Author: admin Published: January 23rd, 2010
If you have a car to sell, you may hear that you should turn to eBay.com. Ebay is a popular online auction website. Millions of internet users use the website to buy and sell goods, including cars. For most individuals, eBay is a great way to sell a car. For others, it is not.
If you are unsure if you should use eBay to sell your vehicle, continue reading on for a list of five signs you should not. These signs do not necessarily mean you should avoid eBay.com. They mean you should consider the pros and cons first. So, when is eBay not a good way to sell a car?
1 – If You Have Bad eBay Feedback
In the past year, eBay changed their feedback ratings. Now, not everyone is rated. Still, old ratings show up. If you regularly agreed to buy items and did not pay, you may have received negative ratings. If you sold items but misrepresented or waited to long to ship the merchandise, you may have poor eBay feedback.
When buying a product online, especially an expensive car, all interested buyers will look closely at your eBay feedback. If they see you are known for lying or misrepresenting yourself, they may run and fast. People want to do business with someone they trust, not someone who has a bad history of using the eBay.com website.
If you have a poor eBay feedback rating, try selling your car once or twice. If it does not work, focus on your local options.
2 – If You Live in a Very Small Town
It isn’t a bad thing if you live in a small town, as all small towns are different. Your town may have a population of just 5,000 people but ten minutes away, there can be a large city. What you want to consider is the distance to the nearest populated area. If your average car buyer must travel two or three hours to buy your car, you may have few takers. With that said, some buyers are willing to travel far or pay to have the car shipped if it is a good deal, if the car is rare, or something they really want to have.
If you live in a small town, you can try selling your car on eBay first. The first four times, you are only charged when the car sells. As of January 2009, this was a flat $125 fee. On the fifth time, you are now charged an insertion fee too.
3 – If You Want to Get the Most Money
Ebay is nice in that you can set your own price. That doesn’t however mean that people will buy your car. With that said, if they do, you still get less money. As previously stated, as of January 2009, eBay charged a $125 fee for the successful sale of a car, truck, van, and other similar vehicles. This is expensive. On average, it costs less than $10 to put an advertisement in a local newspaper and for sale signs that go in car windows are cheap at the dollar store.
4 – If You Aren’t a Savvy Internet User
Luckily, eBay.com makes it easy for people to buy and sell. After creating a free eBay account, you follow their step-by-step guide to create a listing. You must know how to take digital photographs and upload them to your computer. You must familiarize yourself with common eBay scams. For example, scammers will send you an email that looks like it is from eBay, but it is a fake duplicate website. You click on the link and log into the account and you gave away your personal information. For those unfamiliar with the internet, selling a car on eBay can be too risky.
5 – If You Must Pay Someone to Help You
When people want to sell products on eBay, but don’t know how, they turn to a consignment shop. These are experienced internet and eBay users. They list an eBay auction under their name. They help you sell the item, but take a percentage of the sale. With a large item, such as a car or truck, the commission is high. Your helper may get $2,000 or more! That is too much money out of your own pocket.
Tags: eBay Auto, ebay user, sell car
Category eBay Auto |
Author: admin Published: January 23rd, 2010
Were you recently laid off from work? If so, you may be in financial distress. Even those who collect unemployment benefits barely find themselves scraping by. If you are one of those individuals, you need to make significant cutbacks. What might those cutbacks entail?
Sell your house. If you live in a home with an expensive mortgage that you cannot afford and if you do not anticipate finding a job in the next two or three months, get out now. Try to sell your home before your credit is severely impacted. Luckily, the housing market is starting to slowly improve in many areas of the country. Layoffs are increasing in frequency, but many Americans still have their jobs and can get a loan. List your home for sale based on its last appraised value or fair market value. Don’t sell yourself short, but middle class family homes, in the $75,000 to $150,000 range are easier to sell.
If you have been trying to sell your home and cannot, do you have extra room? If so, rent out a room. Do backgrounds check and check references. This can help offset the cost of a mortgage you cannot afford. In addition, right now many Americans have steady income, but poor credit. These Americans cannot get a home loan, even though they could likely afford one. For that reason, consider renting your home. This is ideal if your house is too big, but do not feel comfortable living with a stranger. Use the incoming rent to pay the mortgage. Use your spouse’s income or your unemployment check to pay rent on a much smaller and cheaper apartment.
Find a new apartment. If you are renter, as opposed to a homeowner, is your rent too expensive? Can you no longer afford it or will you barley be scraping by? If so, look for a new place to live. If you have children, you may want to keep them in their same schools. This is good, but live where you can afford. A city may have an average rent of $1,000. However, fifteen minutes away a smaller town may have an average rent of $500 a month. Due to the poor economy, many landlords are releasing tenants from their contracts with appropriate notice, such as 30 or 60 days.
Sell your car and buy a cheaper one. Your best avenue is to sell the car outright yourself. List it for sale in newspaper classified sections, Craigslist.org, and other places online. Consider the value of your car. Set a fair selling price, but make sure you have enough to payoff the rest of your automobile loan and buy a cheaper, used car. Driving around a used “old clunker,” may not be what you had in mind, but you can find quality used cars for $1,000 to $5,000. Right now, you need something that runs and gets you from point a to point b. As for just selling you car, this isn’t recommended. Even if there is public transportation in your area, remember the poor job market. When find a new job, it may be two or three town away.
Look at the cost of your landline and cell phone. Do you have both? Many see success with replacing their landline phones with cell phones. If you can’t, practice talking on your cell phone less and lower the minutes. If you can get out of your cell phone contract without large fees, do it. Get a prepaid phone and use it for emergencies only.
Lower the cost of your internet. Many times, internet access is considered an extra. Yes, it technically is. However, it is now a job search tool for you. If actively looking for a new job, you need internet access. Don’t cancel yours. Instead, look for cheaper lower speed packages or opt for dial up access instead.
Lower the cost of your television. If you have internet access, consider doing away with your television altogether. You can get your local news and weather online. If you want television, get the local channels only. You don’t need one hundred or more channels, many of which you never watch. Luckily, most shows are now streamed online for free. In addition, the season DVD will soon be released on Netflix. Speaking of Netflix, if you do away with television, consider a subscription. For less than $20 a month, you can get unlimited movies with three movies at a time!
The above mentioned lifestyle changes may sound significant and impossible to make, but remember your financial situation. You were laid off from work. It may be one month before you find a new job, but it may be one year or more. Don’t fall victim to debt, take charge now.
Tags: apartment, cellphone, dvd, expensive mortgage, laid off, landlines, sell car
Category What To Do |
