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 (www.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.
In early 2005, my friend Drue Miller and I received an email from Sarah Milstein, an O'Reilly editor. Through a convoluted series of contacts, she'd gotten our names as people qualified to write a different kind of eBay booknot a "how to" manual per se, but something combining personal stories with take-away lessons. Drue and I have a web site called WhoWouldBuyThat.com that had the voice Sarah was looking for. I believe the word used early on was "snarky." (Accurate, that.)
Drue's schedule ultimately didn't allow her to participate as an author (we snagged her later as a tech reviewer), but I was game. What followed were several conversations between Sarah and myself about what exactly we wanted this book to bea book that's fun to read and extremely informative. That's what you'll find here.
The stories within this book are all true, recounted (usually on the message boards in eBay's Community section) by the people who experienced them. Minor artistic license has been taken where necessary, and all names have been changed to protect the innocent, the ignorant, and the guilty.
