I had an interesting call from a friend tonight that wanted to list their first item on eBay. Their son’s car is up for sale and where better to advertise it than eBay for motors? Of course being the local “eBay expert” they asked me over to assist. First thing was to show them how to set up a “seller account” but amazingly although they profess a total ignorance in the ways of eBay they not only have an account set up, but they’ve at some time in the past set up a seller account and made previous sales!
As with many eBay accounts they have a “Family” account, it’s not used just by the account owner but the entire family use it for bidding and buying. Which one of them actually set up the selling account remains a mystery, but all that remained for me to do was to show them how to update their payment preferences to add a current credit card.
Listing the car (a Peugeot 205) was a snip – it’s a long time since I’ve used the SYI (Sell Your Item) form instead of TurboLister. It’s so much easier than when I listed my first item on eBay with the old SYI layout. The part of the listing that took longest was taking the photos, followed by composing the description, clicking the boxes for item specifics, price, payment and postal options (It’s a car…. payment on collection only!) was the work of seconds.
I left the family with the promise that they’d check their email at least daily during the course of the auction, and with possibly my lowest ever fee for consultancy – a couple of beers at the pub next week. The biggest thing I took away though was how the whole family were involved in listing the car, even if it was just looking over my shoulder at the screen amazed at how easy selling a car on eBay really is!