Lots of books tell you how to buy and sell on eBay. But what if something goes horribly awry? Do you have to chalk it up to a "lesson learned," lick your wounds and move on? Not a chance. Don't Get Burned on eBay offers relevant lessons based on real-life stories posted on eBay's Answer Center. With sharp, witty rhetoric, veteran eBay user Shauna Wright (co-founder of the popular web site WhoWouldBuyThat.com), shows eBay veterans and newcomers alike how to avoid those nasty scenarios, and how to pull themselves out of the muck if they've already fallen in.
Six entertaining (and hair-raising) chapters cover real problems that people have encountered with bidding, payment, shipping, packaging, dealing with other eBayers, and coping with the eBay system. This book is for anyone who's ever used eBay, because even veteran buyers and sellers often don't know the intricacies of eBay's and PayPal's rules. Don't Get Burned on eBay will leave you well-informed and better protected from potential pitfalls. The book's extensive glossary and numerous in-depth sidebars also make the book useful to people who haven't yet taken the plunge into eBay.
Chapter 1 Don’t Get Burned on Bidding
Don’t Act Like A Newbie
When Sellers Go Bad
Chapter 2 Don’t Get Burned on Payment
PayPal: Read the Fine Print
Money Order Mayhem and Chaos with Cashier’s Checks
Personal Checks, Cash, and Others
Chapter 3 Don’t Get Burned on Packaging
Don’t Use Inadequate Packaging
Don’t Use Odd or Potentially Embarrassing Packaging
Shauna Wright has been an avid eBay buyer and seller since 1997. She's aregular on eBay's Answer Center and co-founder of the award-winning siteWhoWouldBuyThat.com. Before becoming a writer, she was a privateinvestigator, a poker dealer, and a fragrance model (don't ask).
(Review first written for the User Group http://www.compsoc.dur.ac.uk, Durham University Computing Society.)
The first thing to notice about this book is that it is heavily Americo-centric. It is about Ebay.com, and some of the features differ
from Ebay.co.uk. So some of it - particularly some of the payment and shipping advice - is less than useful to the UK reader. However, some of it is extremely useful, and generalising the advice to apply to yourself is always good.
The book uses friendly and approachable prose, appropriate to the subject matter. It's very common-sensical, and it's hard for the technically savvy reader to believe that there really are people who need some of the advice - but it's clear that there are people being burned by these issues, and actually, when there's an awful lot of
common sense needed, even the most pragmatic of us can miss things.
This book advises people as both buyers and sellers, which also provides a useful insight into the "other side" for everyone. It also provides a handy glossary for the confused.
I'd like to think that most CompSoccers are too tech savvy and sensible to need this book - but it would make an excellent Christmas present for nervous mothers, grandfathers and friends.
Which being so, a 5/10 for it - 3/10 for usefulness to techies, but a good 7/10 for the general reader.
