I am a very cautious person, and I am extremely weary when dealing with someone 100% online and without personal physical contact like eBay allows.  I have come up with a method of selecting sellers that so far has worked to 100% accuracy for me.  While this may mean that some sellers who are on the up and up are rejected from my selection, it does mean that all of my items have arrived, with very few disputes over the last 4 years of using eBay. 

Criteria #1.  I view the feedback of the seller carefully.  Not just their score because their score is meaningless to me if it is 98.5% positive but in the last month alone they have received over 1,000 negatives.  That would be a seller whom I would avoid at all costs.  Now in order to have that high a feedback rating they are obviously doing massive amounts of business on eBay, but doing that massive amount of business is obviously leaving people upset for one reason or another.  I think I will pass.

Criteria #2.  If you have more than six negatives in a month you are moved to my Not in this lifetime stack of sellers.  Now to be fair, I will investigate the negatives to see if I feel it was a legitimate reason or not.  If you give a seller a negative because the item was non-working when you received it and the auction clearly states non-working or sold As-Is, which is sellers lingo for broken then I’m not going to count that against the seller.  However, if the seller is claiming that something is brand new and sealed in the original box and people are complaining about broken parts, non-receipt, or missing stuff from the box then your staying in the not in this lifetime stack. 

Criteria #3.  If your feedback consists of nothing more than penny auctions, I am not going to be the sucker to place a bid on an item that costs more than $50-60 bucks.  I would like to see others leave you positive feedback on larger amounts before I am willing to risk my money.  Just today I was surfing eBay and stumbled upon a seller was had 98.7% positive feedback with only one negative in the last month.  His item I was looking at was already at slightly over $1,000.  Ok for the item, it was a fair price, however upon examining his feedback his highest previous sales were some pairs of jean shorts that sold for a whopping penny.  Ok that is great he is cleaning out his closets, but I am not going to take a chance that this is a legitimate auction instead of a scam.  Once he gets a few high-ticket feedbacks under his belt, I will look at him again. 

Criteria #4.  If at all possible, I prefer sellers in the US.  Reason for this is simple, I am in the US, and if something has to be shipped in, the shipping costs alone jack up the price of the item immensely.  This can double or even triple the purchase price of an item quite quickly depending on the size and weight.  If it is an item that I absolutely cannot find in the US somewhere I will go ahead and select a foreign seller as long as they meet my other criteria and have reasonable shipping rates.  Other bad news with out of country sellers is the time it takes to even receive the packages.  I had to wait 8 weeks for a single DVD to arrive.  I was really upset, however the postmark on the package was in fact from 7 weeks ago, so the seller was not to blame, but the shipping company certainly was not on my Christmas list that year. 

Criteria #5.  The item needs to be something that I can get cheaper by purchasing online.  I do not want to waste money under any circumstances, I am not sitting around burning dollar bills with a lighter, and I do not want to waste money on eBay either.  If I am buying something online it is either cheaper than in the stores, or a hard to find item that my only option to locate it seems to be eBay. 

Criteria #6.  I stick to the old adage, if it seems too good to be true, it more than likely is.  For example I am not going to expect to purchase a brand-new working Nintendo Wii for $100 off of eBay.  Obviously, an auction like this screams either scam, or really angry seller who just lost a lot of money in this deal.  Either way I am not very likely to actually receive my incredibly priced Nintendo Wii.  While I am not saying that these types of scams occur frequently, I am as I said before a very weary person who is cautious.  I would rather be safe than sorry. 

While I do realize that some sellers are unfairly excluded from my business with this criteria I have managed to be scam free so far, I have managed to find some great deals on eBay and been able to find some hard to locate items and saved money at the same time.  Well I am off to dig around on eBay for more Bratz stuff for my oldest who is recently Bratz obsessed.  Happy Shopping and Surfing!