Buying the Ebay Way
                       www.ebay.co.uk

                     An article by Sue

After reviewing the demo of Knights and Merchants a few issues
ago, I looked for it in the shops. It was nowhere to be seen but
that surprised me as I thought it was a new game. On enquiry it
turned out that it was actually 3 years old. How could I get hold
of a copy? I wondered.

I'd heard people talk about Ebay - www.ebay.co.uk - so I went on
and had a look. Doing a search for 'knights merchants' turned up a
copy for sale. I put in a bid and luckily no-one else did. Soon
after I was told that I'd won! The seller contacted me and I sent
off a cheque for the price, plus P&P, and a few days I was the
proud owner of my own copy for just œ9.75.

I hadn't been back on there since but recently I saw a copy of Age
of Wonders in Computer Exchange for œ10, a good price.  But I got
so fed up with waiting to be served that I put it back on the
shelf, came home and looked it up on Ebay. There was one copy on
there and the auction was just about to finish. I got it for œ3.70
plus P&P! - œ5.70 in all.

Flushed with success, I went after a copy of Might and Magic 8
which I'd seen for œ25 in Game. The P&P was œ1.75 so I wouldn't go
over œ23 or I might just as well go to Bromley and buy it in
person. Someone went to œ26 ... fine by me. There'll be another
one on there some time. Julian Gregory was also looking for MM8
and he started bidding for another copy - we made sure we didn't
bid for the same one.

Meanwhile I spotted a copy of Stupid Invaders. I'd seen it for œ10
in PC World so limited myself to œ8 to allow for P&P. It went for
œ12 plus postage. I'm currently in the running for a copy of
SimSafari for œ5.  It's great fun and very addictive to see how
your bidding goes!


So how does it work? It's really very simple. You have to register
and give yourself an identity. That's all people know about you.
You start with a rank of 0 and each time you sell or buy
something, the person who is the other half of the transaction is
asked to make a comment about how the sale has gone - positive,
negative or neutral. Every time a different individual makes a
positive comment about you, your ranking goes up by one. So if you
sold 3 things to one person (as separate sales), even if they made
3 different positive comments about you, that would only count as
1 increase.  After 10 positive comments, you get a yellow star
after your name, after 100 a turquoise star and so it goes on up
to a red shooting star for a feedback profile of over 100,000.

Bidding is by proxy. You're told what the minimum bid is and the
increments that the bids go up by and you type in your maximum.
Ebay will then bid on your behalf up to your maximum. If you get
outbid, you'll get an email informing you.  Then it's up to you if
you want to go higher still.


Sometimes a seller will give a 'buy it now' price. This is higher
than the starting price but guarantees no-one can beat you to it.
It's up to you if it's worth paying the extra.

There is a good search option which will let you quickly see if
the item you want is up for sale. You can track particular auction
items or ask Ebay to contact you when a particular item comes up
for sale. They'll email you when it does.

I was very impressed with Ebay. I don't always win because I
mentally set myself a maximum limit that I think is reasonable for
that piece of software and don't go above that - at least, I
haven't yet. I've never been let down with delivery and all the
sellers I've dealt with have been prompt and helpful. Why not have
a look yourself?




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