Who among us does not know the famous American eBay shopping store, Definitely one of the biggest stores that grew up in the United States, It is one of the oldest and most powerful e-commerce stores. Its establishment dates back to 1995 AD. The reason is that it is considered one of the most powerful stores in the United States of America and is second only to the Amazon store in that its idea is to put products in the form of an auction on its website.
Whoever pays a higher price than the buyers gets the product. Although it is one of the best and most powerful online stores , it has drawbacks and also has advantages. In this article, we will highlight the advantages and disadvantages of shopping through eBay.
Ebay.com.. Best American Online Shopping Site 2022
Foundation:
eBay was launched in 1995 by its founder and owner, Pierre Omidyar. It is located in San Jose County, California. Where he started his activity from there as an online auction site, It was initially called Auction Web and operated under the domain echobay.com, but soon changed the domain name to ebay.com in 1997 due to the fact that this domain was held by a gold mining company.
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In 1997, the site received a large financial support from Benchmark Capital, amounting to $6.7 million, which in turn contributed significantly to the start of the spread of eBay. One of the most important events that contributed to the expansion of eBay’s services and the increase in the number of products offered to it was that it acquired iBazaar, which specializes in online auctions in Europe, in 1998 and integrated it into eBay’s services.
As well as the biggest event of buying the famous PayPal site in 2002 AD with the aim of transferring money online with reliability and safety,
PayPal remained owned by eBay until 2015, when it became an independent company from eBay.
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Advantages of shopping through Ebay
- eBay provides millions of products offered from various fields, which are constantly renewed, All imaginable products, whether new or used, can be found on eBay and added to your shopping cart.
- eBay provides the ability to ship products to all countries of the world, You never have to worry about how the product will reach you. The site has a long experience that extends for years in shipping and delivering products in all countries of the world.
- Through eBay, you can buy products in two systems: The first system is to obtain products using the bidding system, i.e. paying the highest price to purchase the product, but products can be obtained by bidding system at a lower price in many cases. Or a single and fixed price system for the product that you find written under the product, So that you can order the product at this price and get it very quickly and easily.
- You can also do the entire shopping process through the eBay website and view prices and products through the eBay application via smartphones, This feature is preferred by most shoppers. It is a positive feature provided by the eBay store.
- eBay guarantees a refund from the seller in the event that the product does not meet the specifications requested by the buyer and the refund is made no later than two days after the refund request, The eBay site is very strict in this aspect and imposes heavy penalties on violating sellers and warns them, and the penalties may reach to ban the seller’s account through the site and prevent him from using the site permanently.
- eBay displays to the buyer all the details about the product he ordered, including the cost of shipping to his country before buying the product, The price of the product is without shipping, In addition to the total cost of the product after shipping costs, This is before completing the purchase order.
- Payment via eBay is made through a secure and powerful payment gateway for credit card payments, In addition to providing payment via the well-known PayPal site.
- eBay offers many high-value vintage products and merchandise. In addition to antiques and rare items that you can buy from the site.
- Also, eBay offers many product shipping and delivery methods that you can choose among them when you order the product.
- It is possible to work in the field of dropshipping through the eBay site and make more profits, as it allows this feature to market the products that are located inside the site.
- When you shop on eBay, you shop with confidence and security because the site is highly reliable and 100% and has customers from all over the world.
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Cons of Shopping on Ebay
- The product you ordered from eBay may be damaged during the process of being shipped and transported from eBay warehouses to your country.
- Some orders are lost during the process of being shipped and transported from eBay warehouses to your country and you pay for them and do not reach you.
- eBay does not provide a specific shipping company to ship products to customers, There are many product shipping companies that ship products from eBay, This causes many errors to occur during the process of shipping the products with the difficulty of tracking them by the site due to the large number of shipping requests for the products and shipping them by different shipping companies.
- Most of the shipping companies that work with eBay are specific to each of the countries where eBay stores are located, Which means that they are mostly local shipping companies, and this sometimes causes slow delivery of orders and takes longer to reach customers in those countries.
- The buyer through eBay is exposed to many scams and frauds through the bidding system, where he gets the item at a price that is much higher than its real price and he does not know it, Therefore, it is preferable to buy goods with a fixed price system to bypass this problem.
- The possibility of being deceived and cheated as a result of anyone being able to register on eBay and offer their product for sale, As a result of this matter, the shipments requested by the buyer do not arrive, or its arrival, but with different specifications from the specifications requested by the buyer, Sometimes the buyer arrives with damaged or counterfeit products that are not original, but are completely similar to the original in terms of external appearance.
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Important Tips When Buying Through Ebay
- Do not buy any illegal product such as buying drugs or anything that is generally prohibited, Every purchase is registered to eBay and your account may be banned sooner or later after reviewing your purchase and starting shipping the product to you.
- Be careful when buying and avoid selling counterfeit, counterfeit and non-original products. It is best to look at the ratings of the seller and the reviews of the customers who have purchased from him, In general, it is preferable not to buy from new sellers if they offer high-priced products to avoid fraud and deception. It is good to look at the seller’s profile and make sure that he is a real person who has put his full data before completing the purchase.
- It is best to search well on many of the major online auction sites for the same product that you want to buy from eBay and make sure that it is really a real product and that it is the same product that the seller is offering on eBay, Each product has its own serial number that can be checked and confirmed by the product data that will appear in front of you if it is an original and not a counterfeit product. No data will appear if the product is counterfeit or counterfeit.
- It is preferable to purchase through PayPal to guarantee your right as a buyer and to raise a dispute with the seller in the event that the product does not meet the specifications you requested.
- Use the refund feature on your eBay account to file a complaint against the seller and be sent to eBay if the product is not exactly what you ordered, eBay will resolve the issue between you and the seller within 24 hours or 48 hours at the latest.
- Make sure the product return service is available from the seller you want to buy from via eBay.
- Ensure that the seller can ship the product to the country where you live, In addition to obtaining information about shipping costs and whether they include the price of the product as a whole or not.
- Knowing all the information about the customs and taxes that are imposed on the products upon their arrival in the buyer’s country, Did the seller incur these costs and include them in the final invoice, or should the buyer pay them separately to the local authorities in his country?
- The buyer must make sure that the product he will order is from the list of products allowed to be brought into his country and not from the list of prohibited items.
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Important tips when selling on Ebay
- Use PayPal as the primary payment method when selling, Or if the method is a check, the full price of the product must be received before completing the sale and shipped to the customer for fear of being defrauded by some buyers who are not serious about buying.
- The communication between the seller and the buyer must be via the eBay website through the internal correspondence system provided by the site, It should not be done externally via e-mail to avoid being deceived by the buyer and not being serious about the purchase.
- Transactions on your eBay account as well as through your PayPal account should be monitored on an ongoing basis to ensure that all transactions are legitimate and legal and that you as a seller actually do, And that there is no problem in any of these transactions.
- Be very wary of fake e-mails that come in the name of eBay and PayPal, And always check the email address of the sender of the message.
Regardless of the fact that there are some negatives that you may encounter as a buyer or seller when using the eBay website, the site always tries to solve and reduce these negatives and punish offending sellers by banning their accounts and preventing them from using the platform permanently. That is why it is a very good option to get a lot of products at competitive prices, which are the lowest among the popular online auction sites.
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