) and wait for a note from the seller. Slimeballs can take advantage of this by contacting winning bidders immediately after the auctions end. They pretend they're the seller and try to trick the buyer into rushing payment out to them. Winning buyers are accustomed to getting multiple payment notices from eBay, from the seller, from the seller's automated management software, and even from automatic credit card payment programs. Buyers may send money to the crook and then assume all subsequent e-mails asking for payment are just duplicates that they can delete.

Buyers: Read all those tedious e-mails from eBay carefully. And be wary about sending money if the seller's e-mail address or name is different from what eBay says it is. (You can always double-check with eBay to see what address the seller used when he registered.) Sellers: Send out notice to your winning bidder promptly. Include both payment and contact information.

In the end, grasshoppers, if you're smart, not to mention calm, you too can be an eBay master.


Simple steps to avoid getting ripped off in the auction world

The more you know about the loathsome clot of slime in the dank cesspool beneath our culture that periodically slithers out to prey upon the rest of us, the better you can protect yourself from it:

:: Always use an escrow service.

:: Always use a credit card, not a debit card. Debit cards don't offer scam protection.

:: Check out the sellers thoroughly. View their feedback and, with big-ticket items, e-mail the seller and ask for a phone number and/or address. Then call and see what the experience is like. If you can't get in touch, or you get bad vibes, skip it. Ditto if the offer seems too good to be true or if the seller insists on a form of payment you're not comfortable with.

:: Don't use your e-mail address as your eBay ID. This makes it easier for a scam artist to contact you.

:: Be wary of after-auction offers—eBay won't let you put in an insurance claim or post negative feedback for these, and scammers know this.

The online auction site has spawned a dizzying array of terminology all its own

BID HISTORY: A list of all bids, bidding dates, and bidders for an item. Extremely valuable information, if you know what to do with it.

BUMP: Entering a bid just a bit over the current high bidder's top bid to try to determine where the current high bidder's top limit is. Often done in several successive attempts, each higher than the previous one until the limit is exposed or the bumper gives up. One way to spot a newbie.

DNF: One of eBay's feistiest message boards, dedicated to Discussing eBay's Newest Features. Is often angry in tone.

FEEDBACK: Mechanism that lets buyers and sellers rate transactions as positive, neutral, or negative. Each positive feedback entry usually increases the user's eBay rating. Each negative one decreases the rating. But eBay ignores repeated positive dealings with a single vendor.

NARU: Not A Registered User. What happens when eBay kicks someone off for any offense, from fraud to whining too much publicly. No user wants to be NARUed, although there's nothing to stop you from coming back under a different name (but, of course, without any of your previously accumulated positive feedback points).

NEG: Negative user feedback. Many users won't enter negative feedback, even after a bad experience, in fear of getting retaliatory—although utterly unjustified—negative feedback from the user they zapped.

PRIVATE AUCTION: The names of the bidders and winners are screened from public view. Generally used for eyebrow-raising items.

PROXY BIDDING: An eBay system that automatically bids for you up to a secret top limit. Your bids are increased by just enough to beat each competitor until the top limit of your proxy bid is reached.

RESERVE: The secret minimum price below which an item will not be sold. The seller decides whether or not to set a reserve price when he lists.