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Selling stuff on eBay


Bash Riprock

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And now we have a customer circling around on the slow-pay flake-out zoo train.

I've got a pretty detached protocol. First, send a faultlessly polite note asking if he still wants it, or would like to cancel, and either is OK. (Because it is-- I don't want to send a nice easy-to-pawn widget to a broke resentful person 1,000 miles away.)

Then if he doesn't respond, we run through the eBay reporting process, staying detached, completely within the lines. Don't want to look like two rednecks rolling around on Springer.

Fuggit. Minor inconvenience, rather sell it to somebody else.

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usps is the derel of delivery options.
that said, i've had a buyer receive a shipment, pull out a specific card/component, and then complain to ebay that i ripped them off. 
 
What recourse do you have when that happens? I had a friend (she was a designer at Gucci in Milan or Florence or wherever they were) sell her Gucci handbag on eBay. After receiving the item, the buyer claimed my friend had sent a fake bag. My friend had taken pictures of the serial numbers and unique markings which were registered with Gucci, got her manager to write to eBay confirming its provenance, but eBay still made her pay back the $1,400 and let the buyer keep the bag. The pics of the supposed bag received by the buyer were of a completely different bag. This was about eight years ago. Been scared off from selling big ticket items on eBay ever since.
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2 hours ago, gsoda3 said:
On 7/5/2018 at 2:22 PM, The University said:
usps is the derel of delivery options.
that said, i've had a buyer receive a shipment, pull out a specific card/component, and then complain to ebay that i ripped them off. 
 

What recourse do you have when that happens? I had a friend (she was a designer at Gucci in Milan or Florence or wherever they were) sell her Gucci handbag on eBay. After receiving the item, the buyer claimed my friend had sent a fake bag. My friend had taken pictures of the serial numbers and unique markings which were registered with Gucci, got her manager to write to eBay confirming its provenance, but eBay still made her pay back the $1,400 and let the buyer keep the bag. The pics of the supposed bag received by the buyer were of a completely different bag. This was about eight years ago. Been scared off from selling big ticket items on eBay ever since.

Buddy of mine who is the type who will argue about whether he argues too much, he used to go to the Post Office and fill out a little card for Mail Fraud on the person. He said, win or lose, they had to get a lawyer and show up to talk to the postal inspectors.

He'd file those mail fraud claims like hammering nails. One time, a teenager cancelled payment for some game stuff, and when my buddy called the kid, kid said "Fuuuuck you, nothing you can do." Then after he got the USPS involved on a fraud claim, kid's dad is on the horn asking my friend to drop the charges, offering a thousand bucks extra to let it go.

My pal said he didn't need the money. Said maybe send your kid to military school. Stone cold.

I think my friend probably caused half his own problems, because he's the type who can get a little too clever, and was probably stepping outside eBay to cut them out of fees. That sort of attracts the shady crowd.

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Me I only got scammed once, the dude was so pathetic he made up some story about how the stuff came back to him for insufficient postage. Like, 70 bucks of silver. I thought back to my buddy and his Mail Fraud method, because I am sure the USPS would have made a record if returning a package. I FB-stalked the dude and saw that he had a newborn baby, figured maybe he had suffered temporary insanity from sleep deprivation, so all I did was a vanilla complaint through eBay channels. They gave me my money back, and dude isn't selling on eBay, all good.

About once a year I'll run into somebody who's just crazy. You can kind of tell if you look at what feedback they give other people-- I avoid dealing with somebody whose feedback looks like The Cloak Room. One woman in England ordered some art from me, I sent it, then she started "testing" me saying she never got it. Her feedback said that she "didn't get" things more than you'd expect. I looked up the nearest post office in her village, and offered to contact them so as to help her. Amazingly, she found the shit I sent her while we were chatting about it.

Edited by RDCanecutter
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5 hours ago, gsoda3 said:
On 7/5/2018 at 2:22 PM, The University said:
 

What recourse do you have when that happens?

we went back and forth for a month. eventually eBay was able to meet me in the middle.

after a bit of simple backtracking, apparently he was an attorney of some sort still living with his parents who was collecting the exact type of peipherals that he ripped out of the system. his responses were so batshit crazy it was simply amazing. basically he would write thousand word unintelligible essays without paragraphs and minimal punctuation to express one simple thought. even though he was over 40, i was tempted to contact his parents and ask wtf?

Edited by The University
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  • 3 weeks later...

I have a guy on eBay that is persistently contacting me. I have a vintage Arkansas Razorback print by Dirk West from the 70s. I listed the item 6 months ago for 50.00 and it didn't sell. I don't think its too high because I had the same the same print sale for 85.00 dollars a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy asks me if I still have the print that didn't sell for 50.00 and if I wanted to sell it for 40.00. I told him I want to hang on to it because it might sell for more and I'm just not ready to relist it.  I didn't tell him this but it's in my parent's garage and I'm too lazy to get it out. 

I told him all of that, and I get a message once a week. I blocked him through eBay but he still is able to email me. It's really fucking annoying. I've told him no. But he persists.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I went through a purge of stuff I bought and rarely use (pocket knives, watches, multi-tools) and as expected 85% were no problem.  Most items auctioned at higher than I tried to list as "buy it now" so I am not complaining.  Even with the fees and shipping, came out good enough for me.  

The non-payers were really annoying.  But just as above, I sent an invoice.  A reminder after a day.  Then went through the non-payer process.  It just wasted my time.  Luckily, I didn't need the money right away.  

I also didn't like the "Zero insertion fees for the first 50 listings" hook they use to get you to list.  To a novice like me means I read no fees on the first 50.  What it really meant was "don't worry about, we won't bite you on the way in, but we'll take a bite on the way out."  Whatever.  

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  • 5 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
On 9/12/2018 at 1:17 PM, Bash Riprock said:

I have a guy on eBay that is persistently contacting me. I have a vintage Arkansas Razorback print by Dirk West from the 70s. I listed the item 6 months ago for 50.00 and it didn't sell. I don't think its too high because I had the same the same print sale for 85.00 dollars a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy asks me if I still have the print that didn't sell for 50.00 and if I wanted to sell it for 40.00. I told him I want to hang on to it because it might sell for more and I'm just not ready to relist it.  I didn't tell him this but it's in my parent's garage and I'm too lazy to get it out. 

I told him all of that, and I get a message once a week. I blocked him through eBay but he still is able to email me. It's really fucking annoying. I've told him no. But he persists.

The last thing I sold on eBay was a golf club and something similar happened. A guy messaged me, sometimes multiple times a day, trying to get me to come down on my item. He would make the same offer multiple ways (like $250 with free shipping or $230 with $20 shipping). He would tell me the new model is coming out and no one wanted mine. He basically started to threaten me to sell him the club. I honestly thought it was one of the old shaggy bipolar posters who wrote mind numbing crazy stuff all the time.

Edited by drewlaws
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  • 1 month later...

eBay sales on the uptick.

I have 1,000+ widgets that I just keep rolling over for my store. A year ago I started an experiment-- some of them, I drop the price 1% whenever I relist them. The others, I raise the price 1% at each relist.

The ones where I raise the prices have been selling a better than the price-drop ones. Not the exact same product, but hmmm.

Also have been getting sales for auctions where I let them make an offer. Most of the offers have been decent, as in, 90% of what I was asking anyway. I guess people like a little bit of control.

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  • 3 weeks later...

So I used to sell a lot on ebay/half.com but haven't in roughly a decade. The last couple years I've sold a lot of stuff locally on craigslist and varagesale but I had a box full of things that just wouldn't sell on those sites so I decided to list them online. Sold all pretty quickly for more than I was asking here. The problem is, I really don't remember shipping being this expensive. Have shipping costs gone up or am I just not remembering? 

Any tips or ideas on the best way to save on shipping (like offer free shipping only under a certain size or weight, etc)? 

 

Oh by the way I used Mercari. The interface and transaction part was very easy and seamless, however I don't get paid until the customer receives the item and we both post a review (wtf?). Luckily they make you put tracking on it but it seems like sellers can get fucked over in this process easier. 

Edited by NorthLoop
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Shipping has gone up, most recently just a few days ago.

If it's small and heavy, the Small Priority Mail box is a good deal. For bigger things, I usually make out better doing Priority Mail for whatever its weight is, instead of using the Medium or Large fixed price boxes. Those are great if you're shipping really dense stuff.

I just add what I think it'll cost to ship to the price, call it "free".

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  • 2 weeks later...

eBay seems determined to shoot its own toes off. They've come out with this helpful new plan where starting mid-March, all Buy It Now listings will automatically relist as Good Til Canceled.

Me, I have thousands of items in stock, and rotate them every other month, so I can see making some miscalculation and suddenly owing $100+ bucks a month "for my convenience."

I have had the store for years, but fuggit, I might just burn it all down at the end of this month rather than go along with this redesign.

I've gotten a critical mass of former customers so I probably make as many sales through my social media page as I do through eBay, I could move everything to Etsy or Bonanza and just point people there. I will miss the greater volume of new sellers from eBay, but I think that day is about done anyway.

Maybe I'll do a piece of "artwork" with writing on it telling the eBay public where I've moved my store, stick a photo of it in one last eBay listing and ask $12,000 for it, see if they notice it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Anyone pay for something on ebay with PayPal and have PayPal send the money to the seller, but ebay didn't recognize that the item was sold?  Happened to me last month, thank god the seller shipped it anyone once I contacted him. PayPal and Ebay customer service reps just blamed each other. No help except for providing seller contact info.

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On 3/7/2019 at 12:42 PM, HawaiiHorn said:

Anyone pay for something on ebay with PayPal and have PayPal send the money to the seller, but ebay didn't recognize that the item was sold?  Happened to me last month, thank god the seller shipped it anyone once I contacted him. PayPal and Ebay customer service reps just blamed each other. No help except for providing seller contact info.

Sounds like a glitch. About once every two years I'll get some weird little thing like that. If the guy received $ from you via Paypal, he also got your real contact email instead of having to go through eBay. If they then claimed it didn't sell, I guess worst case he got to sell it to you without paying eBay fees.

Edited by RDCanecutter
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  • 2 weeks later...

Y'all be wary if you just occasionally list on eBay-- this month they changed their policy where Fixed Price listings will auto-renew as Good-til-Cancelled (and auto nickle-and-dime you if you're not careful), while possibly staying up a while after you sell out of the items.

People who just do the occasional Auction probably won't notice anything different.

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i have a ton of stuff to move.  10 watches.  comics.  model railroad stuff from the 50s and 70s.

i buy on ebay but i'm loathe to sell because paypal = clusterfuck.  i've heard horror stories about getting your money OUT of paypal.

what's the story with bonanza?  please tell me they don't use paypal and have a bitcoin or something.

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37 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

i have a ton of stuff to move.  10 watches.  comics.  model railroad stuff from the 50s and 70s.

i buy on ebay but i'm loathe to sell because paypal = clusterfuck.  i've heard horror stories about getting your money OUT of paypal.

what's the story with bonanza?  please tell me they don't use paypal and have a bitcoin or something.

Paypal been bery bery good to me. You can't get your money out the first month (either it's eBay or Paypal that do the hold) to sort out whether you're ("you" in general, not "you" personally) a methhead scambucket selling pictures of things instead of the actual things, but after the first month you can get it all out with maybe a one day delay.

I am not sure I would take any of the things you mention to eBay. There must be specialized sites (especially for the watches) where you could sell more securely to a less cheap-ass crowd.

Bonanza is an OK sidekick to eBay. I sell maybe one thing a month there. I have them pay me on Paypal, but maybe you could set up a different method (personally I don't want some whiz-kid's site having direct access to my real bank.) Costs nothing to list an item, as far as I can tell, it stays up forever, which is good because it doesn't seem to sell fast.

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  • 2 months later...

 

On 2/6/2019 at 4:34 PM, RDCanecutter said:

Shipping has gone up, most recently just a few days ago.

If it's small and heavy, the Small Priority Mail box is a good deal. For bigger things, I usually make out better doing Priority Mail for whatever its weight is, instead of using the Medium or Large fixed price boxes. Those are great if you're shipping really dense stuff.

I just add what I think it'll cost to ship to the price, call it "free".

If you're shipping small, order some region A boxes, they're damn near the same size as medium but sometimes almost half the cost on close ships

On 2/6/2019 at 4:46 PM, Jkwellborn said:

A friend of mine used to sell a lot on amazon. He just added the estimated cost of shipping to his listing price and then posted as free shipping. People ate it up.

until someone from Hawaii/Alaska/NE buys your shit.

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eBay appears to be in a nose-dive. They changed a bunch of policies, pushed me to the "fuck it" point. I shut down my store.

Actually selling a ton more art, because I started going to actual face-to-face art shows. Wish I'd started doing it that way years ago. I still have some things on Etsy, eBay, and Bonanza, but I do more sales online through my Facebook page than all of them put together.

eBay is still good for unloading some collectible widget that was sitting in the garage, especially if it's something a person in their 60s wants.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 6/12/2019 at 11:16 AM, RDCanecutter said:

eBay is still good for unloading some collectible widget that was sitting in the garage, especially if it's something a person in their 60s wants.

And now we love eBay again-- found a stack of Judges Guild D&D accessories from the late 70s, early 80s. I had put it aside because it looked like worthless newsprint and cardboard. Figured what the hell, took photos and tossed em up on eBay.

Auctions ended yesterday, 2 guys got into a bid war over some maps. Ran the total up to more than $400. Already got paid.

If you find anything with "Judges Guild" on it, that's potential gold.

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On 7/5/2019 at 1:41 PM, RDCanecutter said:

And now we love eBay again-- found a stack of Judges Guild D&D accessories from the late 70s, early 80s. I had put it aside because it looked like worthless newsprint and cardboard. Figured what the hell, took photos and tossed em up on eBay.

Auctions ended yesterday, 2 guys got into a bid war over some maps. Ran the total up to more than $400. Already got paid.

If you find anything with "Judges Guild" on it, that's potential gold.

Interesting regarding the D&D stuff.  I have probably 200 or so Dragon magazines going back to almost the beginning.  I might see what they are worth.

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10 hours ago, Loose Stool said:

Interesting regarding the D&D stuff.  I have probably 200 or so Dragon magazines going back to almost the beginning.  I might see what they are worth.

A few years back I sold a bunch of older Dragons. Some of them went for $20+, especially if they had some sort of game insert that hadn't been removed. People will probably make you an offer if you want to sell quick. Seems like there is a subculture of newly-retired men who want to recapture all their old magazines and toys.

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I have about $2-3k worth of rather specialized fishing equipment sitting in my garage that I have been too lazy to sell on ebay -- a bunch of rods and reels worth $200-300 a piece.  Anybody have experience with the shops that sell your stuff for you (particularly in the Austin area)?  I would love to avoid the hassle, but the few I have looked at online seem to charge up to 50% commission, and I am guessing I will still have to exert some level of effort just explaining how to price everything and what to say in item descriptions.  

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  • 2 months later...

Well, past few months just selling steady on eBay, still making enough sales to pay a couple of utilities with very little time spent maintaining listings.

Meanwhile, Etsy and Bonanza been dead in the water. There's a reason I keep putting up with eBay's quirks-- they get results, and sales to people I don't know.

Dunno if y'all have noticed, but if you make a few sales in a row, eBay will gift you a couple hundred extra listings. Usually have to use them within a few days.

Lately I have been putting "Make an Offer" on most of my auctions. It gives the buyer power to get the item right then, provided the offer is tempting. Occasionally people will offer more than the minimum bid, just to get something. Since I set my minimum bids at what I'd be happy to sell something at, this works for me.

This functions almost like the fixed-price Buy-It-Now that I quit using because I don't want to be at the mercy of some auto-relist glitch after an item is sold.

Kinda makes me wonder if I shouldn't set my minimum bids at double what I want, and then let people talk me down.

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  • 1 month later...
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So, what are the rules for buying stuff on Ebay? Are there any buying protections? Stuff I'm looking for, specifically camera lenses, aren't cheap. I'm scared to death I'd lose my ass and buy a pile of junk. But the prices are so much better than the reputable shops that sell used gear it's hard not to look at Ebay and wonder. 

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My number one rule for selling on ebay is I only ship to the continental US.  No Alaska, Hawaii, PRico, etc.  I also inflate the price by what I think it should be and offer "free shipping".

Number one rule for buying, seller needs 99% feedback with >50 transactions.

I'm not sure how many years I've used eBay, but its been a long time.  I've bought everything from a car to electrical terminals.  Never had any real issues.

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Yeah, I first sold a few things on Ebay around 2000 or so. A lot has changed since then I think as far as internet shenanigans. I don't even remember how financial transactions were done then, pretty sure we didn't have PayPal but people were not as anonymous then either. 

My biggest concern is evaluating condition of an item, sight unseen. A telephoto lens can be a complicated hunk of glass with a lot of failure points that could be compromised but might not be readily noticeable from photos alone.

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Paypal was around back in 2000. I used to buy Super Nintendos and TI-82/83 calculators from Yahoo Auctions and then turn around and sell them for double on EBay. At one point I had like 12 Super Nintendos stacked up in my little dorm room closet in Dobie. Thought i was the next Michael Dell. 

 

 

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2 hours ago, NorthLoop said:

Paypal was around back in 2000. I used to buy Super Nintendos and TI-82/83 calculators from Yahoo Auctions and then turn around and sell them for double on EBay. At one point I had like 12 Super Nintendos stacked up in my little dorm room closet in Dobie. Thought i was the next Michael Dell. 

 

 

I've got a TI-35, TI-92 and another I don't recall the model number on. Make me an offer? :) 

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On 11/20/2019 at 8:42 PM, El Diablo said:

So, what are the rules for buying stuff on Ebay? Are there any buying protections?

Yes. The key is to stick within eBay's rules. Most problems I've seen come when one or both parties try to get clever and go do an outside deal, cutting eBay out of the fees, after using eBay to meet. This is like doing business in a mafia town, and failing to show respect.

eBay weeds out a lot of bad sellers by making them wait a month to withdraw money from their first sales. That works wonders at keeping the more jittery personalities away.

I hear that certain things, like phones, attract the scammeroonies. Telephoto lens sound more like something grown-ups would be dealing with. I bet if you find a seller of camera equipment with 1,000+ good feedback, you're dealing with a real store somewhere who do eBay on the side.

You'd think that gold and silver would be all eaten up with bad actors, but back when I was into buying and selling that, I only saw one outright criminal. They didn't zing me-- I bought a tiny silver coin from them, and got it-- but when I checked them a few months later, I saw they'd been banned for selling non-existent gold ounces. What they did was patiently build up 50 or so good transactions selling small stuff, and then they cut and pasted some pictures of gold ingots, listed them as melt price, and let the robbery commence.

I did some googling of the seller (a woman), and found multiple arrest records of her getting into trouble alongside her boyfriend, who among other things, robbed houses of coin collections. Reason #314 to have a PO Box.

Those buyers probably got their money back, if they didn't stroke out first.

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8 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

You'd think that gold and silver would be all eaten up with bad actors, but back when I was into buying and selling that, I only saw one outright criminal.

D'oh. Two. I forgot the fucking music minister down close to Miami, was gonna ship me 70 bucks of US Silver and kept making up easily-detected lies about the USPS. I mean, childlike lies that put his head in a mail fraud noose. I had a crazed college dranking buddy from Panama who lives in that town, she was ready to walk into the church and put a boot up his ass while the projector played the lyrics on the wall, but no, Mrs. Canecutter (born in New Jersey, wise in these ways), advised me to keep all messages bland and public via eBay. Got my money back and he got banned.

Because I'm bored and vicious, I stalked his FB page while muttering, and saw that he had a newborn child. That stayed my hand-- I figured he was already in sleep-deprivation hell, go forth and sin no more.

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52 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

D'oh. Two. I forgot the fucking music minister down close to Miami, was gonna ship me 70 bucks of US Silver and kept making up easily-detected lies about the USPS. I mean, childlike lies that put his head in a mail fraud noose. I had a crazed college dranking buddy from Panama who lives in that town, she was ready to walk into the church and put a boot up his ass while the projector played the lyrics on the wall, but no, Mrs. Canecutter (born in New Jersey, wise in these ways), advised me to keep all messages bland and public via eBay. Got my money back and he got banned.

Because I'm bored and vicious, I stalked his FB page while muttering, and saw that he had a newborn child. That stayed my hand-- I figured he was already in sleep-deprivation hell, go forth and sin no more.

Thanks for the advice. I had a fish purchase go somewhat sideways on me recently (see the aquarium homies thread) and have become a bit leery of dealing with individuals vs established businesses. The guy's Paypal.me acct had enough info to allow me to FB stalk him. He was a mess. His wife eventually shipped my money back. They just couldn't keep their commitments and weren't really crooks. Sad because I wanted their fish.

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53 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

It happens. I still think you meet fewer freaks in a year doing online business than you meet in a week of face-to-face retail, or in a day if you're a waiter.

Yeah, the guy I was dealing with on the fish, I made casual mention of what constitutes wire fraud. Well, actually I copied and pasted the definition into one of my many emails to him. Shrug, got money back.

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I've got an OEM/Kicker subwoofer for a 2015-2019 Yukon/Tahoe/Suburban I want to sell, no longer have the Yukon and never around to getting it installed so NiB,  but only have 34 transactions in 15+ years with 100% positive but all are as a buyer and none as a seller.  Is ebay the right avenue for this?  The Yukon/Tahoe/Suburban forum I found requires 50 posts before any for sale listings. 

https://www.kicker.com/SSUTAYU15

Edited by ShaggyBevo RIP
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21 hours ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:

I've got an OEM/Kicker subwoofer for a 2015-2019 Yukon/Tahoe/Suburban I want to sell, no longer have the Yukon and never around to getting it installed so NiB,  but only have 34 transactions in 15+ years with 100% positive but all are as a buyer and none as a seller.  Is ebay the right avenue for this?  The Yukon/Tahoe/Suburban forum I found requires 50 posts before any for sale listings. 

https://www.kicker.com/SSUTAYU15

Is it something like this?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/19355506-2015-2019-Suburban-Tahoe-Yukon-OEM-Kicker-200w-Subwoofer-Kit-NEW/282482652004?epid=888546212&hash=item41c5473364:g:w7IAAOSw1WJZHJsU

That seems like a lot of money to deal with for a first sale. You aren't a total noob at 34 transactions, so probably won't attract the predators who look for people with little feedback, but if something turns into he said/she said, eBay will likely side with the more experienced party.

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