Online auctions made easy - Part 3 - Problems

If things do go wrong with your online auction transaction, the first port of call when trying to resolve things should be the person you are dealing with, whether they are the buyer or seller.

Once an auction is complete, both parties are given contact information for the other and you should be able to resolve most problems this way.

If the person has generally received positive feedback for previous transactions, you can give them the benefit of the doubt initially. Don't lose your temper or become abusive in your emails. If you don't seem to be getting anywhere with your problem, contact the auction company.

eBay operates a Buyer Protection Programme. If you pay for an item and don't receive it, or you receive an item which is not as it was described, eBay will, in the correct circumstances, refund your money up to maximum of £120.

There is a £15 charge levied on this service, however, so if your item is very low value it will not be worthwhile. eBay also has the ultimate sanction of booting off people who don't play by the rules, so it is imperative that you follow them as much as you expect others to.

Strange auctions
As you'd expect, with so many people using the internet some pretty strange stuff appears on auction websites from time to time. We had a range of gauges for World War II aircraft to choose from when we had a look around eBay, and we wouldn't know where to start looking for a 1960s Bond 250G Minicar if we wanted to buy one. However, there were two on eBay the day we looked.

The biggest item ever to be sold on eBay was a Gulfstream jet, but it wasn't a pocket money purchase, costing the winning bidder around £2.7m. One of Lady Thatcher's old handbags was bought for an impressive £103,000, while a first edition of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings finished the bidding at £13,000.

Some of the stranger items that have been sold include a packet of Walker's Cheese and Onion crisps (which made £2, despite only costing 50p from a shop) and a bucket of Bristol tap water.

The latter item was actually removed from sale by eBay officials as it was too silly, but they were assured that all the money raised was being given to Oxfam, whose buckets are used all over the third world to help transport water to where it is needed most. As a result, it went back onto the site and eventually raised over £100 for a good cause.

How to spot a scam
Auction sites are rife with scams and the simplest way to spot most of them is to apply some common sense. In short, if it looks too good to be true then it almost certainly is.

So, if you see an auction promising you serial numbers for all Microsoft applications and so on, steer well clear. As well as being unlikely to actually work, such things are on the fringes of the law.

Pirate copies of popular applications are another favourite, so if you are after a bargain piece of software, email the vendor in advance and get them to clarify whether or not it is the original software package or a copy.

If they don't answer with a direct 'yes' or say 'no, but what do you expect for the price?', back away. If you do get tricked into parting with your cash, contact eBay immediately as it has procedures in place to compensate users who have been done wrong.

Other favourite types of sale are the 'miracle cure for baldness' or 'lose 300lbs in 10 minutes' variety. These auctions rarely make clear what you are actually bidding for in terms of a tangible product, preferring instead to make bold promises and harvest money from well-meaning auction goers who don't know any better.

If you stick to auctions selling a product you recognise and are confident that you know exactly what you are getting, you won't go far wrong.

Not all the problems relate directly to buying and selling items, either. In particular, eBay has been plagued by email security problems, where unscrupulous people sent emails to thousands of computer users, purporting to be from the company.

In these messages, they ask users to type their eBay passwords and credit card numbers into an email reply so they can be 'checked against the company's records'.

It goes without saying that anything asking for bank details should be viewed with acute suspicion and if you are in any doubt, contact eBay directly to ask whether the message is from the company or part of a scamming attempt.

Other auction sites
The undisputed king of the auction sites is eBay, with over eight million users in the UK alone, but it isn't the only auction site. QXL and eBid handle all manner of items from the normal to the highly odd.

Neither attracts anything like the volume or variety of items on eBay but both are worth a look, as with fewer viewers bargains are often more likely. Here's a list of other sites which are well worth a look.

www.biditup.co.uk
www.buyit.co.uk
www.cqout.co.uk
www.luckybidz.com
www.morgan-auctions.co.uk
www.clearance-comet.co.uk