On 2007-12-28 18:09:32 +0000, Lobster said:

Andy Hall wrote:
On 2007-12-28 14:14:20 +0000, Lobster
said:

Tim Ward wrote:
"Lobster" wrote in message
...
a 'good' transaction paid for by Paypal - which does account
for the vast majority of ours - really is totally smooth and
very quick and easy.

A 'good' transaction carried out by any means would be "totally smooth
and very quick and easy".

Agreed - but Andy seemed to be saying the opposite.

And I do find the whole ebay thing extremely straightforward for
lots of stuff, items that I really don't know where else I'd go to
buy or sell with anything remotely approaching 'convenience'.

What matters is when things go wrong.

For sure...


That's really my point.

For the most part, I don't want to have to get into an
argument/recovery game with individuals over buying and selling,
especially of small things.

But I would maintain even considering the very small % of transactions
which do go wrong, you're still very much quids-in overall whether you
counting in terms of your time or cash.

That's probably true. The problem is that one has no real way of
knowing which transaction will go wrong until it happens. It might
then be a case of having to act quickly to resolve the situation.

Even when buying through a regular internet site with the protection of
the Distance Selling Regulations, there are time limits. For that
reason, I never order an item that will need to be checked or tested by
me before going on a business trip.

As far as costing of time is concerned, I have to consider the
opportunity cost as well as direct cost. Therefore there has to be
quite a large saving to make it interesting for me to take a risk on
something that is going to be time consuming to fix if there is an
issue.

I'm not risk averse - far from it - *BUT* the return on the risk has to
be large enough to make it worth bothering.



Eg - my most recent ebay purchase...the other day I needed some inkjet
cartridges for my now-obsolete printer; I usually pay about 7 quid a pop
for these from a shop a few miles away: this time I typed the model
number into ebay and it threw up several hits - result was that I paid
£2.00 all-in for 6 cartridges which landed on my doormat two days later.
(it cost the poor guy £2.10 to post them!). If I'd bought them from
dabs.com or somewhere I can't see how I could have spent less time and
hassle.

I understand. I might have done this by accident on a search but
wouldn't spend time looking through Ebay for it. If I could be
reasonably convinced that the seller was selling branded cartridges for
a genuine reason - e.g. his printer has broken and he has spare
cartridges then fair enough.
I might buy compatible cartridges from a known supplier, but not from
an Ebay one. If they cock up the printer then the cost of acquiring a
new one far exceeds any saving.


In terms of selling stuff, I've been able to get rid of plenty of junk
from the house and garage which would otherwise have cost me time and
petrol to take down to the dump, but people have happily come and paid
me money to remove from my property.... my most successful ebay sale? I
had an old much-loved Lewis Leathers biker jacket in the back of my
wardrobe, waiting to see if the male menopause would strike soon enough
to get me back on a motorcycle before my ever-expanding waistline
rendered the jacket totally obsolete for me. Unfortunately the latter
condition prevailed, and SWMBO decreed that it was time it went to the
dump. Decided to have a punt on ebay, as it was a quite nice jacket
really (cost me 80 or 90 quid new IIRC, circa 1982). It ended up going
for a jaw-dropping 650 quid, plus about 50 to Fedex, to some bloke in
Tokyo, who later professed himself to be delighted with the deal!

David

That's in the realm of collector's items I guess. I have never heard
of Lewis Leathers, but imagine that it it is perhaps a cult item?
Presumably you knew that it was better than a dump item.

I think that the closest thing I have to something like that is two
full sets of Natwest Piggies complete with bungs in pristine condition
from when the kids were small. I imagine that they have some value
as sets but I am not about to sell them anyway.