[Closed] Your biggest eBay failure?!

Skoda car mats 10p.

surprised you got that much for the front mech, more unfashionable than 26" wheels.

Sold a leather Audi TT interior with seats for £1000. The guy came to collect and as I took one of the seats out of the shear it caught on the dropout of a frame hanging from the roof. One badly torn seat,lots of swearing and an argument later,I ended up giving the guy some petrol money for his journey home.

All in all, a bad eBay day.

2 G-Plan armchairs with no reserve. Bloke won with £2. He was nearby, and on the way to the shops, so I dropped them off too.

I suppose it was a marginally shorter run to his place than the tip.

A grands worth of hardtail for £80.

Your luck to sell a front mech.

I failed to check auctions finishing during last night's football for potential bargains.

Though thanks for the tip, I won't miss out next week now 😉

i severely miscalculated the cost of posting a printer.

It actually cost me money to sell that.

If it makes you feel any better, a mate* paid several hundred quid for an xbox box back when xboxes first came out. 😆

* genuinely it was not me, I'm too tight fisted to buy new consoles

Mine was using an iPad to set up a sale of a coat. And not noticing that the "Will accept returns" button is checked by default.
Then getting into a dispute with some bloody moron who had bought a coat slightly too big for them and wanted to return it! What am I Marks & bleedin Spencers??
Massive row with eBay about freezing my Paypal account because they can't decide for 8 days that I'm right even though they admitted I'm right after 1 day.
Extremely irritating.

DVD box set on ebay, cost more to post than the total selling price

Quite a few years ago when I was an ebay newb, our company changed all it's PC's. They were going to be chucked so I decided to take them all, wipe them, put a clean OS on and sell them on ebay.

They sold like hot cakes, but I stupidly sold them complete with 17" CRT monitors and guestimated the postage. A bloke in Ireland bought 10. Cost me a fortune to post them, and 5 out of the 10 monitors turned up smashed.

on the flip side, i sold the box set of 24 seasons 1-8 for £20 more than I paid once I'd watched it.

Old Haynes manual.
Ebay had a maximum postage charge allowed for books.
This cost considerably more. Made the profit about 10p 😕

Sold some K2 roller blades for £11.70, quoted postage of a fiver, cost £16.50

Total profit of 20p on a pair of £80 blades...

We sold a really nice 3 seater Next sofa for £1.00!

I'm currently hoping my carbon full suss goes for a lot more than the start price I've put on it - and now hoping there's no football on Friday evening, although being a lady's bike, that shouldn't be an issue for potential bidders.

I sold a microwave for a penny.

Fortunately it was pick-up only and the guy rocked up and insisted on giving me the penny.

And a Villeroy & Bosh basin with a very minor mark on it but otherwise unused - again just 1p. Still, that's better than taking it to the recycling centre as ours charges for disposing of things like basins.

Win: bought a pair of second hand Carradice panniers for about £45. Used them for a fair bit of touring, sold them ten years later for about £45.

Fail: single ottoman bed, dead comfy, really well made. Sold it for £3.50.

Sold some hi-fi stuff, think I got £20 when similar stuff was going for £100+. No idea why, did everything right, just no one bid on it for some reason.

I received an email to say I had won the bidding on a Givi tool bag for my BMW. I vaguely remember looking at it one night after the pub (oh dear). Cost me £42 plus postage and a new one is only about £45. When it arrived, it didn't fit (wrong model). I sold it on eBay for about £35.
(Note to self - no more drunken ebaying!)

So, so many. But the most annoying was selling about 40 antique wax cylinder records for a fair price and finding I had a Belgium buyer, despite selecting UK only and making it clear in the description.

He persuaded me he'd pay for the courier and seemed like a decent old chap so I chucked in a pile of extra, empty cylinder boxes, packaged the whole lot as if they were Faberge eggs and foolishly posted them off.

They arrived with five smashed and this guy went absolutely radge. He also insisted the empty boxes I'd sent should have had records in them.

PayPal account frozen, money sucked out of my [i]bank[/i] account, courier company insurance refusing to answer the phone.

Expensive, time-sucking error that one.

ebay can be a fickle beast
i bought an led screen for my gopro hero3 cost £45, i sold on the cases as i got 6 in total and didnt need one size, got £39 for them

ps.I've never seen the point of a reserve, when a mate can set one for you.

Forgot about the football effect, need to log in next week.
Have got some massive deals in the past where the seller was clearly a bit pissed about the outcome

taking it to the recycling centre as ours charges for disposing of things like basins

[img] [/img]

Cost about £150 I recall, Excellent condition, put it on for auction 99p, no reserve.collect only. One bid £1.00 won it, woman who came to collect brought a bunch of flowers for Mrs George as she felt guilty at getting such a bargain!

Sold a set of wheel trim still in the packet, way underestimated the postage so after post and fees was still £2 in profit until the bell end said there was a tiny scratch when he opened the packet and refused my off of a refund and because I was an e bay Newby at the time ended up refunding him. So lost out completely.

Didnt read the new t and c saying my sales were open to international bidders and fell foul to a fake bidder with no feedback

We sold a glass dining room table (quite a nice one), went for a fair-ish price (£112.47p or something like that), we had it 2nd hand and apid similar for it so weren't fussed. We sort of assumed the guy would round it upto £115 or £120 or something. But no, the guy stood there counting out the pennies giving the impression he wanted us to tell him to keep the change and call it £110 or something. No, you sniped the guy who bid £112, you can dam well give us the last 47p!

Gave away a (perfectly good, bu CBA with ebay at the time) sofa on freecycle, family turned up in a van for it, and sat in the van whilst we loaded it, getting it down from our flat on the hottest day of the year! Very nearly dropped it outside our door and told them to shift it themselves, but I'm too polite.

Tried to sell some roof bars my dad gave me, which don't fit my car.

Started at £25. No interest.

Started at £0.99. No interest.

Eventually someone bid the £0.99 but refused to confirm what day and time he would be coming to pay and collect them until I'd given him my address. I said that when he told me when he was coming, I would make sure someone was around and I would let him have my details.

This went on for way longer than it should have. So I just gave up. And got charged something like 25p for the privilege of not having sold my roof bars. Going to take them to the tip soon.

Never heard of this ?? .. i work at the local HRC and we dont charge anything , Basins,ceramics etc just go into the rubble to get recycled

Recently I had to pay £11 to dispose of some half empty bags of plaster that a workman left behind in our garage after doing some work on our house.

http://m.northyorks.gov.uk/article/29205/Hardcore-rubble-and-plasterboard-waste?

Never heard of this ?? .. i work at the local HRC and we dont charge anything , Basins,ceramics etc just go into the rubble to get recycled

charge in devon too. the introduction of which coincided with the marked increase in fly tipping further down the quiet road the tip is on.

I've just sold all of my archery gear. I made the mistake of trusting eBay's recommended postage costs, not realising that several of the items would cost £11.99 due to the length, even though they weighed very little!

I was after a second hand sofa, so after selecting 'ending soonest' on my search, one of the first few items caught my eye and was infact fairly local, and it was only on a 99p starting bid. The photo just showed the sofa against a white background.

As there was only about 30 seconds to go so I made a snap decision to bid £1. I won the auction, and on re-reading the description imagine my delight to find that I'd just bought a minature sofa for a dolls house 😳

I sold 2 landrover discovery (1) rear doors for 99p each, guy collected was very happy. On the flip side though, I have on bought 2 Superwinches for £10 each, and then sold them on for £150+ so it does even out to some degree.

If you don't want to sell it cheap, either set a reserve or a suitable staring price, but either way, honor the deal.

Fell asleep [s]passed out when getting home from the pub[/s] when winning and bidding on a Zaskar LE. My bid was £55. It went for £59. It'd been my dream bike since I understood MTB'ing. It can't have been ridden much more than home from the LBS!

Full M9000 too!

I'm frankly the benchmark for ****ing up eBay stuff.

Bought a car unseen (mk2 MR2) it was a Cat D too, which I knew - spent 8 hours on trains, and coaches to collect it with no real way of getting home but to buy it (which of course I was committed to do if 'as advertised' it wasn't, the engine was wrecked but I bought it anyway to get home - got a quote to make a rough car a running rough car of 150% of what I bought it for - sold it again 2 weeks later for a £700 loss.

Cleaned out my stuff as my Mums place, found a small pile of unopened PS2 games, sold them 99p no reserve - they all sold for £1 - £3 to the same person, sent them off - quoted the P&P as £1.99, the stamp on the jiffy bag said £1.25 so he trashed my feedback, on EVRRY SINGLE ONE OF THEM without ever contacting me, I appealed eBay said "tough luck" only in 600 words.

Sold a PC I was given when we were closing an old Office in work, it was 2 years old and a Dell, that's all I knew about it, this was 10 years ago before I knew anything about IT stuff, so I took the name off the front of it - it said something like Optiplex T130 so I looked on the Dell site and cut and paste the spec list from Dell to eBay - sold it for a huge amount I thought - £400 or so, carefully boxed it up and sent it via courier - 48 hours later and my inbox lit up with threats of legal action from buyer, threats of excommunication from eBay and all manner of threats from PP - it seems I had sold a basic, entry level 3 year old PC using the spec from the top of the range, halo model from the current line-up, the 'T130' bit was a huge range of machines that just used the same case - but the buyers language was so aggressive I fought it for a bit assuming he was trying to scam me - gave him a full refund, including posting and let him keep the PC, he threw it in a skip I think.

And really that’s a the highlight reel…

I’ve done a lot better with stuff I know though.

I had a set of 2006 36’s with a knackered damper, bought a complete set of forks with a cracked lower and swapped them over – sold them again, this time listed as “cracked lower, broken damper” someone paid me £3 more than I paid for them, he was local so called around I gave him a hand to swap the CSU for his broken ones, I’m not sure if he resold them to someone needing the air side or perhaps some knobs or something, but that was a very broken fork when it left my garage that day.

Bought a pile of motorbike clothing in winter years ago, sizing for motorbike stuff it much worse than MTB stiff, you need to have a ballerinas build for jackets, short legs for jeans but mostly VERY narrow feet, I’m size 9, I finally found some boots in size 12 that I could get on. Anyway, come spring I had a pile of stuff that didn’t fit which I’d paid £200-£300 for, sold for £900 when the sun came out.

Bought a set of RS Lyrik RC2DH 26” forks last spring for £180, they were virginal they were so clean and tidy and came with a bill from CRC saying they’d cost the seller £500 6 month previously, sold my rough looking 36s for £250 which were 5 years old, I should thank Fox’s marketing team for that I suppose, the Lyriks were by far the better fork, if a bit heavier, they were pretty brilliant in fact – sold them this spring for £250ish again.

Not sure it quite counts as a failure but our old 25" Sony CRT TV sold for 99p - the buyer did at least collect and saved a trip to the tip.

Jakester - Member
Tried to sell some roof bars my dad gave me, which don't fit my car.

Going to take them to the tip soon.

What car are they for? Someone on here (me if it's the right car) may be interested.

Oh, if we're also allowed success stories... I was at Xscape in Castleford one day and the local Puma store were selling really naff knee / elbow pads for 10p a packet in a huge bargain bin. I bought as many as I could be arsed stuffing in the car (about £20 worth) and sold each one for about a fiver plus postage.

Good job I lived 30 seconds away from the local post office. They hated me in there.

Just had my frame "won" by someone with no history, which is strange as they've been a member for 4 years.

Also lives in Chile, so I won't hold my breath for payment....

Large 25L Hydrapak including brand new 3L res - £7.

Someone in South Wales got themselves a bargain.

A few years back, I meant to order the Wii console version of Endless Ocean for better half, but seconds after confirming the purchase, realised I had ordered the wrong platform version! 😳

Contacted seller immediately, they were great and sent a Wii version out, but the other platform version had already been processed so was asked to return it when it arrived. Well it arrived, but it is buried somewhere in the flat, silly me forgot to return it. 😳 😳

A grands worth of hardtail for £80.

I know I'll take pelters, but I wouldn't have sold it.

johndoh - Member
Never heard of this ?? .. i work at the local HRC and we dont charge anything , Basins,ceramics etc just go into the rubble to get recycled

Yup - Harrogate council - ceramics, rubble, plasterboard etc - all counted as 'home improvements' and they charge to dump it.
Recently I had to pay £11 to dispose of some half empty bags of plaster that a workman left behind in our garage after doing some work on our house.

http://m.northyorks.gov.uk/article/29205/Hardcore-rubble-and-plasterboard-waste?

apologies for the hijack again,this really surprised me as im in birmingham and we charge for nothing ? .. only thing we dont take is asbestos or sharps
we have to deal with massive vans as well which carry literally tonnes of crap !, we have said in the past that people should get charged for it, im gonna print the price list off and leave it around the place to see anyone takes notice 🙂

 

They don't charge in Leeds either, but they're all posh in Harrogate so it's fair enough!! 😉

th no history, which is strange as they've been a member for 4 years.
Also lives in Chile, so I won't hold my breath for paym

I've just sold one of those kirk magnesium frames on eBay, had 2 enquiries asking if I'd ship it to Chile.

Sold stuff that's left me at £0 before but I hate wasting things, it's a slog and sometimes not worth it but selling the contents of our shed has paid for a week in Dorset. Also, less stuff, this is a good thing.

Sold a proper old school petrol mower (the self propelled type with a big roller on the front) It went for the 99p listing price.

I told my missus "he's bound to give us a fiver for it - I would if it was me" Nope he gave me a quid and insisted on his 1p change the bastard!

I just sell using Buy It Now these days, seems better for everyone.

I've just sold all of my archery gear. I made the mistake of trusting eBay's recommended postage costs, not realising that several of the items would cost £11.99 due to the length, even though they weighed very little!

If it's not too late, have you checked MyHermes? They take irregular shaped stuff way cheaper than RM.

Last week I found to my surprise in my Inbox that I had bought a carbon 29er full build (probebly someone on here) which was on for £1200 as a buy it now or best offer and collect only. I still have no idea how this happened. I never do drunk purchases and it was anyway `bought' the previous day at 4pm when I was on holiday. Ebay confirmed my account had not been hacked and I can't believe my 4 yr old could have done it. My frame only searches had no relevance either, nor would I want to collect a bike from the other side of the country anyway. The only thing I could put it down to was my iphone screen was cracked and until I put it on 5 second lock had been opening random pages on my phone when in my pocket for example, getting as far as almost deleting a few apps.

Sent some apology emails to the seller and rang ebay in a flap, but they were fine about it and the seller has now cancelled the purchase. In hindsight slightly gutted as it was a nice bike and the Wife didn't seem [i]that[/i] annoyed about the possibility of me loosing £1200 on a bike I neither could afford nor needed, so that barometer has been filed away for the future 🙂

on a flipside..

won a very nice speaker stand (newish) for peanuts rrp should be £180 .. no one bids and its collect only and very heavy , got it for like £5 😆 ..I cannot forget the look on his face when I collected it . I even say sorry and gave him £20 😀

A couple of weeks ago i sold a few items, anyway cocked it all up and one buyer ended up with two items.

Not getting the wrong one back 🙁

Its a shame as the bloke who never got what he bought seems like a descent bloke. (Full refund)

Using non-tracked postage, right back when (2004?), that was a mistake I never made again. So, buyer gets this bubble image '60s projector thing, pays £25 plus some post. I'm on holiday. I say as much. He then makes a massive fuss about me not being responsive and not getting his projector. I return from holiday. Apologise for being on holiday and not checking ebay. Send projector. Several weeks later it turns out he's claimed he never received it and I'm down £35. Never again.

Guesstimating postage has gone a bit wrong on a few occassions. Never again, and never use RM.

I won a Kona retro frame for 99p and went to collect it, was surprised that the bloke sold it to me for that little but he was chuffed it would be reused (it was a state but a repaint sorted it) - looked in his garage where it was stored and you couldn't have fitted another molecule in it - he was just listing everything for 99p and he didn't care how much it went for.

Sold a nice scanner for 99p as my new OS didn't support it. Bloke who came to collect it was really nervous as he didn't think I'd sell it for so little but I was just glad someone could make use of it.

I put a pretty ratty pine table up for sale for 99p. I could have sanded it back and painted it and got £150 for it but I was hoping someone might think the same and I didn't have time to do it. Bloke messages me and said what did I want for it, I said £30 and he sent someone round to pick it up that day so I canceled the auction. The bloke picking it up said he did this all the time for the buyer and he would strip it and sand it and sell it on for a profit. Again, I got a decent amount of money, it was going to be reused and someone was making a living out of what I was selling so I was very happy! Can't stand to see things going to waste.

biggest ebay failure.

ACTUALLY BEING STUPID ENOUGH TO USE EBAY.

pocpoc - Member
What car are they for? Someone on here (me if it's the right car) may be interested.

Mk7 Honda Accord touring. One of these:

[img] [/img]

Selling a nice Ti hardtail, was hoping to get >£800, but instead of listing it to sell at 9pm Sunday, listed it as 9am Sunday. Disaster & £450.

Tried to sell some roof bars my dad gave me, which don't fit my car.

Started at £25. No interest.

Started at £0.99. No interest.

The problem with trying to sell car accessories on eBay is that the market is flooded with cheap new ones. I know, because I was about to buy a bike rack from Halfords for £100 or whatever, then I looked on eBay and found them for £20.

I think someone would rather spend £20 on a new thing from a bulk seller than go through the hassle of getting a slightly better bargain from a private seller, with all of the hassle that potentially entails.

The problem with trying to sell car accessories on eBay is that the market is flooded with cheap new ones

...and they're all abject crap.

Most useful thing you can do if searching for car accessory bits on ebay is to tick the "condition - used" box... 99% i.e. the "universal" rubbish is removed. You stick a chance of finding the manufacturer's original bits that way, or something made by a reputable brand.

Sold a tube amps for £660 on ebay, the next year the buyer sells it on for £1600, and uses my name and some pictures from the HiFi show I used it at as provence for it 🙁

ACTUALLY BEING STUPID ENOUGH TO USE EBAY.

Care to expand on that?

Possibly without the caps.

bongohoohaa - Member

[i]ACTUALLY BEING STUPID ENOUGH TO USE EBAY.[/i]

Care to expand on that?

Possibly without the caps.

a c t u a l l y b e i n g s t u p i d e n o u g h t o u s e e b a y

Better?

a c t u a l l y b e i n g s t u p i d e n o u g h t o u s e e b a y

so the original was a pretty stupid comment, and this one is even more stupid?

What other forum gives you the visibility for selling to as many people ?

This affects prices, add in 'auction fever' as it's an attractive proposition. The main downer is fees, but if you can't get as good prices elsewhere you haven't got the option.

so the original was a pretty stupid comment, and this one is even more stupid?

I think the joke is they have literally expanded on the original comment.

It at least deserves a...

[img] [/img]

I think the joke is they have literally expanded on the original comment.

lost the spaces though.

[pre]a c t u a l l y b e i n g s t u p i d e n o u g h t o u s e e b a y[/pre]

An old 128gb ssd drive that went for £30. Just stuck it in a jiffy bag & posted it. I didnt ask for a receipt at the post office being in a rush & near christmas.
It never arrived (they claim, maybe it didnt but I am inherently distrustful). So I send them another jiffy with a cat 5 cable cut in half but got a receipt from the PO this time, then was able to claim £25 back from the royalmail, so a monetary loss averted.

Sold an Alpine 160 a few years back. It was one of our ex-hire bikes, but had barely been used due to the great Fox Fork Scandal of summer 2013. 3-months old, £3000 new, went for £650 on ebay.

Got a whole load of grief from the buyer because the saddle had a wee tear on it.

I had a load of 38mm chipboard left over from a mezz floor install so rather than put it in a skip, stuck it on ebay for 99p NR. Sold it for 99p but the bloke said it was too big so handed over a £1 and left. Put it back on and a week later sold it for £56.

The vaguaries of Ebay! 🙂

Care to expand on that?

NO 🙄

so the original was a pretty stupid comment, and this one is even more stupid?

Judgmental nobber on STW making even more stupid comment.

Care to expand on that?

NO

why the hell not?

If you can't justify your statement then who's the nobber here ?

Judgmental nobber on STW making even more stupid comment.

Genuine lol.

Who's pissed on your chips?

Thread: EJECT!

why the hell not?

holy overreaction to something posted on www....batman

Thread: EJECT!

exactly , sensitive bunnies on here today.

sensitive bunnies on here today.

Don't get excited, Sam 🙂

This was my worst buy. Also my best as I've only ever bought this on ebay.

[IMG] [/IMG]

I love riding this in to worl. This morning in the rain I even came in the 8ml route instead of the 4, just to get a couple more little 'hills'.
Eliptical front ring single speed not fixed. And a stoopid stem.

You got done mate, it's only got half a fork.

Worst: selling some Lyriks to someone who had buyers remorse (he worked in an lBS soy could have got them trade for what he paid used, and prob realised after the event) and claimed they had all sorts of damage. I gave a full refund and got thrm back. To find he'd cut the steerer in the short time he had them so short they wouldn't fit my bike :/

Best: buying a Fox shock from a Chinese seller for £60. Never getting around to fitting it. Selling it for £120.

Worst:

Sold two Ground Effect jerseys, same size and condition, different colours, two buyers. Sent wrong one to both, one guy was fine, other wasn't so had to pay double for postage on both 🙁

Best:
Idly put a lowball bid on a leather suite, poorly advertised. Massively surprised to win it at £7.50. Even more surprised when I collected it, as it was in really good condition and made by Stressless, retail over £4k 8O. Kept the sofa, sold the chairs for £350 🙂

I once ended up bidding against myself on a bike. (Don't ask, drunk eBay logic)