I'm about to sell my laptop on eBay. It's actually working but I'm recommending that people buy it as a fixer-upper or for parts. I'm going to advertise AS IS. I've been tracking similar auctions and to my surprise they've been going for ~$200. It's my first time selling. Is there anything I should watch out for? Should I require payment by PayPal? What's the best way to exchange money that's safest for both sides? I really have no idea, seems like there's quite a few options. To avoid headaches I plan on limiting it to the continental US. Can I request no refunds/exchanges? Also can anyone recommend the best way to ship it? Who has proper packaging to send it out safely and who do you find reliable? FYI, it's an HP DV1000 laptop, hd just crashed, and the power button needs to be pressed for 1-2 minutes before it actually starts up. Besides that it works fine.
Definitely use Paypal only. It protects you against fraud and is totally safe. Just make sure that when you get the email stating you have been paid via payal, you check your paypal account to make sure that you were actually paid. Some people (nigerian scam artists) send fake paypal notices to try to trick you...they pull crap like "my son is a missionary in Africa and he needs it sent to him"...just beware, though I doubt they would do it for an old laptop Also make sure that the buyer has positive feedback so you know that they are trustworthy. Good luck
I've often accepted check as well, which is usually okay. One time I had a check bounce, but the buyer apologized and covered any fees. I would advise that you definitely get an estimate of shipping costs before-hand. I think ebay has some way the buyer can now put in their preferred shipping methods and calculate cost, but if you don't put in a cost, you'll likely get a lot of "how much to ship to..." questions. I usually put in a flat fee and say this is what it costs to ship, regardless of location, and includes x,y,z (i.e. insurance) and will be sent after confirmation of receipt of payment (or something to that effect) via [ground, 2 day air, whatever]. I would definitely take more pictures rather than less. Ebay fees do suck, but adding a few more pictures won't bite into you that much. if it was me, I'd put no reserve price either and advertise that, but that's just me...I can see how you wouldn't want to sell for less than X. I think buy-it-now is pretty stupid option, too.
I have the normal stock battery that comes w/ it new. I don't know much about batteries, but 12 cell sounds like larger than normal. Thanks for the ideas, keep them coming. For the sake of the time/money tradeoff, it looks like I'm sticking w/ selling this on eBay. Craigslist or selling for separate parts doesn't look like it will net much more and will probably take much more time. My laptop is old and it looks like most buyers are people in the business of restoring laptops for resale. I've found an online 'guess' that I can ship UPS ground for ~$20, and I've called a local UPS rep that supposedly has appropriate materials for mailing a laptop.
professorjay, I've sold three laptops on Ebay that I broke down into parts. I netted about $500-$700 each, which was double what it was selling for as an assembly. And I sold all the parts during the 7 day listing period.
That is impressive. What parts did you separate? I'm only coming up w/ the motherboard and screen. Is a cdrw/dvd drive sellable? My other concern is that I can't (and preferably don't want to) claim that the motherboard is in full working order. My guess is that the physical connection between the power button and mb is off and the mb is actually fine, but that's just my speculation. For all I know it could be something on the mb though. I appreciate the input.
The screen can usually fetch $150-$250 depending on the model. LCD Screen CDRW (if you have it) Battery Power adapter MB w/ processor Hard drive Ram Keyboard Case Speakers
Give me your name and bank account and Social Security numbers. I'll get back to you about your ideal options for accepting payment.
I put up a Wii on Craigslist and Facebook and got two emails within an hour from scammers. You can read about it here. Make sure you don't fall for any of the phishing scams. Always login to your account from a direct link that you type in to the address bar. Never use the ones that might be in your inbox because they could be fake.
I've got my notebook selling on eBay now (I was too lazy to take it apart and sell parts separately). I don't have a Buy It Now price. I've been getting pm's asking how much would I take to sell it now. Out of curiosity, how would you go about doing this? In 24 hrs I've gotten 3 scam pm's and 3 'how much to sell it now?' questions which seem fishy. I'm sure there's a loophole they're trying to exploit if I agreed to it. What is it?
i tried to sell a laptop once. the highest bidder was from Nigeria who sent me a fake page that looked like a paypal reciept.
My auction just ended, and the winner has a postal code listed as Nigeria. Sounds like trouble. What do I do? I haven't sent the winner an invoice yet. I've also contacted eBay customer service for advice, but that could take a day or two. I'd like to give a 'Second Chance Offer' to the next highest bidder. Can I go ahead and do that, or is there some catch that will come back and get me.
Nevermind. Just now (~30 minutes after my auction ended) I received an email from eBay that my auction has been canceled. They realized the high bidder's account was hacked. What a POS situation. I'm not aggravated at eBay, but the scammers. I waited a whole week to get this over with, and now I have to start over. I wish eBay would've left me the option to sell to the second highest bidder instead of terminating the whole thing though. I was happy w/ the results (the second highest bid met what I wanted). BTW, did anyone see that Dateline special where they actually followed one of these trails all the way to Nigeria? They were in one of the towns and ended up in a place that was clearly not happy to see him.
oh i had the same problem.. i had some guy from nigeria paying a huge amount for my cellphone which i put on ebay. he had the whole paypal thing pasted on the email account. but when i checked my paypal i had no money recieved on it. be careful about that fraud. make sure you have the money before you actually mail it or verify with the customer who is buying stuff from you. my friend actually lost his ipod on ebay the same way, he mailed it to the address but never got any money from them.
I got one of those when I was selling my Razr but I knew it was BS right away when he said he was going to give me 250 bucks for a phone that wouldn't even power on.
You can (and should IMO) block certain bidders from bidding on your auctions. One type of bidder to block is bidders from countries that you do not ship to - and I wouldn't ship to Nigeria.
