My (Terrible) Experiences With eBay

*Keep in mind that I wrote this not to bash eBay in anyway, but to share my experiences selling fixed/broken iPhones so that others may be weary in the future*

A thread another BHW member made asking about making money online inspired me to write my experiences with eBay.

I started out a couple months ago and sniped a broken iPhone 5 for $110 that I was certain the battery was broken in. So I bought a battery, changed it when the phone I has bought arrived at my house, and tried to turn it on. To my delight it worked!

So I threw the phone back up on eBay as a working phone and sold it for around $160. An easy 50(ish) dollars, right? Wrong.

I shipped the phone to the buyer, and to my surprise, they said it didn't work and returned it. Now, keep in mind that before I shipped it out I made sure the phone was fully functional & it was in amazing condition.

When I got the phone back it didn't power on, and the screen was cracked and had divots in it that looked like some kid has shot it with a BB gun. I ended up selling it again for $50 resulting in $60 loss.

I didn't want this to discourage me, so I bought a couple more phones. The next 2 I sold without a problem and made about $30 on each of them.

I bought like 4 more and these turned into a living nightmare.

The first iPhone I sold was a 5c so a non-english speaking dude in Puerto Rico. This phone was listed as broken, but he sent it back claiming that it had a blacklisted SN (which it didn't, I verified this across 3 different sites) and proceeded to give me negative feedback. Yay!

The next iPhone I attempted to sell was the worst one yet. It sold a total of 7 times. The buyer never paid for 4 of these, and the other 2 times the buyer returned it because they decided that they didn't like it. Finally the 7th sale was successful.

I'm not going to go into detail about the last 2 phones because I'm sure you get the point by now. Out of an attempted total of 10 sales, only 3 of these went through without a hiccup.

I've found that around 95% of the time eBay will side with the buyer, and 99% of the time PayPal will side with the buyer as well.

I'm not saying there's no money to be made, because there is, but you have to determine for yourself if the time you've put into a specific item is worth the potential ROI.

Best of luck to you future sellers, and I hope you can learn from my experiences!

I believe you. My ebay account is old... like 2000ish old. I can't remember when I opened it but it is so old that I have no limits.

Anyway, I used to buy and sell some stuff on there with not much hassle. I tried selling some things last year and the first 2 bids, the buyer's never paid and the last one the buyer paid but there was no communication. It was odd but at least I got paid.

Ebay used to be a great place to buy and sell but this was like 10 years ago.

So bad, but your idea are very cool, why don't open a repair shop online and try to see if you can rank it ?

I got scammed this summer as well. Some chap sold me piece of crap used shit for new. I tried everything within my reach but I still didn't receive a refund, it's been months.

Dealing with broken items can be a nightmare, some people just dont want or cant read. I prefer generic stock items with well made description along with pictures to keep the buyers from messaging me about the item.

I normally sell a lot of items (10000 of items shipped/month), and it seems like a lot of hustle but it actually isnt. I still find time to be on forums.

I never use Ebay because i have only heard bad things about it.

few months ago I bought an iphone 6 from ebay and now suddenly it says no service when I put my sim and after checking I realised it's locked and blacklisted.

virtualbyron said:

So bad, but your idea are very cool, why don't open a repair shop online and try to see if you can rank it ?

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Interesting thought. Are you saying open a site online where people can mail me their phones and have them repaired? Or start more of a business in my area and build a site for it?

bartosimpsonio said:

I got scammed this summer as well. Some chap sold me piece of crap used shit for new. I tried everything within my reach but I still didn't receive a refund, it's been months.

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Wow, that sucks...companies like eBay don't seem to care as long as they get their split from the sale. It's sad really.

epimetheus039 said:

Dealing with broken items can be a nightmare, some people just dont want or cant read. I prefer generic stock items with well made description along with pictures to keep the buyers from messaging me about the item.

I normally sell a lot of items (10000 of items shipped/month), and it seems like a lot of hustle but it actually isnt. I still find time to be on forums.

Click to expand...

So I take it you have one of those accounts with feedback int he 10's of thousands? Do buyers hassle you a lot? Do you deal with a lot of people trying to scam you out of your items?

dr4goncl5ws said:

Interesting thought. Are you saying open a site online where people can mail me their phones and have them repaired? Or start more of a business in my area and build a site for it?


Wow, that sucks...companies like eBay don't seem to care as long as they get their split from the sale. It's sad really.



So I take it you have one of those accounts with feedback int he 10's of thousands? Do buyers hassle you a lot? Do you deal with a lot of people trying to scam you out of your items?

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Well, I have templates for every question a buyer may have and there is a software which stores it at all and I can have as many ebay accounts as I need. It is called replymanager.com. Well, no as I am in $3-20 dollar range, so not really. I just send out some items with no tracking and sometimes I get few requests of items being not delivered but it's mostly due to the address being wrong hence they get sent back.

better to use amazon ebay is becoming a bitch

dr4goncl5ws said:

Interesting thought. Are you saying open a site online where people can mail me their phones and have them repaired? Or start more of a business in my area and build a site for it?

Click to expand...

Yes absolutely, a friend of mine do that with his fb account, he have join many local group and let know people about his repair skill but he meet the people in real life, of course make and rank (localy) a site will be much harder but in the end you will have a big customer base + you can sell new similar product with amazon

So if you live in a big city you surely can find many customer with local facebook group or even create your own group about phone repair for begin

epimetheus039 said:

Dealing with broken items can be a nightmare, some people just dont want or cant read. I prefer generic stock items with well made description along with pictures to keep the buyers from messaging me about the item.

I normally sell a lot of items (10000 of items shipped/month), and it seems like a lot of hustle but it actually isnt. I still find time to be on forums.

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What kind of items do you sell if you don't mind me asking?

Electronics, collectibles, all generic.

nnahlee said:

better to use amazon ebay is becoming a bitch

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How hard is it to set up an Amazon store? I've never tried but have heard of others having trouble with it.

virtualbyron said:

Yes absolutely, a friend of mine do that with his fb account, he have join many local group and let know people about his repair skill but he meet the people in real life, of course make and rank (localy) a site will be much harder but in the end you will have a big customer base + you can sell new similar product with amazon

So if you live in a big city you surely can find many customer with local facebook group or even create your own group about phone repair for begin

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Interesting idea. Sadly, I live in a relatively small town haha.

Glad that you shared with us your experience. I am sure that it will help others.

epimetheus039 said:

Electronics, collectibles, all generic.

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I wonder how 1 person can handle 10,000 orders a month.
On my hard working days ive had about 1000 orders a month and it took hell lot of my time,
Therefore i just started Dropshipping since than .

I am not alone. I have 3 people including myself. My average for packaging 100 orders from scratch is 1 hour 15. Per every day it is only 300 orders + customer service + creating listings etc.

LoftPower said:

Glad that you shared with us your experience. I am sure that it will help others.

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I hope that it will.

epimetheus039 said:

I am not alone. I have 3 people including myself. My average for packaging 100 orders from scratch is 1 hour 15. Per every day it is only 300 orders + customer service + creating listings etc.

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So basically you have a small company? You hiring these people part time or what? Thanks for the info.

Yep, it is. No, actually have 1 full time and 1 part time positions. Looking to expand this later on.

epimetheus039 said:

Yep, it is. No, actually have 1 full time and 1 part time positions. Looking to expand this later on.

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Ah okay, that's actually pretty cool. If you don't mind my asking, what kind of money does a job like that pay?