Selling Your Laptop On eBay PDF Print E-mail
Written by Francua Smith   
Saturday, 12 September 2009 17:40
Are you trying to sell your laptop on eBay? Well, eBay is surely a fine canal to get some additional money from your aged laptop sale, but be warned - there are some scammers out there who might cheat you. You need to beware when you're selling your laptop - this article shows you some tips. In particular, you ought to beware of fraudulent bidders who scour eBay for the unwary and snatch their money away.
by FrancuaSmith


Are you trying to sell your laptop on eBay? Well, eBay is surely a fine canal to get some additional money from your aged laptop sale, but be warned - there are some scammers out there who might cheat you. You need to beware when you're selling your laptop - this article shows you some tips. In particular, you ought to beware of fraudulent bidders who scour eBay for the unwary and snatch their money away.

1. Keep All Your Laptop Stuff One excellent tip I have for selling laptops - make confident that you sustain ALL the stuff found in the shipped laptop package when you first bought. You see, a buyer would surely pay a bit more whether the laptop has its original box, manuals, software, cables, etc. So make an effort to sustain the original stuff with you - thus when you lastly sell your laptop, you have some fine original stuff and 'extras' to bid the buyer.

2. Monitor The Auction's Close One of the most important things to do when selling your laptop is to monitor the auction's close. In fact, this does not just apply to laptops, it applies to the sale of any kind of item you have.

The excellent more than half of bids come in just within the final few minutes of an auction. What some scammers might do is to hijack an eBay user ID, then offer up the laptop as the auction is ending. You ought to monitor your bidders toward the auction's close. Those with poor feedback scores or who have not been dynamic in eBay for more than a year are really doubtful indeed.

3. PayPal Is Not A Gurantee Some of you may live and breathe by PayPal when you sell your laptop on eBay. Now, PayPal is owned by eBay - and they offer a Seller Protection Policy (covering the selling for up to US$5000 per year on any transaction PayPal deems fraudulent. However, there is some fine print you need to take note of - PayPal only provides cover is the transaction meets some specific criteria (e.g. must be shipped to an 'eligible' address, proof of signature by recipient needed for sale items US$250 and above).

4. Check Out Escrow.com One website that is very useful in selling your laptop on eBay is Escrow.com. What does it do? Well, Escrow.com is a third party that collects, holds and disburses funds according to buyer and seller instructions. These guys are licensed and regulated, and serve to protect both buyers and sellers. They act like a 'judge' in any transaction and ensure that all flows smoothly and fairly.

5. Hold On Before Shipping One lesson I learnt in my eBay adventures (not just with laptops but other sale items) is to hold on a bit before shipping. Do not - repeat - do not ship your laptop to the buyer until at least one business day after a PayPal payment has been made into your account or a money order has cleared your bank. You don't want to send off the laptop only to discover the payment was fraudulent.

6. Communicate via eBay Here's an important one - do your communication via eBay. eBay has its own built-in communications system and you should fully make use of it. By keeping transactions and communication within eBay, you have a solid and traceable record that will help investigations is you get scammed.

7. Wipe Out Your Hard Drive Many people forget to do this after selling their laptop. Please, please please - remove all your personal information, credit card numbers, love notes and passwords from that hard drive on your laptop. There's a good video on 'How to Completely Erase a Hard Drive' out in the Internet that you should definitely watch.

Conclusion I hope this article helped you understand some good tips on selling laptops on eBay. For most people, selling expensive items like laptops on eBay should not pose a problem - however, there have been cases of the unlucky few who got scammed. They often end up without the laptop and without the buyer's money. So do take note of the above tips the next time you're selling a laptop (or any other expensive item) on eBay. Good luck and happy selling!

DISCLAIMER: This article is provided as information only and is not to be taken as financial advice.

Francua Smith is a good Computer specialist who has a lot of experience on laptop computers. He will help you to choose your own good laptop computer.